"This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society"
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Hume is doing something sly here: he’s not merely scolding greed, he’s isolating it as a kind of social solvent. “Avidity” is a sharper word than “desire” or even “self-interest.” It suggests appetite ungoverned by reflection, a hunger that keeps eating even after the body politic is gone. The line’s power comes from its escalation: insatiable (no natural stopping point), perpetual (no temporal limit), universal (no comforting exception). By the time he lands on “directly destructive,” the reader has already been walked into a trap: if this impulse is that common and that endless, then any society that relies on private acquisition alone is building on a quietly explosive foundation.
The subtext is less anti-commerce than anti-naivete about what commerce can’t do by itself. Hume, an Enlightenment skeptic, doesn’t bet on moral purity; he bets on institutions, norms, and counterweights that redirect human motives into tolerable patterns. Notice the small, devastating phrase “and our nearest friends.” He’s not targeting cartoon villains; he’s describing the everyday ethics of favoritism, the way love and loyalty can become an alibi for hoarding, patronage, and inequality. Selfishness gets a halo when it’s done “for family.”
Context matters: Hume writes in a Britain rapidly reshaped by trade, empire, and a rising consumer culture. His warning reads like an early diagnosis of capitalism’s moral hazard: without civic restraint and shared standards, accumulation becomes a permanent motion machine that corrodes trust, turns citizens into rivals, and treats society as a mine rather than a home.
The subtext is less anti-commerce than anti-naivete about what commerce can’t do by itself. Hume, an Enlightenment skeptic, doesn’t bet on moral purity; he bets on institutions, norms, and counterweights that redirect human motives into tolerable patterns. Notice the small, devastating phrase “and our nearest friends.” He’s not targeting cartoon villains; he’s describing the everyday ethics of favoritism, the way love and loyalty can become an alibi for hoarding, patronage, and inequality. Selfishness gets a halo when it’s done “for family.”
Context matters: Hume writes in a Britain rapidly reshaped by trade, empire, and a rising consumer culture. His warning reads like an early diagnosis of capitalism’s moral hazard: without civic restraint and shared standards, accumulation becomes a permanent motion machine that corrodes trust, turns citizens into rivals, and treats society as a mine rather than a home.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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