David Hume appears in The Bob Zadek Show as a recurring intellectual reference rather than as the subject of any single episode. Across three episodes spanning 2019 to 2022, guests invoke Hume in discussions of property, the power of Enlightenment ideas, and the proper limits of scientific authority. The excerpts do not present a sustained treatment of Hume’s philosophy; they show him cited as an authority whose views on property, liberty, and evidence bear on contemporary libertarian arguments.
Hume and the foundations of property
In the 2021 episode “The Foundations of Property,” Professor Bart J. Wilson tells Bob Zadek that his research into the foundations of property rights led him to read David Hume and John Locke. Wilson says he noticed that the two thinkers did not use the phrase “property rights” but instead used the word “property,” and employed phrases such as “they have property in X.” That observation, Wilson says, got him interested in asking what property is and how it works. The Foundations of Property (2021)
Wilson’s reading of Hume and Locke formed part of an inquiry that he describes as steering between two opposing views he encountered on his campus. Friends in biology told him that all sorts of animals have property, citing baboons that respect harems, chimpanzees and wolves that patrol territories, and birds that re-hide caches of food when another bird is watching. Friends in the humanities told him that property is a Western European construction, male-dominated and imposed on the world. Wilson says he thought both intuitions were wrong, and he came to the conclusion that property is a universal and uniquely human custom—universal in that all human groups have property in some small set of things, probably tools, utensils, and ornaments, but uniquely human in that only human beings have property in such things. The Foundations of Property (2021)
The episode’s discussion of property’s function centers on conflict avoidance. Wilson asks the listener to imagine a spear that two people want to use when only one can. If both make a claim on it, there is potential for violence, and because human beings are groupish, each claimant may bring allies, making the problem worse. Property, on this account, is a custom that solves the problem of who goes after what. Zadek summarizes the concept as one of conflict avoidance: with property rights, conflict is not eliminated, but the prospect of conflict and the things to fight over are diminished. Wilson agrees that this is basically accurate and at the core of it. The Foundations of Property (2021)
Hume’s role in this episode is as a source whom Wilson read in the course of developing his account. The excerpts do not attribute any specific doctrine of property to Hume beyond the terminological observation that he used “property” rather than “property rights.” Wilson’s own conclusion—that property is a universal and uniquely human custom rooted in conflict avoidance—is presented as the product of his research, not as Hume’s position.
Hume and the power of Enlightenment ideas
In the 2019 episode featuring John Marini on Unmasking the Administrative State, Randall Holcombe responds to Zadek’s question about whether democracy is on a trend toward destroying itself. Holcombe says the long-term trend looks that way but that he remains optimistic, perhaps putting too much emphasis on the power of ideas. He points back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment era, saying that one of the things that jump-started the Industrial Revolution, gave people more rights, and limited government were the Enlightenment ideas of people like John Locke, Adam Smith, and David Hume. Those ideas, Holcombe says, had real power. [[episodes/john_marini_on__unmasking_the_administrative_state|John Marini on Unmasking the Administrative State (2019)]]
Holcombe extends the point forward in time, noting that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher said one of the sources of their views on freedom came from Milton Friedman. He recalls teaching in the 1970s, a decade he calls a time for pessimism, with wage and price controls, lines at gas pumps, rising inflation, and rising unemployment. Then came the Reagan revolution, the Thatcher revolution, and the influence of Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, and things in the 1980s began looking better. After the end of the Cold War, he says, there was good reason to feel optimistic in the last couple decades of the twentieth century. In the twenty-first century, he thinks things have moved back toward where freedom is eroding, but he remains confident in the power of ideas and hopes for a reversal of the trend. [[episodes/john_marini_on__unmasking_the_administrative_state|John Marini on Unmasking the Administrative State (2019)]]
Here Hume appears as one of three named Enlightenment figures—alongside Locke and Smith—credited with ideas that limited government and expanded rights. The excerpt does not specify which of Hume’s ideas Holcombe has in mind, nor does it elaborate on Hume’s contribution beyond naming him in that list.
Hume on evidence and the limits of science
In the 2022 episode “Troubleshooting the Constitution,” Mike Munger invokes Hume twice in a discussion of how government officials invoked science during the COVID-19 pandemic. Munger says that David Hume, the famous skeptic, was really worried about science making assertions as if it were a religion. Munger argues that instead of saying God tells me we have to do this and I am the prophet of God, officials said science tells me we should do this and I am the prophet of science, having studied, become a cleric, earned a PhD, and gained experience working in experiments. Troubleshooting the Constitution (2022)
Munger then adds a second Humean point: David Hume also said that any sensible person proportions their belief based on the evidence. Munger says that what science should mean is that we proportion our belief based on the evidence, and that if the evidence is mixed, the science says it is actually really hard to know what is going to happen—not that one invokes science and demands to be listened to because of a PhD. Troubleshooting the Constitution (2022)
The context of Munger’s remarks is a critique of pandemic policy. He argues that an economist would say every decision is about trade-offs and opportunity cost—what you give up by doing something. He notes that it is hard to measure things that do not happen, and that scientists point to measured cases and numbers while economists would ask them to look at the things that did not happen, which are the cost of the so-called science. He gives the example of a man in California who was arrested for surfing by himself after a lockdown order, with the Coast Guard sent after him, and says that science actually says that if you are outside you do not even need a mask. In Munger’s telling, this was not science but authoritarian control. Troubleshooting the Constitution (2022)
Zadek responds by channeling Frédéric Bastiat, who reminded us almost 200 years ago to pay attention to the unseen—the invisible but real consequences of any decision. Munger agrees and says he is worried that people constantly have to be reminded of this, noting that Bastiat wrote in 1850 and that we have learned nothing. Troubleshooting the Constitution (2022)
Across episodes: Hume as a shared reference
The three episodes do not argue the same question about Hume; they invoke him for different purposes. In 2019, Holcombe names Hume among Enlightenment thinkers whose ideas limited government and expanded rights. In 2021, Wilson describes reading Hume and Locke and noticing their use of “property” rather than “property rights.” In 2022, Munger cites Hume as the famous skeptic who warned against science making assertions as if it were a religion and who held that any sensible person proportions belief to the evidence. The excerpts show no development or change in the treatment of Hume across these episodes, because no episode treats him as its subject; each guest draws on him independently for a different argument. [[episodes/john_marini_on__unmasking_the_administrative_state|John Marini on Unmasking the Administrative State (2019)]] The Foundations of Property (2021) Troubleshooting the Constitution (2022)
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not discuss Hume’s life, his dates, his major works, his epistemology beyond the single maxim about proportioning belief to evidence, his economics, his history, or his views on religion beyond the characterization of him as a famous skeptic worried about science making assertions as if it were a religion. No excerpt states what Hume’s theory of property was, only that he used the word “property” rather than “property rights.” No excerpt describes a specific Hume text, argument, or passage. The episodes treat Hume as a name and a set of associations, not as a thinker whose views are examined in detail.