This paper explores some strands of the new science of man proposed in Hume’s Treatise, focusing on the role given to the passions in Hume’s account of personal identity. How is the view of the self with regard to the passions examined in Book 2 supposed to complement, as Hume suggests, that with regard to thought and imagination discussed in Book 1 (T 1.4.6.19; SBN 261)? How should the nature and object of the account there proposed be understood? While it is clear that Hume rejects a metaphysical thesis of the mind as a unitary, simple thinking substance, it is less clear whether he also gives an alternative metaphysical theory of the mind as consisting in a mere succession of discrete impressions and ideas or more modestly offers a description of what we actually observe when inspecting our idea of self. I favor the latter view and argue that Hume’s best and most interesting characterization of the mind is the political analogy of the self as a republic or commonwealth that Hume calls a “true idea of the human mind.” The mind in this metaphor is compared to a dynamic political system of changing members driven by common or shared goals and interacting in determinate ways regulated by its constitution. This system of interconnected ideas already comes with all the elements that a broader, embodied and social self presupposes. It is thus because the idea of mind or self as sketched in the Section “Of Personal Identity” in Book 1 is grounded in the passions that the examination of their nature and mechanisms in Book 2 can be seen by Hume as actually “corroborating” it.

Hume’s ethics is concerned not only with the metaphysical status of moral qualities but equally, if not more, with the problem of determining to what extent and under what conditions issues of moral disagreement and inquiry can be decided by rational argumentation. This paper argues that Hume’s solution to the second problem is a form of perspectivism: the rational decidability of moral issues depends on the existence of shared perspectives, or sets of assumptions and correlated dispositions to feelings, and is largely independent of the metaphysical status of moral qualities. An issue of disagreement may thus be rationally decidable among people with certain dispositions to feeling but not among others. A similar perspectivist reading is suggested for Hume’s analysis of knowledge about causes and effects.

Recent years have witnessed a renewed scholarly interest in David Hume’s History of England (1754–1762), and this essay adds to that interest by analyzing the sources that Hume used in the History. Unfortunately, Hume did not provide a bibliography or guide to those sources, and no scholar has produced one since. We have been preparing a bibliography for publication and the following essay is a preliminary view of some of what it will show. It demonstrates that Hume consulted and used more varied sources, and used them in more skillful ways, than commonly has been assumed.

In the Treatise, Hume writes several seemingly incompatible things about the moral sentiments, thus there is no general agreement about where they fit within his taxonomy of the perceptions. Some passages speak in favor of the view that moral sentiments are indirect passions, a few in favor of the view that they are direct passions, and yet a couple of explicit statements strongly suggest otherwise. Due to these tensions in Hume’s text, we find at least five competing characterizations in the literature:• Moral sentiments are calm emotions.• Moral sentiments are calm direct passions.• Moral sentiments are calm versions of the indirect passions of love or hatred.• Moral sentiments are unique species of calm indirect passions.• Moral sentiments are indirect secondary impressions.This paper assesses each of these interpretations. When their virtues are brought together, a new interpretation of the origin of moral sentiments starts to emerge.

Hume is widely read as committed to a kind of anti-realism about secondary qualities, on which secondary qualities are less real than primary qualities. I argue that Hume is not an anti-realist about secondary qualities as such, and I explain why Hume’s remarks on the primary-secondary distinction are better read as abstaining from the realist/anti-realist debate as it was understood by modern philosophers such as Locke. By contextualizing Hume’s discussion of the primary-secondary distinction in Treatise 1.4.4 as a response to a broadly Lockean understanding of the distinction, my analysis retrieves Hume’s critique of the resemblance and inseparability theses that structure Locke’s version of the distinction and establishes that Hume has epistemic reasons to reject Locke’s metaphysical conclusions about the distinction.

Hume had two principal arguments for denying that we can have an idea of a vacuum, an argument from the non-entity of unqualified points and an argument from the impossibility of forming abstract ideas of manners of disposition. He also made two serious concessions to the opposed view that we can indeed form ideas of vacua, namely, that bodies that have nothing sensible disposed between them may permit the interposition of other bodies without any apparent motion or occlusion and that it is possible to conceive the contents of a room to be evacuated without being compelled to conceive the walls moving into contact. To reconcile these concessions with his arguments and show why we only “falsely imagine” that we can form the idea of a vacuum (T 1.2.5.14; SBN 58), Hume developed a psychological theory of the perception of “invisible and intangible distance” that has something in common with Berkeley’s account of the perception of outward distance. This paper argues that this theory is both untenable and inconsistent with fundamental Humean principles. It explains why Hume should have rejected the two arguments against the idea of a vacuum and why accepting ideas of vacua would have been more in line with the rest of his thought than attempting to deny that we have any such ideas.

According to Paul Russell’s irreligious interpretation of Hume’s Treatise, the aim of the Treatise is to discredit “Christian theology” generically construed. In this paper, I argue that in seeking to discredit Christian theology in the Treatise, Hume uses an early eighteenth-century Anglican version of Christian theology rather than “Christian theology” in a generic sense as his theological paradigm. Taking Hume’s attacks on “hidden powers” and “the liberty of indifference” as test-cases, I show that whereas Hume’s views on these topics are subversive of the Anglican theology of his day, they are not subversive of other major forms of Christian theology that were current at the time, including the Calvinist theology of the Kirk of Scotland. If this is right, then the immediate theological target of Hume’s Treatise should be deemed narrower than Russell’s irreligious interpretation takes it to be.

In this discussion note, I put forth evidence to argue against the recent assertions made in favor of the late-1740s or early-1750s date for the composition of Hume’s memoranda. In particular, I show that the claims made regarding Hume’s reference to Strabo in the memoranda do not provide evidence for such a late date of composition but, rather, provide evidence for the date of composition being considerably earlier.

What is the source of normativity in Hume’s account of causal reasoning? In virtue of what are causal beliefs justified for Hume? To answer these questions, the literature appeals, almost invariably, to custom or some feature thereof. I argue, in contrast, that causal beliefs are justified for Hume because they issue from experience. Although he denies experience the title of justifying reason, for Hume experience has normative authority. I offer an interpretation of the source and nature of the normativity of experience in causal reasoning. I argue that the senses and memory have a special, positive status within the mind in virtue of their force and vivacity, which, on my reading, Hume identifies with a sense of presentness and a strong effect on the mind. Hume dignifies the system of memory and the senses with the title of reality because of these features. Causal beliefs are dignified as “realities” because they issue from reality. However, because the imagination can sometimes enhance the force and vivacity of ideas without the help of experience, Hume appeals to coherence and general rules as well.

In this paper I compare two models of expert judgment: the art critic in Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste” and the “wise man” in “Of Miracles.” The art critic is a true judge of beauty because he has made himself into a person who is optimally receptive to beauty. He possesses the virtues of taste: “Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice” (“Of the Standard of Taste,” 241). But the virtues of the art critic, I argue, are also those of the “wise man,” the person who consistently “proportions his belief to the evidence” (EHU 10.4; SBN 110). Comparison of these two characters reveals that for Hume the virtues fundamental to the art critic’s critical competence are also epistemic virtues. Hume’s exposition of aesthetic excellences should thus be of interest for virtue epistemology. Because contemporary virtue epistemologists have tended to focus almost exclusively on the relationships between intellectual and moral virtues, Hume offers something new: an account of epistemic virtues based on aesthetic virtues.