On Quinn (part II), Hume, More, and the hybridity of Civilization.
Last week I read and digressed (recall) on Josephine Quinn’s excellent (2024) How the World Made the West: a 4,000 Year History. Along the way I expressed some misgivings on how she tells the story about her main polemical target, the tendency to treat civilizations as social kinds, especially associated with the idea of superiority and homogeneity. I added Quinn “associates this idea with eighteenth century stadial thought, and especially nineteenth century Victorian (and French) imperialism.” In her account Mirabeau first uses the term in the 1750s, and then the (somewhat reactionary) liberal Guizot rethinks the history of Europe in light of it setting the stage for all kinds of imperialist (and often liberal) uses of the concept. Since I assume you are loyal readers, I won’t repeat it here.
As it happens, Quinn responded rather generously to my digression on an open thread on Facebook (here), and (amongst other things) directed our readers to an editorial by her in the Financial Times (here). (Do read all her comments; they are a nice window into the decisions an author makes when writing for a learned public.) This FT essay does much more justice to the narrative she wants to tell about the origin of civilization (including the role of Hegel and the role of thinking in terms of comparative civilizations). But this piece also doubles down on the thought defended in the book that ‘civilization’ originates with Mirabeau in 1759, where “it denoted an abstract concept of advanced society.” (This is from note 4 in the Introduction. of the book.)
Now, if you have read this far, you may suspect that I will concede that Mirabeau first used the term, but that the concept (as it were, un-baptised) precedes it. I do believe something like that, and that civilizational thinking in the sense recovered in the eighteenth century goes back to the contrast between the urbane and rustic that we find in Plato and the Stoics, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s earlier yet (and that various empires used some such contrast). But while civilizational thinking without the term is probably much older, here I just want to argue that the ‘civilization’ and its cognates ‘civilized’ predate Mirabeau.
In fact, as I have argued, in a different (rather polemical) context (recall here; and here), David Hume was rather obsessed by the contrast between civilized and savage (sometimes he uses ‘natural’ or ‘rude’ (in the sense of uncultivated, but also in the sense of w/o manners)). In such cases a ‘civilized’ society always means not just a society with polite manners, but crucially one that has established, law-governed (or at least somewhat regular/ordered) government, and in Hume tends to be contrasted with the inferior uncivilized. In Hume, this terminology starts in Book 3 of the Treatise (so 1740), part 2. “Of justice and injustice.” I mention this exact location because this is rather central to Hume’s account of property and obligation (so much discussed in the scholarly literature.)
Given that Quinn is an archeologist and classicist, one of my favorite examples of Hume’s use of civilized is the following in the first Enquiry (1748): “A man, who should find in a desert country the remains of pompous buildings, would conclude, that the country had, in ancient times, been cultivated by civilized inhabitants….” (EHU 5.7) In this sense, Hume uses ‘civilized’ all over his works and it connects ordered society to wider cultural achievements. For Hume civilized is to be preferred over (backwards) savage.
In fact, I have defended the claim that Hume was committed to the idea that even the violent expansion of civilized society could be defended and justified and that this marks him (recall) as anticipating the imperialist arguments of the nineteenth century (and that the distinctiveness of Adam Smith’s philosophy has to be understood as critical of Hume on this point). In fact, while Hume doesn’t use ‘civilization’ often, the one time he does is precisely in this sense. It occurs in a note to what became volume 5 of the History of England, published in 1754 (and published first, the so-called Stuart volume). But since Hume edited the History throughout his life, I am hedging whether Hume had the note in the first edition of the work (and so predates Mirabeau).
Anyway, in the note Hume writes, “The same author [Spenser] in p. 1660, proposes a plan for the civilization of Ireland; that the queen should create a provost marshal in every county, who might ride about with eight or ten followers in search of stragglers and vagabonds…” I am happy to concede that in this note Hume is merely summarizing Edmund Spenser’s point of view, although Hume clearly does not treat this use of ‘civilization’ as problematic, or ironically. And the reason for that is they he also happens to endorse (elsewhere) such civilizing of the Irish.
Now, nowhere does Hume suggest that his use of civilized/civilization is distinctive to him or requires special explanation. (The very note I just quoted is about the terminology of ‘absolute’ monarchy, so it’s not that he doesn’t care about terms.) That’s not surprising because we find this kind of use of ‘civilized’ (with associated commitments) in the chapter on property (V), Section 30 of Locke’s Second Treatise (which was rather widely read):
Thus this law of reason makes the deer that Indian’s who hath killed it; it is allowed to be his goods, who hath bestowed his labour upon it, though before it was the common right of every one. And amongst those who are counted the civilized part of mankind, who have made and multiplied positive laws to determine property, this original law of nature, for the beginning of property, in what was before common, still takes place. [Emphasis added]
In Locke we already find the contrast between those in the state of nature, who lack positive laws, and the civilized who do. In the History of England footnote Hume is clearly happy to back-project ‘civilization,’ almost certainly anachronistically, onto an author (Spenser) who is originally writing almost a century and half earlier than himself. Since we know that Mirabeau engaged with Hume’s writings, my comments are not ad hoc here.
As I hinted in my early post, I think civilizational thinking (in this sense) is to be found in humanist writings and also in debates prompted by Las Casas over what to do with American natives. Today, I want to close with a passage that I had in mind.
In Part I of Utopia, More (the narrator) remembers what Raphael (his informant) recounts of his travels from leaving Amerigo Vespucci to his/Raphael’s arrival in Utopia. This journey is marked throughout by the contrast between peoples who live in the state of nature and those that are civilized.
Here’s Raphe Robynson’s (1556) translation, which is the second English edition:
‘Policye’ here means something like what we think of ‘public policy’ and ‘good governance.’ This is, in fact, emphasized by the ‘good order.’' More’s Latin reads
This actually suggests that custom (ex usu) and good governance (recte prudenterque provisa) converge on or coproduce civilized life. Modern translations may be a touch anachronistic in using ‘civilization’ here, but it’s not misleading. The passage is not a mere aside.
At the start of Part II, King Utopus, the conqueror of Abraxa, and the founder of Utopia is described in following fashion:
But kyng Utopus, whose name, as conquerour the iland beareth (for before his tyme it was called Abraxa) which also broughte the rude and wild people to that excellent perfection in al good fassions, humanitye, and civile gentilnes, wherin they nowe goe beyond al the people of the world: even at his firste arrivinge and enteringe upon the lande, furthwith obteynynge the victory,
Here there is already an explicit contrast between ‘rude and wild people’ [rudem atque agrestem turbam]— that is, uncultivated and lacking laws — and the ‘humanity, and civil gentleness’ introduced by the conquering King Utopus, who is said to have Greek (!) provenance. That is, in More (an invented) Greek culture is treated as a bearer of civilized living. (Something that partially complicates Quinn’s narrative, but see below.) Robynson may even be over-translating More’s “quo nunc ceteros prope mortales antecellit cultus, humanitatisque perduxit.” Robynson is clearly treating the life of a citizen (from the latin civile) and being humane/humanized as near synonyms.
Let me close with two observations. One forward-looking: it is by now a trope in scholarship that in Hume the principle of ‘humanity’ as a moral category — one that could extend even between the civilized and the powerless/savage — is the foundation of the kind of thinking that despite nineteenth century imperialist civilizational prejudices ultimately led to what are now known as ‘human rights.’
The other backward looking. The contrast between civilized/savage is very much present as Europeans start reflecting on the significance of peoples in the Americas. They recognize, especially, that some of them live under civil policy not unlike themselves, and they contrast these, explicitly, with those who seem to live without more anarchically. Somewhat strikingly More tells a tale in which at least some of these civilized are themselves indebted to Greek learning and (alas) stock. (Bacon tells a similar tale.)
In fact, I should be more precise. Raphael claims (again in Robynson’s translation) the Utopians “tooke their beginninge of the Grekes, bycause their speche, which in al other poyntes is not much unlyke the Persian tonge, kepeth dyvers signes and tokens of the Greke langage in the names of their cityes and of theire magistrates.” So, in some ways More has us imagine that the Utopians, which themselves are a hybrid of the Abraxan locals and conquerors, combine Persian and Greek elements. And despite More’s own imperial and civilizational (in the bad sense) projects, intellectually he, thus, anticipates Quinn’s insight that civilization is intrinsically hybrid.