Abstract

The aim of this article is to characterize the concept of justice as an indispensable social convention for the emergence of moral duties in the context of groups that surpass the so-called “Dunbar’s number”. The article resumes, on the one hand, David Hume’s theory of justice, as it is discussed in the third section of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, and on the other hand it resumes Robin Dunbar’s hypothesis relative to the maximum number of individuals with whom a person may keep stable social relationships that comprise kinship, fellowship, and a sense of shared personal histories.