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In this paper, I return to the well-known apparent inconsistencies in Hume’s treatment of personal identity in the three books of A Treatise of Human Nature , and try to defend a Humean narrative interpretation of the self. I argue that in Book 1 of the Treatise Hume is answering (to use Marya Schechtman’s expressions in The Constitution of Selves ) a ‘reidentification’ question concerning personal identity, which is different from the ‘characterization’ question of Books 2 and 3. That is, I maintain that whereas in Book 1 Hume is using his philosophical empiricism to provide his own version of the problem of how to recognize persons as the same at different times, in Books 2 and 3 he is presenting selves from a different, both sentimental and ethical standpoint, as the focus of people’s concerns. I start by discussing Hume’s notion of personal identity as presented in Book 1 and in the Appendix. I then specify the narrative conception of the self Hume relies on when dealing with passions and morality as the self-consciousness persons develop as bearers of characters of or about which they can be morally proud or humble. I finally conclude by distinguishing Hume’s narrative self from the idea of “the unity of human life” that Alasdair MacIntyre puts forward in After Virtue .

In this article I maintain that the anti-theoretical spirit which pervades Williams's ethics is close to the Humean project of developing and defending an ethics based on sentiments which has its main focus in the virtues. In particular, I argue that there are similar underlying themes which run through the philosophies of Hume and Williams, such as the view that a correct ethical perspective cannot avoid dealing with a broader theory of human nature; the conviction that this inquiry cannot be developed in abstraction from the contingencies which are distinctive of the lives of flesh-and-blood human beings driven by passions; and the belief that the notion of character plays a key role in identifying and morally evaluating such lives. Finally, Williams' account of the psychological mechanism of shame in explaining character formation bears a strong resemblance to Hume's treatment of the passion of humility.

There are various forms of teleological thinking central to debates in the early modern and modern periods, debates in which David Hume (1711-1776) is a key figure. In the first section, we shall introduce three levels at which teleological considerations have been incorporated into philosophical accounts of man and nature, and sketch Hume's criticisms of these approaches. In the second section, we turn to Hume's non-teleological 'science of man'. In the third section, we show how Hume has an account of human flourishing that is not dependent on teleology. In the fourth section, we shall speculate as to the relation between Hume's account of human nature and contemporary evolutionary accounts of morality and reasoning. Teleology: metaphysical, Christian, political There are distinct domains or ways of thinking of reality within which teleology can be seen as relevant, that is, with respect to the causal interaction between ordinary objects in the world, with respect to individuals and with respect to society and political progress. In this section, we shall sketch teleological accounts of these kinds in order to clarify what is meant by teleology and the kinds of ways it has been seen as playing a role in nature. We shall also note Hume's rejection of all such accounts. First, there is the Aristotelian notion of final causes. A final cause is the end-point towards which things are directed. These are mind-independent features of the natural order. The final cause is the 'cause of causes'. As Boulter describes it, a final cause is 'that which causes the efficient cause of X to bring about this arrangement in the stuff of X rather than some other arrangement'. 1 Hume rejects this Aristotelian framework: '[A]ll causes are of the same kind, and. .. there is no foundation for that distinction, which we sometimes make betwixt efficient causes, and formal, and material. .. and final causes.' 2 Further, the one kind of cause that remains is not easily identifiable with any of those posited by Aristotle. Both our everyday beliefs about the causal structure of the world and our causal science are derived from the way we project experienced regularities onto the world and not from knowledge of mind-independent features of the natural order. Second, there is the notion of the teleology of individuals and, for Christians, the teleology of a person-the end-point at which they are directed-is, all being well, eternal life and salvation. Hume has no truck with such thinking, and this is agreed upon even by those who do not interpret Hume as a hardline atheist. Harris, in his recent intellectual biography, takes Hume as having 'a maximally detached and disengaged point of view' with respect to religion, considering it with 'ruthless impartiality, as if describing nothing more emotionally engaging than some bizarre belief systems so long extinct as to be bound to be all but unintelligible to the reader'. 3 A persuasive case is made that there was 'little genuine intellectual affinity between Hume and the philosophes', 4 bristly at...