Hume's use of history and political theory

History with Hume is often understood as a compendium of experiences liable to confirm the general propositions of political theory. Such an articulation between the general and the particular describes one of the relationships existing between history and philosophy. There are quite a few others. Some of the propositions of the Treatise of Human Nature enable to show how the irreducible difference between history and philosophy is sometimes the opportunity to formulate in a new way some of the difficulties to which the theory heard as the working-through of generalization may collide itself. The study of a few aspects of the human criticism of the contract and of how to understand the topic of time as the circle of transformation allow one to assume that both history and theory hold together a relationship of reciprocal demands and that the former, far from always being conditioned as a knowledge of specific circumstance, is sometimes what determines the field in which generalization may take place. Such a liable reversal of the relationships between philosophy and history may also requalify Hume's scepticism.