Abstract

While this approach does not eliminate the difficulties with Hume's positive account of personal identity or resolve the inconsistency noted by Hume himself in the Appendix, it does show that the account of personal identity contains no surprises and is consistent with the rest of Book I. The dissertation tentatively concludes that Hume's comparison of the soul with a republic is the most promising point from which to develop a Humean account of personal identity not subject to the difficulties of his original account. ;The bulk of the dissertation is a close textual examination of Book I and the account of personal identity from the perspective just outlined. The positive and negative aspects of Hume's task become clear early in the book: positively, the science of man is a science of relations; negatively, it involves a critique of causality and substance. In the course of the book Hume develops the relations of causality and resemblance in whose terms personal identity will be understood while simultaneously undermining the conceptual foundations of the traditional philosophical concept of the self. The basis for his definition of the self as a collection of perceptions is laid down in the discussion of existence in I.2.vi. ;It is within this context that Hume's crucial distinction between personal identity as it regards the understanding and as it regards the passions is to be interpreted. Whatever the difficulties with the account of personal identity in Book I, they do not prevent Hume from giving a common sense account of passions and morals in Books II and III, for which personal identity is not a problem. When the context for Book I is taken to be Hume's own science of man rather than the enterprises of Locke or Berkeley, then Book I as a whole and the account of personal identity within it can be viewed in a new light. Book I is no longer seen as being primarily an epistemology, and the usual objection to the account of personal identity, that it presupposes the very concept of the self it starts out by denying, is removed. ;Hume's account of personal identity in Treatise I.4.vi maintains that the self is a collection of perceptions. Beginning with Hume's own Appendix to the Treatise, this short but complex account has been the object of critical scrutiny and has generated an enormous amount of secondary literature. Attempts to place the account of personal identity in the context of the entire Treatise have, however, been few. The first step in such an attempt is to see how Hume actually executes his project of a science of man sketched in the Treatise's Introduction. Studied in its unity in Book III's account of morals and politics, human nature is artificially broken down into the systems of the understanding and of the passions, which are analyzed in the first two books. The passions supply the ends and motives of human action; due to their conflict they must first be socialized before they can be satisfied. This socialization of the passions is the most important role of the understanding in human nature