Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T15:43:17.429Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hume and Descartes On Self-Acquaintance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

David L. Mouton
David L. Mouton
Affiliation:
Roosevelt University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The idea of self-knowledge divides naturally into two parts in accordance with the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. I know myself and I know things about myself. The latter I know partly from self-acquaintance, partly from the behavior, especially linguistic, of others, and partly from each of these. All aspects of self-knowledge are controversial, so I shall concentrate in this paper on the question of self-acquaintance. My purpose is both philosophical and historical. It is commonly believed that Hume and Descartes held diametrically opposed, or at least strongly contrasting, views regarding self-acquaintance since Hume is regularly ridiculed for his denial of ability to discover his own Self whereas it would occur to no one to ascribe that same view to the author of the Meditations. In this paper I shall argue that contrary to appearances these two philosophers either held the same position or Descartes occupied the more agnostic extreme; and also that the position usually ascribed to Hume is, when properly understood, both correct and of fundamental philosophical significance. Part of my reason for selecting Hume and Descartes for analysis and comparison is to show thereby that the thesis of this paper is true independently of the rationalist/empiricist schism in philosophy.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 255 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Numbers given in parentheses preceded by ‘T’ refer to pages in Hume's, Treatise, the Oxford edition, (ed.) Selby-Bigge, L. A..Google Scholar

2 Quine, W. V. O., Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), p. 11.Google Scholar

3 Ayer, A. J., The Problem of Knowledge (New York, 1965), p. 49.Google Scholar

4 Shoemaker, Sidney, Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (Ithaca, N. Y., 1963, p.74.Google Scholar

5 Numbers given in parentheses preceded by T or ‘II’ refer to pages in the designated volumes of The Philosophical Works of Descartes, (eds.) Haldane, E. S. and Ross, G. R. T. (Dover Publications, 1955).Google Scholar

6 Precisely this view — “the act of thinking is a substance” — is ascribed to Descartes by the phenomenologist Pierre Thevenaz in his essay “Reflexion and Consciousness of Self” on the grounds that “I become conscious that my act of thinking needs only itself to ‘exist’ and to be assured of its existence. That is the very definition of substance according to Descartes,” in What is Phenomenology? edited by Edie, James M. (Chicago, 1962), p. 125.Google Scholar

7 Oeuvres de Descartes, Adam, Charles and Tannery, Paul, (eds.), (Paris: Cerf, 1897 and 1913)Google Scholar, v. V, p. 155 and quoted in Kenny, A., Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy (New York, 1968), p. 67.Google Scholar

8 In a letter to Hyperaspistes (August, 1641) reprinted in Descartes, Philosophical Letters, (ed.) Kenny, A. (Oxford, 1970), p. 111.Google Scholar

9 Basson, A. H., David Hume (Penguin Books, 1958), p. 127.Google Scholar

10 Stuart Hampshire, Review of The Concept of Mind, Ryle, Gilbert, in Mind, vol. LIX, 1950, p. 239.Google Scholar

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., p. 240.