Hume’s Theory of Social Constitution of the Self

Abstract

Hume distinguishes between the self of thought and imagination and the self of the passions. He is criticized for contradicting himself as he allegedly attributes fictitiousness to the self in book one of the Treatise but later reintroduces the self in books two and three. Hume’s account of the idea of the self, however, is not contradictory: he shows the impossibility of a pure associationist-empiricist account of the self. Instead, he proposes a social account of the constitution of the idea of the self and consciousness. In doing so, Hume’s account of the self anticipates social-historical theories of the self.

Hjum razlikuje sopstvo misli i uobrazilje i sopstvo strasti. Kritikuje se jer protivreči sebi zbog toga što navodno pripisuje fiktivnost sopstvu u prvoj knjizi Rasprave, a kasnije ponovo uvodi sopstvo u drugoj i trećoj knjizi. Hjumovo razmatranje ideje sopstva, međutim, nije protivreč-no: on pokazuje nemogućnost čisto asocijaciono-empirističkog razmatranja sopstva. Umesto toga, predlaže društveno razmatranje konstitucije ideje sopstva i svesti. Čineći to, Hjumovo razmatranje sopstva anticipira društveno-istorijske teorije sopstva.