QuestionsMust we always obey the law?We obey from utility and habit, not from a contract
Must we always obey the law?Obey

We obey from utility and habit, not from a contract

Hume's critique of the social contract

David Hume 1711 · 1776Neither causation nor induction can be proved: custom guides us.
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What it claims

The duty to obey the established government rests on the utility of society (helped by habit), not on a contract or a promise.

Why

Governments come from force, and living in a country is not consenting: we obey because society could not otherwise subsist.

The same idea through history
Socrates360 BCThe Crito: the Laws argue that by staying in the city Socrates promised to obey. Hume cites this passage as the only one in antiquity that bases obedience on a promise.
John Locke1689Second Treatise, §119: whoever enjoys property or a road within a government's territory gives it his tacit consent. This is Hume's target.
David Hume1748'Of the Original Contract': the version presented here. Hume admits a 'contract' in the sense of an implicit agreement between equal savages, but denies that it grounds the duty to obey today.
In short

"We obey from utility and habit, not from a contract" is an argument by David Hume ('Of the Original Contract' (Three Essays, Moral and Political, 1748), 1748) on the question "Must we always obey the law?" (answer: obey). Its claim: The duty to obey the established government rests on the utility of society (helped by habit), not on a contract or a promise. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

'Of the Original Contract' (Three Essays, Moral and Political, 1748)
Valid with an implicit premise

In eighteenth-century Britain, two political camps rest their doctrine on grand theories. One says that power comes from God and must not be touched. The other says that power comes from an original contract in which the people kept the right to resist. Hume finds both theories true 'but not in the sense each party gives them'. In his essay on the contract he examines the facts (how did governments begin?), then the thesis of 'tacit consent' (does staying in a country mean consenting?), then proposes another basis for obedience: utility. His thesis is not that we must obey any power: the same test of utility also limits obedience (see his replies below). The P1 to P4 → C form is our reconstruction.

P1Almost all governments arose from conquest or usurpation, that is, from force. Where consent took place, it was irregular, confined or mixed with fraud and violence: it has no great authority. So an original consent does not ground the present duty to obey.
P2The 'tacit consent' inferred from merely living under a prince is not real consent. Whoever thinks, as almost everyone does, that he owes allegiance from birth does not imagine it depends on his choice; and a poor peasant is not free to leave his country.
P3Yet people are bound: the duty to obey the magistrate is recognised everywhere. And the reason is clear to all: without magistrates, laws and judges, society could not subsist. The duty of fidelity (keeping one's promise) rests on the same foundation, the general interest of society. So nothing is gained by resolving the first into the second.
P4 · implicit premiseIf we are bound to obey, this duty must have a ground among three candidates: an original consent, a tacit consent, or the utility of society. There is no other.
Therefore the duty to obey the established government rests on the utility of society (helped by habit), not on a contract or a promise.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where we are bound to obey although none of the three grounds applies: for instance a natural duty of justice. The other premises do not exclude it.
The argument is valid. If obedience has a ground among three (P4), neither original consent (P1) nor tacit consent (P2) fits, and obedience is indeed owed (P3), then it is utility. Its strength is to start from facts and to explain why people who have never heard of a contract feel bound. Its weak point is P4: one can propose other grounds (fairness, a natural moral duty) or an ideal, non-historical contract.
Analogy. We wash our hands before eating. Some say it is because we promised our mother; but the real reason is that it prevents illness, and the promise adds nothing. For Hume the same goes for obedience: the utility of society is the real reason, and the supposed promise adds no force.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

John Locke 1689 · attacks premise 2

Locke answers the objection in advance: every man that has any possessions, or enjoyment, of any part of the dominions of any government, thereby gives his tacit consent, and is obliged to obey the laws of that government as long as he enjoys it, whether his possession be of land for ever, or a lodging for a week, or barely travelling freely on the highway.

Hume replies
Hume 1748 · Hume's reply, in the same essay
Hume answers that such an implied consent can only have place where a man imagines the matter depends on his choice. But whoever thinks, like all men born under an established government, that by his birth he owes allegiance, expressly renounces any choice: it would be absurd to infer a consent.
The debate goes on (our summary) Locke does not claim this consent is perfect: he himself distinguishes express consent from tacit consent, which binds only during the enjoyment (§119). Hume answers with limiting cases: the poor peasant who cannot leave, the man carried asleep onto a ship, who could leave it only by leaping into the ocean (our summary). Today's defenders of consent (such as theorists of the 'hypothetical contract') abandon real consent and speak of what reasonable people would accept.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Locke holds that enjoying a territory amounts to tacit consent. Hume replies that without a real choice there is no consent. The basic disagreement remains: does a purely implicit consent, with no real chance to say no, really oblige?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 · attacks premise 1

Rousseau does not say the contract took place one day: it is the standard of what makes a power legitimate. The problem is to find a form of association in which each, uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before. That real governments were born of force changes nothing: it shows they are not legitimate, not that the idea is false.

Hume replies
see the argument
We have not yet found a direct reply by Hume in the texts.
Hume 1748 · What Hume wrote in 1748, before Rousseau
Hume targets the contract theory as it was held in his day. He writes that a theory of this kind is shown to be erroneous when it leads to paradoxes repugnant to the common sentiments of mankind and to the practice and opinion of all nations and all ages.
The debate goes on (our summary) Hume (1748) precedes Rousseau (1762): he does not answer the ideal version of the contract. Defenders of the ideal contract reply that a norm need not describe facts: it serves to judge governments. Hume could answer that this norm is then another basis of obedience than utility, and has to be justified (our summary).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Rousseau makes the contract a rule of legitimacy and not a fact. Hume rejects theories that contradict common sentiment. The basic disagreement remains: should a power be judged by its real origins or by what free citizens could accept?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 · attacks premise 3

An objection drawn from Rousseau's chapter on the 'right of the strongest': obeying because a power is established would justify any power. Rousseau writes: 'Obey the powers that be': if that means 'yield to force', the precept is good but superfluous, for it will never be violated. The brigand at the corner of a wood holds a pistol that is also a power: one must give up one's purse, but is one obliged in conscience? Force makes no right.

Hume replies
We have not yet found a direct reply by Hume in the texts.
Hume 1748 · What Hume wrote in 1748 in the next essay, before Rousseau
Hume writes in the next essay that, resistance being admitted in extraordinary emergencies, the question is only the degree of necessity that can justify it. He sides with those who draw the bond of allegiance close, but admits resistance as a last resort when the public is in the highest danger from violence and tyranny.
The debate goes on (our summary) The test of utility thus limits obedience, but Rousseau asks for more: a moral reason to distinguish legitimate power from force. For Hume the distinction is made by opinion and utility; for Rousseau by the general will (see rousseau-pacte). Both accept that one may refuse to obey a ruinous power, but for different reasons (our summary).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Rousseau asks what distinguishes legitimate power from the brigand. Hume answers with public utility, which also limits obedience in case of ruin. The basic disagreement remains: does utility suffice to make a power legitimate, or is a distinct moral principle needed?