Thomas Mautner 130 respect for rights. An egoist is capable of such concerns. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, the theory was originally designed to apply to individuals conceived as egoists. Hume was aware of the connection between egoism and justice: ‘tis only from the selfishness and confin’d generosity of men, along with the scanty provisions nature has made for his wants, that justice derives its origin.^^ Once psychological egoism is rejected, and altruism accepted as a genuine possibility, and not merely as identical with refined or prudent egoism, there is one reason less for adopting a theory designed to apply to a range of egoistic individuals. At least to that extent there is a connection between the rejection of the rights theory and the rejection of psychological egoism. The connection may not seem very close; yet, we should remember that what Hutcheson does is on the one hand drastically to revise Pufendorf’s theory of rights, and, on the other hand, never explicitlytooppose Pufendorf except in the matter of egoism. The conjecture may deserve further inquiry. To sum up: although lack of conceptual clarity cannot be completely excluded as a possible reason why Hutcheson did not make the difference between his views and Pufendorf’s more explicit, it seems, on the whole, that this can be explained by certain ideological affinities, by the agreement on many points of normative ethics, by the literary conventions of the time, and by his pedagogical aims. At the same time, Hutcheson’s actual rejection of Pufendorf’s rights theory fits in with his rejection of ethical rationalism and of psychological egoism. On its arrival in Great Britain, modern natural law theory was quickly and quietly pruned. What was presented as natural jurisprudence was in fact almost from the outset a utilitarianismin disguise. References Barbeyrac, Jean, see Pufendorf 1712. Blackstone, William, Francis Hutcheson and Contemporary Ethical Theory. Athens, Ga. 1965. Bower, Alexander, The History of the University of Edinburgh, vol. 2. 1817. Carmichael, Gerschom, see Pufendorf 1724. Diesselhorst, Malte, Zum Vermögensrechtssystem Samuel Pufendorfs. Göttingen 1976. Grotius, Hugo, De jure belli ac pads (ed. Gronovius). Amsterdam 1712. Hägerström, Axel, Recht, Pflicht iind bindende Kraft des Vertrages nach römischer und naturrechtlicher Anschauung (1934^). Uppsala 1965. Hart, H. L. A., “Are there any natural rights?”, Philosophical Review 64 (1955) pp. 175— 191; also in A. Quinton (ed.). Political Philosophy, Oxford 1967, pp. 53—66. 38 Hume 3, 2, 2 (p. 495).
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