Abstract

How often have we read that Hume denies that we have an idea of the self? This of course is the upshot of Treatise 1, 4, 6. So there is some textual basis for that claim. But then Hume goes on almost immediately in book 2 on the passions to say that the passions have as their object our “self, or that succession of related ideas and impressions of which we have an intimate memory and consciousness”. So we do after all have an idea of the self. It is just that it is a complex idea. What Hume has exorcised in book 1 is the Cartesian ego, but to do that is not somehow to deny that we can think about ourselves. Those who say that Hume denies the existence of the self have stopped reading the Treatise a few paragraphs before they should. Pitson is not one of those. His book deals with what Hume actually says about our actual selves—selves in all their narrative complexity. This excellent book covers Hume’s positive account of the self. Indeed, it is the first book to do this, and is a welcome addition to Hume scholarship.