This article shows the unity of hume's "a treatise" as a problem; green and smith; contemplation and action; the roles of the author; the ambiguities of nature and fiction; scarcity and vanity. "a treatise" as an experiment in autonomy unmixed with heteronomy ; vindication of the ordinary through flight to the extraordinary; mention and use, Retorsion; arguments from silence and violence against hyperbolic evidence and unruly desire; is discourse compatible with dissolution of its author into free-Floating impressions or with representation (...) of his character as avaricious and vain? aristotle, Hobbes, And kant as foils for interpreting hume. (shrink)

THIS TITLE PROMISES a gloss on Heidegger's words, more exactly, on four of his words, four words which are crucial to his thought after Sein und Zeit. These four words fall into two groups of two.

THAT the itself-by-itself is mediated to soul by logos is itself mirrored by the dramatic form of Phaedo, the recollection of the last day of Socrates by Phaedo, who was himself there, to Echecrates, who was not there, but who would gladly hear what Socrates said and how he died.