Politeness, Paris and the Treatise

Abstract

This article analyses Hume's notion of politeness as developed in a letter he wrote in Paris in 1734 and the account of the corresponding artificial virtue in the Treatise . The analysis will help us understand Hume's admiration for French manners and why politeness is presented as one of the central artificial virtues in the Treatise . Before the Treatise , Hume had already sided with Bernard Mandeville's theoretical outlook which stood in contrast to the popular eighteenth-century understanding of politeness as a natural quality of human nature. In the Treatise , Hume developed these notions about the artificial nature of politeness into one of the cornerstones of his account of human sociability.

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