Sobre o problema da identidade pessoal: David Hume e seus críticos

Abstract

On the problem of personal identity: David Hume and his critics the problem of personal identity is, perhaps, the most polemic topic of David Hume's (1711-1776) philosophy. Three causes can be pointed: the innovation of Hume's explanation when he defines the mind as a bundle of perceptions that lacks perfect identity; the confession, in "Appendix", of dissatisfaction with his own explication and, finally, the fact that he abandons the problem in his posterior works. Scholars approaches personal identity problem by looking what is the inconsistency in the theory, acknowledged by Hume, in order to draw the real nature of his dissatisfaction. This dissertation follows a different path. Our aim is to analyze the reception of Hume's theory by two contemporarys philosophers of him: Thomas Reid (1710-1796) and James Beattie (1735-1803). Therefore, our research is primarily historical and tries to rebuild Beattie's and Reid's criticism of Hume's philosophy. Choosing these philosophers is justified for the importance of both to modern philosophical context. Representing the so-called common sense philosophy, Reid and Beattie's interpretation of Hume's philosophy - mainly in Treatise of Human Nature - contributed to a diffusion of Hume as a radical skeptic. That is why Hume releases a note denying the Treatise. Such note was characterized by Hume as "a compleat Answer to Dr. Reid and to that bigotted silly Fellow, Beattie. That said, we try, in the first chapter, to analyze personal identity explanation on Treatise's section 1.4.6 and to examine the nature of Hume's dissatisfaction confessed in the Appendix. In the second chapter, we present the common sense philosopher's criticism of the "way of ideas", from which Hume draws his personal identity theory and show the alternative offered by Reid in attempt to solve the problems of humean philosophy. Finally, in the third chapter, we examine Reid's and Beattie's criticism specifically on humean notion of personal identity; criticism which, simultaneously, promote the principles of their common sense philosophy.