SECTION II: What is the Self?
Reading 5: from Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature
David Hume challenges some of our basic beliefs about the "self". Hume asks us to consider carefully the nature and content of our experiences. Careful consideration reveals some surprising results, he thinks. Not only might we raise questions about the reality of a human self, but the very idea of a self may be defective, on his view. |
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"But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement." |
(Engraver unknown.) |
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Go on to the next reading, by Immanuel Kant. |
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Go back to Locke's Essay. |
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