HUME’S INDIVIDUAL: AGENT OR BILLIARD BALL?
HUME’S INDIVIDUAL: AGENT OR BILLIARD BALL?

Summary/Abstract: It is hard to make out the agent in Hume’s scienceof man. For the most part, human beings appear operated onpassively by the association and attraction of ideas, creatures ofcustom rather than creators of the future, more predictable even thanthe rising of the sun. However, by inserting Hume’s theory of theartificial virtues into his science of man, an inventive, calculatingagent strides into view. The paper does not conclude, though, thatthis anomalous figure represents a contradiction in Hume’sphilosophy, but rather that Hume’s individual is a far complexcharacter than might appear if one simply read, for example, aboutHume’s theory of induction – as one might spend a lifetime doing.Hume’s individual is not only a rich mixture of reason and sentiment,artifice and nature, action and passion, but these dichotomies, thatorganise so much of Hume’s polemic, evaporate. The result is that arich, holistic picture of agency emerges, together with a view of ‘themind’ that is not static, but rather evolves through time.

• Details
• Contents