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The Concealed Influence of Custom
The Concealed Influence
of Custom
Hume’s Treatise from the Inside Out
vwv
Jay L. Garfield

1
 1
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To the memory of Annette C. Baier
Who taught us how to read Hume
Such is the influence of custom, that, where it is strongest, it not only covers our nat-
ural ignorance, but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place, merely because it is
found in the highest degree. (EHU 4.24; SBN 28–​29)
 CON T E N T S

Preface  ix

PART I. Methodological Preliminaries

1. Introduction: Principles of Interpretation   3
2. Why the Treatise? Why Book II? Why Custom?   28

PART II. Book II: The Psychological Foundations

3. The Passions: Some Basic Distinctions   49
4. The Passions and Human Nature   71
5. Hume’s Moral Psychology   90

PART III. Books I and III: The Skeptical Framework Deployed

6. Epistemological Foundations   105
7. Causality   128
8. Skepticism with Regard to Reason   152
9. Of Skepticism with Regard to the Senses   172
10. Personal Identity and Philosophical Method   203
11. Ethics   225

PART IV. Living Carelessly

12. The Appendix: Second Thoughts about Second Thoughts   263
13. Persons as Customary Creatures   273

References  281
Index  289

( vii )
 PR E FAC E

In 1972, the late Norman S. Care assigned me to read parts of the Treatise
in my first philosophy class, in my first semester of college (a class I took by
accident). After reading Hume’s discussion of personal identity, I declared
a philosophy major. I am sure that I am not alone in having been lured into
the study of philosophy by Hume. I have never stopped thinking about the
Treatise, and this book is the distant effect of Norman Care’s teaching, but,
like any effect, it has many causes and conditions. My interest in Hume was
sustained as an undergraduate by an Oberlin colloquium on Hume. On that
occasion, two eminent Hume scholars were extraordinarily generous and
indulgent to a naive and probably overenthusiastic undergraduate. I still
remember talking at length with Terence Penelhum about the structure of
Hume’s ethics and the role of an ideal observer, and with Lewis White Beck
about the degree to which Kant really diverged from Hume on causality.
Neither of these giants of Hume scholarship had any obligation to talk to
me, and I am very grateful that they indulged a novice philosopher. This is
just one instance that demonstrates how important small acts of gener-
osity to students can be, and just how much our lives depend upon chance
and upon the kindness of others.
I went from Oberlin to Pittsburgh, where I quickly fell under the spell of
Annette Baier, who really taught me—​and so many others—​to read and to
love Hume. Annette opened the Treatise as a systematic unity, and showed
why it was so important to take Book II so seriously. I am always conscious
of how much of my philosophical life I owe to her patient and inspiring
teaching. The reading of Hume I offer here is enormously indebted to her
own. Indeed, virtually every specific idea I advance derives in some way
from her work. If there is anything I add here, it is simply to draw insights
together that are scattered in her work, and to give a shape to them not
explicit in her own corpus, but certainly suggested by it. So, to adopt the
scholastic language appropriate to this philosophical genre, the present

( ix )
 (x) Preface

volume is perhaps a subcommentary on Annette Baier’s commentarial

corpus as much as a direct commentary on the Treatise.
The biggest difference the reader familiar with Baier’s exposition will
note is the order in which I take the text, beginning with Book II and only
then returning to Book I. That is not Baier’s approach, and she argues, espe-
cially in A Progress of Sentiments, that Book I is a necessary foundation for
Book II, as Hume moves gradually from an individualistic to a social per-
spective. I disagree, and much of the burden of this book is to show that, as
Kemp Smith (1941) argued, it is Book II that is the real foundation for both
Books I and III (although I do not adopt Kemp Smith’s position that Book
II was written prior to Book I, a view for which there is no evidence, and for
which he provides no compelling defense). But I owe the reasons for taking
Book II to be conceptually foundational entirely to Annette Baier’s insights
into the Treatise. I suspect that she might approve of this small heresy.
As a rather brilliant undergraduate student of mine once wrote as the
first two sentences of a paper contrasting Descartes’s and Hume’s episte-
mological approaches, “Descartes writes in the first person singular; Hume
writes in the first person plural. Everything else flows from that, because
Hume, unlike Descartes, recognizes that justification is a social practice.”
Annette Baier always emphasized in her reading of Hume his attention to
our social and biological nature, and argued that that his social and bio-
logical perspective on human nature pervades the arguments in Book I as
much as it does Books II and III. I am running with that insight. We will see
how far it can be taken.
The other difference between my approach and Baier’s is my account of
the origin of Hume’s understanding of custom and of its role in his ac-
count of human behavior and of normativity. I am indebted to Baier for
drawing attention to the many important ways this term figures in Hume’s
philosophy. But I have only recently become aware of the roots of Hume’s
thought about custom in legal theory, and those roots suggest a somewhat
different reading of how custom figures in the Treatise from that Baier her-
self offers. The analysis I offer of Hume’s conception of custom, and of the
ways in which that conception shapes the Treatise, may be the most distinc-
tive feature of my reading.
When I read Hume, I also note the resonances between Hume’s ap-
proach to philosophy and that of the Buddhist philosophers I also study, in
particular Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti. I am grateful for the opportunities
I have had to study Buddhist philosophy, as it has given me perspectives
on the Western tradition that would be otherwise unavailable to me. This
study has also impressed on me two facts about the practice of philosophy
and the study of its history. First, we always come to understand our own
 Preface ( xi )

tradition better by coming to understand another, and by having the op-

portunity to view our own traditions from the horizon constituted by an-
other. Second, those of us in the West often take our own philosophical
tradition as a kind of default Archimedean perspective from which phi-
losophy is to be done and in terms of which interpretation is to proceed.
I have found it useful to displace that prejudice by sometimes rereading the
Western tradition from the standpoint of the Buddhist tradition.
My hope is that by occasionally explaining what Hume is up to by put-
ting a point as it is made in the Indo-​Tibetan Madhyamaka Buddhist tradi-
tion I can offer a perspective that illuminates aspects of his own position
that might not otherwise be obvious. I hope that in doing so I am not
doing violence to Hume’s text, and that I thereby illuminate insights in
each tradition through conversation with the other. I also hope that this
encourages my Western-​educated colleagues to read more broadly in the
Buddhist and in other traditions, both for their own sake, and as sources
of insight into our own. This may also help to make Hume more accessible
to my colleagues in Buddhist studies to whom I believe he could become
a valuable resource. One of my purposes in writing this book is to invite
these colleagues to take Hume seriously as a philosophical resource for
their own work.
So, there are four interpretative perspectives at work in this volume,
that, while conceptually independent, interact with one another: one is a
naturalistic skeptical interpretation of Hume’s Treatise defended through
a reading of that text on its own terms; a second is the foregrounding of
Book II of the Treatise as foundational for Books I and III. A third is the con-
sideration of the Treatise in relation to Hume’s philosophical antecedents
(particularly Sextus, Bayle, Hutcheson, Shaftesbury, and Mandeville), as
well as eighteenth-​century debates about the status of customary law, with
one eye on its sequelae in the work of Kant, in the later Wittgenstein, and
in contemporary cognitive science. The fourth is the Buddhist tradition in
which many of the ideas Hume develops are anticipated and articulated in
somewhat different ways. I hope that these perspectives do not collide too
violently.
This way of reading of the Treatise may strike some as odd. I do not pre-
sent Hume as a radical empiricist or as an atomist, and certainly not as a
normative epistemologist or a metaphysician. I present him as a naturalist,
as a skeptic, and as, above all, a communitarian, and on the reading I pre-
sent, these are not only consistent orientations, but mutually supportive.
I offer this reading as a plausible interpretation of the Treatise as a text. In
offering this interpretation, I do not take myself to be divining what was
in Hume’s mind as he composed it; but nor do I take myself to be offering
 ( xii ) Preface

ideas that simply occur to me as I read it. Instead, I hope that I provide
a compelling understanding of the text as a whole in the context of the
literature to which it responded and in the context of the literature it in-
spired; I am locating it hermeneutically in the history of philosophy, and
I am doing so in order to make it maximally informative and interesting
to contemporary readers. I read the Treatise because I learn from it, and
I hope that my reading can enable others to do so as well.
In rereading the Treatise in this way, I hope to exhibit it as a self-​
contained organic whole. Nonetheless, there are certain horizons external
to the text that will play a role in my reading. First, there is the Humean
horizon. I will sometimes advert to other texts by Hume in order to clarify
or even to justify particular interpretative claims. Hume did not change his
mind about all that much in his philosophical life, and often one can see
what is going on in the Treatise better by looking at a subsequent formu-
lation or even a retraction. So I sometimes advert to the History, and I will
sometimes refer to the Enquiries, the Dissertation, and some of the essays
and correspondence.
Second, I will sometimes consider those who were influential on Hume
to trace origins of ideas that might bring those ideas into sharper relief.
Prominent among those I take to be relevant in this context are Sextus
Empiricus, Pierre Bayle, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Bernard Mandeville, and
Frances Hutcheson. Hume read them all with care.1 While it would be
wrong to say that he agrees with any of them on all points, often a Humean
formulation or insight has a history, and we can sometimes appreciate his
point better by reflecting on that history. And we have seen that this tex-
tual horizon includes the law as well.
Third, there is a vast recent secondary literature on Hume, a mass of
recent and contemporary Hume scholarship. I am neither surveying nor
responding to all of it. That would take the book too far afield. I will only
refer to the literature that has most informed my own reading. Some re-
cent commentators have developed the ideas I defend; with others I disa-
gree. I will note the ways in which my reading engages with that literature,
but without any pretense to comprehensiveness. Except where I rely on
them or respond directly to them with regard to the principal argument,
I have kept discussions of others’ readings of Hume and related matters in
the footnotes. Those who wish to remain aloof from these interpretative

1. Hume is also, of course, often responding directly to Locke. But enough has already
been said about that response.
 Preface ( xiii )

debates can safely ignore those notes. In the end, this is a book about the
Treatise and not about the literature on the Treatise.
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to work with many colleagues
who taught me more about Hume, and I have had the opportunity to teach
Hume to many students, who also taught me more about Hume. I note in
particular the late Chris Witherspoon, with whom I taught at Hampshire
College; John Colman, my colleague in Tasmania; the late Barry Smith,
with whom I taught at Smith College; Hsueh Qu, with whom I worked at
the National University of Singapore; Cathay Liu, my colleague at Yale-​NUS
College; and my longtime friend and colleague, stretching back to Oberlin
and then to Pittsburgh days, Don Baxter. Among students, I especially wish
to acknowledge that I have learned a lot from Angela Coventry in Tasmania;
Kathryn Lindeman, Constance Kassor, and Lilly Frank in the Five Colleges;
and Rachel Ong (to whom I owe those two wonderful sentences contrasting
Hume and Descartes), Sai Ying Ng, and Elisabeth Tai in Singapore.
I am very grateful to my friend and colleague Yasuo Deguchi, to the
Graduate Faculty of Letters at the University of Kyoto, and to the Japan
Society for the Promotion of Science for a JSPS visiting research profes-
sorship at Kyoto in 2017 that enabled me to teach a graduate seminar on
the Treatise with a very capable and enthusiastic band of students. In that
seminar, Yuki Koizumi, Yuki Kawasaki, Hu Chi-​chiang, James Fyfe, Taro
Okamura, Kazunori Sawada, Riho Sato, Masumi Aoki, Shanshan Cao,
Takuro Onishi, and Hsui-​mei Chen read and commented on an earlier
draft of this book. Dr. Miguel Alvarez Ortega kindly sat in on this seminar
and pushed me hard on questions in the history and philosophy of law,
leading to much greater clarity about these matters than I had achieved
before. His generosity and forcefulness contributed enormously to the
seminar as a whole. This seminar was an experience of pure pleasure, and
the participants’ comments and critique contributed a great deal to this
book. That is what is so wonderful about teaching—​not what we have
the chance to impart, but what we learn from those who think we are
teaching them.
This work has also benefited from the assistance of a trio of able and en-
thusiastic research assistants at Smith College. Thanks to Emma Taussig,
Halley Haruta, and You Jeen Ha. It is hard to overstate the contributions
these dedicated student assistants have made to this book; they have
debated and clarified interpretations; they have made valuable suggestions
regarding organization; they have helped with references, proofreading,
and with so much more. I could not have done this work without them.
Thanks also to Katherine Fox, Riley Mayes, and Savitha Ravi for helping
with the final editorial process.
 ( xiv ) Preface

I thank Rahul Govind of Delhi University for directing my attention to

the literature on custom in the history of English law. I had not been aware
of this important context for Hume’s thought before our conversations and
before reading his book (Govind 2015), and now that I see that context,
I also see that it is impossible to read Hume without it. We philosophers
can learn a good deal by listening to our colleagues in history. And thanks
to Christen Mucher for showing me just how pervasive this understanding
of custom was in the context in which Hume was writing.
Several colleagues generously read and commented on earlier drafts. In
particular I thank the late Lynne Rudder Baker, whose collegiality, friend-
ship, and contributions to my work over four decades I will sorely miss.
I also thank Don Baxter, John Connolly, Bill de Vries, Douglas Duckworth,
Maria Heim, John Powers, Hsueh Qu, Kazunori Sawada, Tom Wartenberg,
and Jan Westerhoff for critical comments. Don Baxter’s, John Connolly’s,
Bill deVries’s, and Tom Wartenberg’s careful reading and probing questions
pushed me to much greater clarity; Hsueh Qu challenged my readings and
saved me from a number of errors. Kazunori Sawada’s relentless critique
revealed important errors and omission in earlier drafts, and showed me
how to sharpen some crucial points. Douglas Duckworth and Maria Heim
offered sage advice on how to make the book more accessible to readers
in Buddhist studies. Two anonymous readers for Oxford University Press
offered many suggestions that have improved this book. While I do not
agree with any of these folks about all matters, each of them has changed
my mind about some things, and forced me to better defense of controver-
sial points. In sum, this book is much better for the assistance of my gen-
erous colleagues, and all defects that remain are my responsibility alone.
Finally, I express my gratitude to my editor at Oxford, Peter Ohlin, for all
of his help and support for this book as well as for his work on the others
I have published with him.
 PA R T I
vwv
Methodological Preliminaries
 CHAPTER 1
w
Introduction
Principles of Interpretation

I present in this book a reading of the Treatise of Human Nature. It is nei-

ther entirely original—​there is far too much Hume scholarship for any-
thing to be entirely original—​nor obviously correct. I will diverge in many
respects from some “mainstream” Hume scholarship, and in any case, the
mainstream of Hume scholarship is a highly contested set of eddies, not a
smoothly flowing current. I will follow many of those eddies, agreeing with
those like Kemp Smith that Hume must be read as a kind of naturalist, but
also with Popkin and with Fogelin that he must also be read as a skeptic
(Kemp Smith 1905; Bayle 1965; Popkin 1980; Fogelin 1985, 2009). For the
most part, however, I follow in the tradition of Annette Baier (1994, 1997,
2010a), who argues that Hume is first and foremost a communitarian (al-
though she does not use this term).
I will show that these are not competing interpretations of the Treatise,
but rather are interdependent aspects of any cogent reading of the text as
a whole, that by taking Book II as foundational, we come to a reading that
reconciles Hume’s skepticism and his naturalism, and that the key to this rec-
onciliation is his communitarianism. I make no claim for originality; I only
present the Treatise as I read it now, in the hope that it is a reading of suffi-
cient interest to move discussions of that text and its importance forward.
This reading has evolved over about four decades of fascination with
the Treatise and by my reading of the Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition and
of Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy, especially the work of Candrakīrti.
Hume was certainly not a Buddhist; nor was he aware of Buddhist ideas.

(3)
 (4) Methodological Preliminaries

Nonetheless, Hume -​arrives at arguments and positions that are strikingly

resonant with Buddhist arguments and positions, and this may be no acci-
dent given the probability of interaction between Greek and Indian skeptics.1
Some of the interpretations I present of particular arguments or theses
might appear odd, but taken together, I believe they offer a cogent reading
of the Treatise that is both historically plausible and philosophically sound.
I do not pretend to vindicate every argument and thesis advanced in the
Treatise; nor do I pretend to correct every error. Either would be a fool’s
errand. But I do intend to defend what I take to be its central insights and
method. There is a reason that the Treatise is still read, and that is because
it has a lot to teach us. In this introductory chapter I set out five method-
ological principles that guide my reading of Hume. Each is defeasible, but
each has a lot to say for itself, and together they inform my engagement
with the text. They are as follows:

1. The Cover Principle

2. The Skeptical Inversion Principle
3. The Centrality of Custom Principle
4. The Pseudo-​idea Principle
5. The Principle of the Uniformity of Method

1. THE COVER PRINCIPLE

The Cover Principle is simple and, I think, obvious. It is even one Hume
himself implicitly advises his reader to adopt, when he says that his aim is
to “introduce experimental philosophy to moral subjects” [introduction 6,
xvi]. Nonetheless, it is ignored repeatedly by eminent and otherwise sen-
sible Hume scholars.

The Cover Principle

If you are unsure about what Hume is doing, close the book and
read the cover.

The Cover Principle has three things going for it: first, it takes Hume at his
word, and that is a good starting place in reading; second, it sets Hume’s
text more plausibly in its historical context, reflecting his debts to Berkeley,
Mandeville, and Malebranche, as well as his regard for Newton, and his

1. See Beckwith (2015), McEvilley (2012), and Kuzminski (2008) for more on the his-
tory between Greek and Indian philosophical interaction.
 Introduction (5)

response to Locke; finally, if I am right, it will make the Treatise a much

more interesting and less fallacious text than it is often taken to be. The
proof, of course, as in the case of each of these principles of interpretation,
is in the haggis.
On the cover, you will find the words “A Treatise of Human Nature.” That
tells you what the book is about. It is not about causality; it is not about
whether there is a self; it is not about the metaphysics of morals or the ex-
istence of the external world. It is about human nature, that is, about psy-
chology, broadly speaking. I will argue that Hume is (almost) always exploring
the workings of the mind, including the place of the mind in culture, and the
role of culture and language in shaping our cognitive and affective processes
as well as our conceptual apparatus.
If we follow the Cover Principle in our interpretation of the Treatise,
we will find that when Hume approaches epistemological questions, he
does so in the framework we today call “naturalized epistemology,” asking
not what justification is, or whether we can know anything, or what the
foundations of knowledge are, but rather how organisms like us come to be
able to justify and to rely on claims, and what the social practices are that
make such justification possible. We will find that when Hume approaches
questions of metaphysics, he is almost always asking questions not about
the fundamental nature of reality, but rather about our own conceptions
about the nature of reality, and about the contents of the concepts we have,
as well as those we falsely believe ourselves to have (more of this anon).2

2. This puts me at odds with Wright (1983), Pears (1990), and Strawson (1989), each
of whom defends a realistic reading of Hume, and takes him to be pursuing a met-
aphysical and epistemological agenda, as opposed to a psychological program. I will
consider their views in more detail in ­chapters 7–​10.
Baxter (2008) reads Hume as “a great metaphysician” (6). I agree with Baxter quite
a lot in matters of detail, but not with regard to the big picture. I will be arguing that
Hume is simply not a metaphysician at all. Part of our disagreement may stem from
where we pick up the tangle of the Treatise. I start with the passions, and work my way
out. Baxter starts with the account of time and identity and works from there. And we
each give relatively short shrift to parts of the Treatise that the other takes as central.
Nonetheless, I think that I can accommodate a reading even of those more apparently
metaphysical sections as accounts of our own concepts, as opposed to metaphysical
accounts of the nature of reality; Baxter has a harder time explaining why there is
so much psychology in a treatise on metaphysics, and must explain away a lot of the
structure of the arguments that I will explore.
I agree with Schmitt (2014) when he says at the beginning of a masterful defense
of a veritistic epistemological reading of Book I of the Treatise that “David Hume’s A
Treatise of Human Nature manifests scepticism, empiricism, and naturalism in episte-
mology” (1). We each strive to reconcile these strands of Hume’s theory. I disagree with
him, however, in seeing the Treatise as governed by an epistemological agenda. I think
that Schmitt’s heroic defense of his reading of Hume would look different were he to
 (6) Methodological Preliminaries

We will find that when Hume addresses questions about ethics, he is not
asking about the difference between right and wrong or about our duties or
virtues as they are in themselves. We will find instead, if we keep the Cover
Principle in mind, that Hume is asking about the nature of our moral rea-
soning and moral practices—​how, as J. L. Mackie was to put it a few centuries
later, we “invent right and wrong.”3
In short, the Cover Principle invites us to take Hume at his word, and to
read the Treatise as an early text in cognitive science, neither as an exercise
in metaphysics such as Berkeley undertakes in the Principles and Dialogues,
nor as an anticipation of Kant’s transcendental philosophy.4 Hume puts the
point nicely in a way that also anticipates the interaction of this principle
with his skepticism. He asserts near the end of Book I that his aim in the
Treatise is “to establish a system of set of opinions, which if not true (for
that, perhaps, is too much to be hop’d for) might at least be satisfactory to
the human mind, and might stand the test of the most critical examina-
tion” [1.4.7.14, 272].5 Hume makes it plain here that his examination is
not an a priori account of how the world or even the mind must be; instead,
it is a fallible, revisable, but acceptable scientific theory that can move our
understanding of our own nature along until the next theory (for which we
might hope) comes along.6

attend to the Treatise as a whole, and not focus entirely on Book I. Kemp Smith (1905)
offers perhaps the most compelling account of Hume’s naturalistic commitments.
3. There may be one exception to this general principle, and this accounts for the
“almost” in my explanation of the Cover Principle. As Baxter has urged (personal com-
munication), 1.2.2 (Of the Infinite Divisibility of Space and Time) can plausibly be read as
metaphysical. (And, I might add, it contains some of Hume’s most questionable claims,
and those most at odds with his general naturalism about the mind.) But I take it that,
like Hume’s missing shade of blue, “the instance is so particular and singular, that
’tis scarce worth our observing, and does not merit that for it alone we should alter
our general maxim” [1.1.1, 6]. But even this section may be more an apparent than
a real counterexample: it can also be read not so much as metaphysics as a cognitive
psychology of our perception of external objects, as suggested by Hume’s remark at
1.2.5.26 that his account is meant to describe not the “real nature and operations” of
external objects, but rather their “appearances.”
4. See also Hume (1978), Fogelin (1985, 1ff.), Biro (1993), Broughton (2004), and
Loeb (2011a) for similar sentiments. Ainslie (2015) agrees, and also sees this natu-
ralism as consistent with Hume’s skepticism.
5. All references to the Treatise are to the Selby-​Bigge and Nidditch second edition
(Hume 1978) with pagination and reference to sections in square brackets referring
directly to that edition; all references to the Enquiries are to Selby-​Bigge and Nidditch,
third edition (Hume 1975, abbreviated EHU or EPM), which reprints the original 1777
edition. References to the Dissertation on the Passions are from Beauchamp’s edition
(Hume 2007).
6. In a letter to George Cheyne in 1734, Hume writes of his enthusiasm for this
naturalism:
 Introduction (7)

As Wright (1983) correctly notes, the particular scientific account of the

mind that Hume adumbrates is hardly original with him. Hume’s broad
conception of what science looks like owes a great deal to Newton, both
with regard to Hume’s quest for a general set of laws descriptive of the psy-
chological realm instead of an account of free agents acting on motives, and
with regard to his insistence on the occult character of the true natures of
the fundamental forces that activate the mind, just like the occult character
Newton ascribed to the fundamental physical forces.7 Penelhum (2000c)
puts the same point very nicely:

To say that there can be a science of the mental, as Hume sees the matter, is to
say that what we think, feel, or will can be explained as the effect of a cause and

Every one, who is acquainted either with the Philosophers or Critics, knows there
is nothing yet establisht in either of these two Sciences, & that they contain
little more than endless Disputes, even in the most fundamental Articles. Upon
Examination of these, I found a certain Boldness of Temper, growing in me, which
was not enclin’d to submit to any Authority in these Subjects, but led me to seek
out some new Medium, by which Truth might be established. After much Study,
& Reflection on this, at last, when I was about 18 Years of Age, there seem’d to be
open’d up to me a new Scene of Thought, which transported me beyond Measure,
& made me, with an Ardor natural to young men, throw up every other Pleasure or
Business to apply entirely to it.
(Letter number 3 to George Cheyne, March or April 1734, in Hume 1932,
vol. 1, 13). (But note that Klibansky and Mossner [2017] take this letter to be
addressed to Arbuthnot.)
Whelan (1985) comments on Hume’s naturalism in terms that reflect these
commitments:
The term naturalism used in connection with Hume’s philosophy refers, in the first
place, to the view of human nature as an integrated whole that Hume develops
following his discovery that key problems of epistemology are insoluble within the
limited framework of the theory of perceptions. Hume’s psychological naturalism
is grounded in his conclusion that cognitive problems are overcome in practice
through the operation of nonrational, natural mental processes whose interaction
with rational ones is continuous, inescapable, and on the whole benign. Further,
this naturalism involves a tendency to regard human nature so delineated as part
of nature in a broader sense, in which all normal organisms are understood as being
well suited, in their capacities, to their environments and coexistent in a general
system of fundamental harmony. (67–​68)
7. Although as Wright notes (1983), it is to Copernicus that Hume explicitly compares
himself in his exposition of the methodology of the discussion of the passions (2.1.3.6–​
7, 282). Hume also makes the Copernican comparison in the first Enquiry (EHU 1.14,
14). But note that in this section he also argues, in distinctly Newtonian language,
that a science of the mind should determine the laws governing its operation. And, we
might also note, the idea of philosophy as an anatomy of the mind (as well as the cen-
trality of the passions to its constitution) is also suggested by Shaftesbury: “The Parts
and Proportions of the Mind, their mutual Relations and Dependency, the Connexion
and Frame of those Passions which constitute the Soule or Temper, may easily be un-
derstood by any-​one who thinks it worth his while to study this inward Anatomy”
 (8) Methodological Preliminaries

the instance of a natural law. Human minds are not strangers in nature, but are
inextricably parts of it. Hume tries to demonstrate this in detail in the Treatise by
showing how our beliefs and our emotive and conative commitments arise. (131)

Hume’s specific speculations about the form of psychological explanation,

and the quasi-​hydraulic model he presumes regarding the operation of the
animal spirits in the nervous system, on the other hand, follow Malebranche
and Mandeville very closely. Indeed, Hume commends Mandeville for
introducing the scientific method into the study of human thought.8
Nonetheless, Hume’s own naturalism is not entirely derivative of those
of his predecessors.9 In particular, reacting against Descartes’s view that
the mind knows itself immediately and with certainty—​a position tacitly
accepted even by such critics of other aspects of the Cartesian philosophy
as Mandeville and Malebranche—​Hume asserts in the introduction to the
Treatise,

[T]‌o me it seems evident, that the essence of mind being equally unknown to us
with that of external bodies, it must be equally impossible to form any notion of
its powers and qualities otherwise than from exact experiments, and the obser-
vation of those particular effects, which result from its different circumstances
and situations. [Introduction 8, xvii]

(1964, 2:48). Hume also employs the anatomical metaphor in the Enquiry (EHU 1.8;
SBN 10).
8. On the other hand, as Alanen (2005; 2006, 20) notes, the psychological states and
processes to be explained and whose relations are to be characterized by the science
of human nature Hume envisions are not merely brute feelings; they are intentional
states whose content is relevant to the generalizations to be discovered. And we will
see, as we proceed, that content is always relevant to Hume’s accounts. So, while the
form of explanation Hume envisions is nomic, the descriptions under which cognitive
states are to be explained is intentional. If we think of Hume as an intellectual ancestor
of the twentieth-​century behaviorist movement, it is hence Tolman, not Hull, Skinner,
or Watson, of whom we should think as his descendant, in virtue of his defense of a
“cognitive behaviorism” that took mental content seriously as causally relevant in the
explanation of behavior. We will return to this point in ­chapter 3.
Despite his professed commitment to the experimental method, Hume does not—​
as do contemporary experimental philosophers—​actually perform or report on ac-
tual psychological experiments. Instead, he often relies on “thought experiments.”
But this shouldn’t be seen as bad faith in any sense. There was no empirical science
of psychology in the eighteenth century, and thought experiments are not foreign to
empirical science—​indeed they are common in physics, and, as Hume argues in the
introduction to the Treatise, experiments conducted on our own minds only reveal our
minds as they are when we are conducting experiments, not as they are in their more
natural state.
9. Here I use the term naturalism to indicate a commitment to the explanation of
phenomena by natural science. This is not, for instance, the way Kemp Smith uses the
 Introduction (9)

Hume, that is, like Tsongkhapa,10 takes seriously the opacity of the mind
to itself, the possibility of cognitive illusion, and the fact that neither the
operation nor the contents of the mind can be taken as given. This denial
of privilege to our knowledge of the mind itself is what animates Hume’s
particularly acute Pyrrhonian skepticism, to which we now turn.11

2. THE SKEPTICAL INVERSION PRINCIPLE

Qu notes in the first sentence of (2015b) that “One of the most important
topics in Hume scholarship today is determining the relation of Hume’s
naturalism to his scepticism” (1). I agree, and while my understanding
of that relation is not exactly Qu’s, I agree with him that any satisfac-
tory reading of the Treatise must reconcile these two trends in Hume’s
thought. This second principle may strike most readers as less plausible
than the Cover Principle, but in what follows we will see that it will illu-
minate a great deal of what is otherwise either obscure or implausible in
the Treatise.

The Skeptical Inversion Principle

Hume follows the Pyrrhonian skeptics in resolving skeptical
dilemmas about the justification of convention by arguing that con-
vention is foundational to ontology, not the other way around.

This one requires some explanation, and reasonable people might disagree
with me either regarding my reading of classical Pyrrhonian skepticism
or about the degree to which Hume—​his own protestations to the con-
trary, and his own somewhat different reading of the Pyrrhonian tradition
notwithstanding—​follows that tradition methodologically. Once again,

term. While many take Hume’s skepticism and naturalism to be in tension with one
another, part of the burden of this book is to show that when each is properly under-
stood, they are in fact mutually reinforcing,
10. Tsongkhapa was a fourteenth-​to fifteenth-​century Tibetan philosopher who
argued that our self-​knowledge is always conceptually mediated and therefore fallible.
For an account of Tsongkhapa’s philosophy of mind, see Garfield (2012).
11. Hume’s recognition of the opacity of the mind is limited in its scope, applying
principally to ideas, as opposed to impressions (although it may issue in false beliefs
about the presence of impressions antecedent to ideas we take ourselves to have). In
particular, as Qu (2015a) points out, Hume insists that the mind is, in general, trans-
parent with respect to the qualitative character of our present impressions (though not
always: at 2.3.3.8, 417 he reminds us that we can sometimes mistake calm passions for
reason).
 ( 10 ) Methodological Preliminaries

I ask the reader to be patient and see whether this bears fruit. First a bit of
explanation is in order.12
Here is how I understand the Pyrrhonian tradition, following Sextus
Empiricus, as embodying a very particular philosophical strategy, one
that we also find in the Madhyamaka philosophical tradition in India: The
skeptic confronts a dogmatic dispute, involving two extreme positions, re-
garding the degree to which a convention, a custom, or a mode of speech
or thought is justified. Let us call one side the reificationist position and the
other the nihilist. One party to such a debate—​the reificationist—​argues
that the convention, custom, or mode of speech or thought is justified, be-
cause it is grounded appropriately in a convention-​independent reality. The
nihilist, on the other hand, argues that because the convention, custom, or
mode of speech or thought cannot be grounded in such extraconventional
facts, it is not justified.
So, for instance, we can imagine a debate between someone who believes
that we are justified in saying that there is an external world and someone
who believes that we are not. The reificationist in this case (for example,
Reid) argues that since there is an external world, we are justified in talking
about external objects, and our concepts and words are adequate to them.
The nihilist (for example, Berkeley) argues that all that we ever experience
are our inner experiences, and that we have no direct access to anything
external. Therefore, he argues, we are never justified in talking about ma-
terial objects.
In the domain of ethics, to take a second example, we can imagine an
argument between a reificationist (say Bentham or Mill) who argues that
because there are extramoral facts (e.g., about utility) that ground it, our
moral discourse about rights, duties, or right and wrong is justified. The ni-
hilist (say Nietzsche) argues instead that since there are no such extramoral
facts that by themselves make moral claims on us, our moral discourse is
unjustified.
In any such case, the skeptic responds with epochē, usually translated
as suspension of judgment. There are, however, various ways to under-
stand such epochē. In Garfield (1990) I argued for a particular reading
of this strategy, which I simply offer here without additional argument.
I begin by discussing what epochē is not. One might suppose that epochē

12. For more detail regarding my reading of Pyrrhonism, see Garfield (1990). See
also Baxter (2006) for a very strong argument for reading Hume as a Pyrrhonist.
Although our respective accounts of Pyrrhonian method differ slightly, we agree (each
following Mates (1996) and Popkin (1980)) that Hume—​despite his protestations to
the contrary—​is a good Pyrrhonian, and not an Academic.
 Introduction ( 11 )

is an attempt to find a compromise, some middle ground between the

two positions: maybe the external world exists in some attenuated sense;
maybe some of our moral discourse is justifiable, but not other parts. This
is not epochē in the Pyrrhonian sense.13
Alternatively, one might suggest that epochē consists in a kind of shrug-
ging of the philosophical shoulders. There are, one might argue, good—​but
perhaps nondemonstrative—​arguments on each side of the issue at stake
in the dispute, and therefore equally good and equally bad reasons for each
extreme position. So, on this account, one should say in such a circum-
stance that it is impossible to decide which to adopt. The skeptic, on this
reading, simply refuses to endorse either of the two opposing positions,
saying, “Maybe one, maybe the other.” This is a common interpretation
of skepticism, and it gains some aid and comfort from certain remarks of
Sextus Empiricus. Moreover, Hume himself sometimes talks about skep-
ticism in this way, as do many of his commentators, including many who
regard him as a skeptic as well as many who do not. But just as compromise
is not the Pyrrhonian agogē (way of life), nor is shoulder-​shrugging.14
Instead, the true Pyrrhonian—​including, as I will argue, Hume—​adopts
a more radical epochē than either of these. The Pyrrhonian rejects the en-
tire debate between the reificationist and the nihilist as ill-​conceived. For,
the Pyrrhonian observes, however much the two dogmatic opponents
might appear to disagree, they agree about the only interesting thing, the
biconditional presupposition that undergirds the debate. In the case of the
debate about the existence of the external world, that is, the assertion that
our discourse about, or conventions regarding, external objects are justi-
fied iff there is an independent external world; in the case of the debate
about ethics, it is the assertion that our moral discourse or conventions are
justified iff there are discourse-​or convention-​independent moral facts to
ground them.
Call biconditionals of this sort grounding biconditionals. The Pyrrhonian
epochē consists in the denial of the grounding biconditional, and a con-
sequent inversion of the direction of explanation. Instead of grounding

13. Nor, for that matter, is this the “middle path” of Madhyamaka, as I argue in
Garfield (1995, 2015).
14. Here I take issue with Garrett (1997) when he takes Hume to understand by skep-
tical arguments any arguments that “in some way concern or tend to produce doubt
and uncertainty” (208). Nonetheless, I agree with Garrett that in the end Hume’s skep-
ticism “can, indeed, reconcile his aim for a positive system of the sciences based on
human cognitive psychology with his use of skeptical arguments, and that he does so
in a way that facilitates an improved, if also chastened, commitment to the historically
developing products of human reason” (208). I think that this reconciliation emerges
from Hume’s consistent Pyrrhonism.
 ( 12 ) Methodological Preliminaries

conventions in ontology, the skeptic places our conventions at bedrock,

and argues that our ontology, morality, epistemology, etc., simply rest on
conventions.15
This is the point of Sextus’s fourfold prescription, viz., that the skeptic
lives by appearances, inclinations, the instructions of the arts, and the
conventions of her society. Sextus puts the point this way in The Outlines
of Pyrrhonism:

Now, we say that the criterion of the Sceptic discipline is the appearance, and
it is virtually the sense-​presentation to which we give this name, for this is de-
pendent on feeling and involuntary affection and hence is not subject to ques-
tion. . . . Now, we cannot be entirely inactive when it comes to the observances
of everyday life. Therefore, while living undogmatically, we pay due regard to
appearances. This observance of the requirements of daily life seems to be four-
fold, with the following particular heads: the guidance of nature, the compulsion
of the feelings, the tradition of laws and customs, and the instruction of the
arts. . . . And it is by virtue of the instruction of the arts that we are not inactive
in those arts which we employ. All the statements, however, we make without
prejudice. (1985, 40)

This passage in the Outlines introduces several themes that will be impor-
tant in Hume’s Treatise. First, Sextus argues that much of what drives our
cognitive and behavioral life is that which is dependent on feeling and
which is involuntary. He then argues that these involuntary feelings issue
in our taking things for granted, things we do not question, not because
we have reasons, but because we have no choice in the matter. In Hume’s
hands, these feelings and affections will become the passions, and we will

15. Compare Hallie’s discussion of a debate regarding the Eucharist in Sextus

Empiricus (1964). As Mates (1996) puts it, “Pyrrhonism is not a doctrine. . . . Sextus
calls it an agogē, a way of life, or perhaps better, a way of thinking and acting. . . . The
Pyrrhonian skeptic, instead of basing his thoughts and actions on firm beliefs about
how things really are in a mind-​independent external world, ‘goes by the appearances’ ”
(7). Much has been made about the importance of the appearances (phainomena) in
Pyrrhonism, but it is equally important to understand the role of convention and
custom as a guide to action, an issue to which we turn shortly. Also see Baxter (2006,
200; 2008, 8–​14) and Popkin (1980b) for a nice discussion of Hume’s Pyrrhonism.
Sawada (personal communication) points out that this account opens up a regress,
with a metaskeptical position possible that suspends the debate between the skeptic
and the dogmatists regarding the grounding biconditional. That is right, but that is not
a vicious regress. The denial of the biconditional at any stage of the skeptical dialectic
is consistent with and underwrites the suspension of the debate under consideration
at that stage, even if it raises the possibility of a new skeptical debate regarding the
biconditional in another skeptical context.
 Introduction ( 13 )

see that the passions become the unquestioned drivers of much of our cog-
nitive and affective life. More importantly, we see Sextus here emphasizing
not only the role of our biological or perceptual affections, but also the so-
cial dimension of our lives as skeptics. In this context, Sextus emphasizes
the importance of laws, customs, the instructions of the arts, and in gen­
eral of the social practices and conventions that constitute our societies in
determining the ways in which we not only behave but also reason. This
positive side of the Pyrrhonian tradition, we will see, plays as great a role in
Hume’s own skepticism as does the negative side.
Hume was introduced to Pyrrhonian skepticism in part through his
reading of Montaigne, but primarily through the article on Pyrrho in
Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary ([1696] 1965), an article that
played a major role in the revival in France and England of interest in the
classical skeptical tradition.16 And we can see a great deal of Bayle’s influ-
ence in Hume’s skeptical method. For instance, Hume’s confident simulta-
neous deployment of skepticism and the methods of science—​which might
seem prima facie at odds with one another (as well as his devastating de-
ployment of the skeptical method in his critique of religious dogma in the
Dialogues)—​reflects Bayle’s remark that

Pyrrhonism is dangerous in relation to this divine science, but it hardly seems so

with regard to the natural sciences or to the state. It does not matter much if one
says that the mind of man is too limited to discover anything concerning natural
truths, concerning the causes producing heat, cold, the tides, and the like. It is
enough for us that we employ ourselves in looking for probable hypotheses and
collecting data. I am quite sure that there are very few good scientists of this
century who are not convinced that nature is an impenetrable abyss and that
its springs are known only to Him who made and directs them. (1965, 194–​95)

We see several ideas in this passage that animate Hume’s own project, be-
yond the distinction between the import of skepticism for religion and

16. Laird (1932) concurs that Hume faithfully follows the Pyrrhonians as they come
down to him through Bayle and offers a detailed explanation of Bayle’s views and their
reflection in Hume’s work. But I think that Fogelin (1985, 1) is wrong when he states
that “the degree of Hume’s skepticism is variable, . . . His general posture is that of
a moderate skeptic, recommending that we modestly restrict our inquiries to topics
within our ken” (2). Instead I will argue that he is a thoroughgoing Pyrrhonian. Baxter
(1993, 1) ably defends the thesis that Hume is a true Pyrrhonist, acknowledging that
Hume himself disavows that label in virtue of a misrepresentation of the Pyrrhonian
doctrine, and demonstrates convincingly how Hume’s skepticism frames and makes
good sense of his much-​maligned account of our ideas of space and time, and that the
account makes no sense whatsoever unless we read Hume as a Pyrrhonian.
 ( 14 ) Methodological Preliminaries

science. First, Bayle asserts—​and Hume will follow him in this—​that it

is perfectly permissible for a Pyrrhonian skeptic to advance “probable
hypotheses” and to collect data.17 This, I will argue, is exactly what Hume
takes himself to be doing with regard to human psychology in the Treatise.
But second, and perhaps more importantly, Bayle emphasizes that in
doing so, one is not uncovering the “springs” of nature, but only advancing
hypotheses with some descriptive or explanatory force. When Hume turns
to topics such as causality, we will see this principle very much at work.
Bayle then turns to the positive side of Pyrrhonism more specifically:

Society has no reason to be afraid of skepticism; for skeptics do not deny that
one should conform to the customs of one’s country, practice moral duties, and
act upon matters on the basis of probabilities without waiting for certainty.
They could suspend judgment on the question of whether such and such an obli-
gation is naturally and absolutely legitimate; but they did not suspend judgment
on the question of whether it ought to be fulfilled on such and such occasions.
(1965, 195)

Hume takes this positive side, encoded in Sextus’s fourfold prescription,

very seriously as well. Indeed, as I will be arguing throughout this book,
his expansive understanding of custom comprises not only collective, so-
cial customs, but also the individual habits of mind and practice that a
classical Pyrrhonian would have characterized as instinct or appetite.18

17. In this context, see Garrett (1997) for an excellent discussion of Hume’s willing-
ness to advance inductive arguments in the Treatise and to advocate an empirical sci-
ence of human nature despite his refutation of any rational or probable justification of
induction. For connections between Hume’s Pyrrhonism and his atheism, see Russell
(2008).
18. And Hume retains this understanding of skepticism and his allegiance to it
throughout his career. In the Enquiry, introducing his “sceptical solution” to the doubts
he raises about theoretical and empirical reasoning, he writes (using the term “aca-
demic,” but really referring to Pyrrhonian skepticism):
The academics always talk of doubt and suspense of judgment, . . . and of renouncing
all speculations which lie not within the limits of common life and practice. Nothing,
therefore, can be more contrary than such a philosophy to the supine indolence of
the mind, its rash arrogance, its lofty pretensions, and its superstitious credulity.
Every passion is mortified by it except for the love of truth. . . . It is surprising,
therefore, that this philosophy, which, in almost every instance, must be harmless
and innocent, should be the subject of so much groundless reproach and obloquy. . . .
Nor need we fear that this philosophy, while it endeavours to limit our enquiries
to common life, should ever undermine the reasonings of common life, and carry
its doubts so far as to destroy all action, as well as speculation. Nature will always
maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever.
(EHU 5.1; SBN 41)
 Introduction ( 15 )

Hume, like the Pyrrhonians as (correctly) understood by Bayle, argues that

custom constitutes the explanatory foundation of our lives, including our
epistemic practices, verbal conventions, and moral judgments, not that
custom-​independent certainty justifies our customs.19
It is for this reason that Pyrrhonian skepticism should neither be seen
as a mere shrugging of the shoulders in ignorance or indecision, nor as
the claim that we know nothing, but rather as a location of the conven-
tional as the bedrock of our epistemic and moral lives. Finally, is worth
noting that in the Outlines, Sextus closely links what we might call the bi-
ological dimensions of habit with the social dimensions. We will see Hume
following him in this respect in his account of custom, which also straddles
this boundary.20

While we must be careful about using the Enquiry to justify interpretations of the
Treatise, here Hume provides us with clear evidence of his own understanding of skep-
ticism, and of an understanding that is evidently at work in the Treatise. (See also the
discussion of skepticism in EHU 4.21–​22 (SBN 36–​39), which recapitulates that of
Treatise 1.4.3, providing further confirmation of the continuity of Hume’s thought in
this regard.) It is also worth noting the careful distinction Hume draws between his
own Pyrrhonian skepticism and the modern skepticism of Descartes, which he takes
to be incurable if taken seriously (EHU 9.1; SBN 150).
19. It is clear that Reid, for instance, misses this positive side of the Pyrrhonian
method when he suggests that Hume’s positions on personal identity and the exist-
ence of the external world are inconsistent with his practice, saying:
It seems to be a peculiar strain of humour in this author, to set out in his intro-
duction, by promising, with a grave face, no less than a complete system of the
sciences, upon a foundation entirely new—​to wit, that of human nature—​when
the intention of the whole work is to shew, that there is neither human nature nor
science in the world. It may perhaps be unreasonable to complain of this conduct in
an author who neither believes his own existence nor that of his reader; and there-
fore could not mean to disappoint him, or to laugh at his credulity. Yet I cannot
imagine that the author of the “Treatise of Human Nature” is so sceptical as to
plead this apology. He believed, against his principles, that he should be read, and
that he should retain his personal identity, till he reaped the honour and reputation
justly due to his metaphysical acumen. Indeed, he ingenuously acknowledges, that
it was only in solitude and retirement that he could yield any assent to his own phi-
losophy; society, like daylight, dispelled the darkness and fogs of scepticism, and
made him yield to the dominion of common sense. Nor did I ever hear him charged
with doing anything, even in solitude, that argued such a degree of scepticism as
his principles maintain. Surely if his friends apprehended this, they would have the
charity never to leave him alone. (2000, 8–​9)
20. As will be apparent as I develop my account of Hume’s skepticism, I disagree with
Garrett’s deployment of what he calls the “Title Principle” (not to be confused with
my “Cover Principle”!): “Where reason is lively, and mixes itself with some propensity,
it ought to be assented to. Where it does not, it can never have any title to operate
upon us” (1.4.7.11, 270). The Title Principle, as I hope that my account will demon-
strate, is not an autonomous epistemic principle; it is a mere summary of Hume’s
broader Pyrrhonian commitments, which we will explore in greater detail throughout
this study. Moreover, I will argue, Hume’s Pyrrhonism is at bottom psychological, not
epistemological.
 ( 16 ) Methodological Preliminaries

Epochē in the classical Pyrrhonian sense is therefore a suspension of the

debate between dogmatic positions in favor of a radically different kind
of discourse. Skepticism of this kind, as Sextus emphasizes when he says
that “we cannot be entirely inactive,” is not a purely negative project, but
a positive project as well, made possible by the clearing of a certain kind of
metaphysical underbrush. The positive project is the limning of the domain
of human custom, of human nature.21
To be sure, there are passages in Sextus’s writings that suggest that he
sees the Pyrrhonian position as a kind of epistemic nihilism, and that he
endorses such a position. But it is hard to square that reading both with
Sextus’s discussion of the fourfold prescription and with the reflexivity of
skepticism that he emphasizes (an emphasis we will see echoed in Hume in
his discussion of skepticism with regard to reason).
It makes much more sense, I think, to read those passages in which
Sextus advocates a recusal from all belief, or denies that there is any knowl­
edge, as a rejection of dogmatic belief, or dogmatic knowledge, that is, of any
doxastic attitude not tempered by the skeptical agogē. When Hume explic-
itly rejects skepticism, he rejects this nihilistic version; his own approach
hews very close to Sextus’s actual program.22 Thus, I will argue, Hume’s

This emphasis on our social nature is a commitment Hume retains throughout his
career, despite other changes in his views. In the first Enquiry, for instance, he remarks:
Man is a reasonable being; and as such, receives from science his proper food and
nourishment: But so narrow are the bounds of human understanding, that little
satisfaction can be hoped for in this particular, either from the extent or security
of his acquisitions. Man is a sociable, no less than a reasonable being: But neither
can he always enjoy company agreeable and amusing, or preserve the proper relish
for them. Man is also an active being; and from that disposition, as well as from
the various necessities of human life, must submit to business and occupation: But
the mind requires some relaxation, and cannot always support its bent to care and
industry. It seems, then, that nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most
suitable to human race. (EHU 1.6; SBN 8–​9)
In this volume, while I will focus explicitly on the Treatise, it is Hume’s account of this
“mixed kind of life” that will concern us.
21. This is not the only reading of Pyrrhonian skepticism. See Burnyeat (1983) for
an alternative understanding. Baxter (1993) follows Frede (1997) in his treatment of
Hume’s skepticism. My own reading is closer to those of Hallie (Sextus Empiricus 1985),
Mates (1996), and Popkin (1980b) and I think explains Bayle’s and Hume’s use of skep-
ticism better. While it is tempting to digress into a debate regarding interpretations of
Sextus Empiricus, I leave that issue aside here, and merely note my own interpretative
allegiance, while acknowledging that it is one among many. I hope that its merits are
demonstrated by the reading of Hume it enables.
22. See Strawson (1985) and Kripke (1982) for insightful account not only of this
method, but also of the connections between Hume and Wittgenstein, and Strawson in
particular for an acute analysis of the connection between Hume’s skepticism and his
naturalism. And read Qu (2015b) for the most searching examination of the relation of
Hume’s naturalism and skepticism to his epistemology.
 Introduction ( 17 )

project is entirely continuous with the classical Pyrrhonian tradition as

well as its later developments in the hands of Wittgenstein, whose ideas are
so redolent of Hume’s.23 As we read the Treatise, we will see many examples
of this inversion.24

3. THE CENTRALITY OF CUSTOM PRINCIPLE

All of this connects directly to the third principle:

The Centrality of Custom Principle

When Hume turns to the explanation of cognitive capacities
and achievements, the central explanans is custom, and this in two
senses: individual customary behavior and social custom.

The connection is clear: The second principle of interpretation leads us to

see Hume as taking custom not as something to explain, but rather as that
which explains; hence its central role in the Treatise. But its role is dual.
Hume uses the term custom to designate what we would now regard as two
phenomena, but which to Hume’s eyes appears to be a single phenomenon
appearing in two distinct domains: custom as convention and custom as habit.
First, there is social custom—​the way we do things, including conventions
regarding language, individuation, explanation, praise and blame, etc. For
Hume, custom in this sense is often explanatory bedrock. We will explore
his understanding of custom in this sense, and its roots in English legal
theory, in c­ hapter 2.
Hume uses custom not only to denote social regularities, but also to de-
note individual psychological regularities, or our customary way of behaving.
We might prefer to call this habit. So, for Hume, the fact that I customarily call
to mind the color red when I think of apples is as much a matter of custom
as the fact that we customarily set the table with the fork on the left and the

23. Some readers might be surprised by this remark given Wittgenstein’s oft-​quoted
comment that he found reading Hume “a torture.” Maybe he did find Hume hard to
read; but it is clear that he endured that “torture,” and, I think, clear that he learned a
great deal from it.
24. See Frede (1997) for a similar account of classical skepticism (although he would
not agree with my discussion of the “skeptical inversion”). Burnyeat, however, in a
searching discussion of the structure of Pyrrhonism that focuses directly on Hume’s
own explicit critique of that doctrine in the Treatise, takes a very different position,
arguing that Pyrrhonism requires a complete recusal from all belief. In fact, Hume
seems to share Burnyeat’s more radical reading of the Pyrrhonian position, which is
why he refuses to take himself to be a Pyrrhonian.
 ( 18 ) Methodological Preliminaries

knife on the right. Custom, then, is regularity in behavior. Nonetheless, a

close reading of the Treatise reveals that on Hume’s view, regularity in indi-
vidual behavior is often grounded in social regularity (as one would expect
given the legal background of this term), which in turn is norm-​constituting
in virtue of the expectations it engenders, and lies at the basis of the explan-
atory power of nomic generalizations grounded in observations of regu-
larity. This is why when we look to Hume on explanation, brute regularities,
whether in individual or collective behavior, are often as deep as he takes
us.25 Wittgenstein was to concur that in the citation of custom, in just this
sense, “our spade is turned” (Wittgenstein 1953, ¶ 217).
Hume returns to this idea in the Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding: Speaking of our natural tendencies to belief that constitute
the positive side of the skeptical program, Hume writes,

This principle is Custom or Habit. For wherever the repetition of any act or op-
eration produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation, . . . we always
say that this propensity is the effect of Custom. By employing that word, we pre-
tend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity. We only point
out a principle of human nature. (EHU 5.5; SBN 43)

A bit later, Hume asserts,

Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which
renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a sim-
ilar train of events with those which have appeared in the past. Without the in-
fluence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond
what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should never know
how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production
of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief
part of speculation. (EHU 5.6; SBN 44–​45)

Hume’s skepticism, and his understanding of skepticism, may well have

evolved between the time of the composition of the Treatise and that of the
composition of the Enquiry. I will not be concerned here to trace that evo-
lution. In any case, in these passages in the Enquiry, we see Hume still con-
necting his account of custom directly not only to his Pyrrhonian method

25. It is interesting to note that this same broad use of a single term to indicate both
collective and individual regularities in behavior and thought is found in the use of
the Sanskrit samvṛti (convention) and vyavahāra (ordinary, or everyday behavior), and
enters Madhyamaka in a way prescient of Hume. See Whelan (1985).
 Introduction ( 19 )

generally, but also to his views about causality and action, connections
that I will argue are already in place in the Treatise. Hume returns to this
connection, and to the connection between custom and our brute, animal
psychology—​to our cognitive instincts—​in EHU 5.11 (SBN 48) (as well as
in EHU 9.5 [SBN 106]), when he argues that the customary nature of much
of thought explains its speed, a speed we do not see in deliberate ratiocina-
tion (in EHU 5.22, 55).26
Baier has made this point with great force. Writing about the Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding, she says, “That principle [which enables
inference] is said . . . to be custom or habit, and it is important to note that
it is said to have authority, not simply to have causal influence” (1994, 80).
Turning back to the Treatise, she observes that

if anything is to have epistemic authority, if any step taken by the mind is to

receive normative endorsement, it cannot fail to be some sort of instance of as-
sociative thinking. What gives it its authority will indeed be a special feature not
found in any and every associative move. The rationalists, Hume believed, had
misidentified that special feature. He is offering another way of understanding
epistemic authority, one that allows us to give authority to some habits that are
not habits of deductive argument and to establish them as rules. (80)

And elsewhere, commenting on the role of custom in its sense as social

convention, she writes:

There is no individualist bias to Hume’s epistemology within most of Book One—​

membership in a linguistic community, itself one of several such communities
whose languages “nearly correspond” to each other, is essential for the sort of
mental activity that he is analyzing in Part I of Book One, indeed in the whole
of the Treatise. Only in Part IV of Book One, when scepticism and solipsism are
worked though, is there any experiment made of separating the thinker from
the normal human world. (1991, 32)

Baier is absolutely correct in observing that one of Hume’s most important

contributions to philosophy is his articulation of the Pyrrhonian fourfold pre-
scription in this way, seeing custom, in its guise both as mental habit and as
social convention, not only as the cause of our cognitive practices, but as a
source of the norms that govern them.

26. And, to press the legal analogy, the speed that allows us instantly to know whether
a course of action accords with our customary practices, as opposed to the deliberate
processes of a court of law.
 ( 20 ) Methodological Preliminaries

It is for this reason that Hume is the first serious naturalizer of episte-
mology. We will also see that this role of custom in the epistemic domain is
entirely homologous with the role that Hume assigns it in the ethical and
political domain. Hume, drawing in part on the Pyrrhonism he inherits
from Bayle and Montaigne, in part on the analysis of our social nature
that he inherits from Mandeville and Hutcheson, and in part on the rich
traditions of British legal theory, develops the first complete Western phil-
osophical system that takes custom seriously as a foundation of human life
as an organic unity.27

27. As I argue elsewhere (Garfield and Priest 2002; Garfield 2002; Cowherds 2010;
Garfield 2011; 2015, 20), Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophers such as Nāgārjuna and
Candrakīrti made this move over a millennium earlier. The parallels between Hume’s
use of custom or convention and that in Madhyamaka are fascinating. Gopnik (2009)
has argued that Hume must have drawn explicitly on Buddhist ideas, on the grounds it
could be no coincidence that these ideas are so similar, given that Hume was writing the
Treatise at La Fleche at precisely the time that Ippolito Desideri and Charles François
Dolu were in residence. Desideri had recently returned from Tibet, where he studied
Buddhist philosophy and acquired a deep understanding of Madhyamaka. (Desideri
2010) and Dolu had been part of a Jesuit embassy to Siam, where he had acquired
some knowledge of Theravāda Buddhism. Gopnik has also pointed out (personal com-
munication) that Bayle mentions Buddhist doctrines (as part of the “philosophy of the
orient”) in a footnote to his essay on Spinoza, and Hume clearly read that essay. Hence,
she concludes that it is likely that Hume knew about Buddhism and utilized Buddhist
ideas in coming to his views about the self, causation, and other matters regarding
which his views are strikingly similar to those of some Buddhist thinkers.
I disagree with Gopnik’s interpretation of what is surely a fascinating historical co-
incidence (and given my own interest both in Buddhist philosophy and in the early
interactions between European and Asian philosophers, I wish I could agree). First, is
no positive evidence that Hume ever met either Desideri or Dolu, or read their work.
And given Hume’s enormous antipathy to Christianity, if he had been able to extol the
greater insight of a “pagan” tradition, he assuredly would have done so. Indeed, there
is no evidence in any of Hume’s writings including not only the Treatise, but also the
Natural History of Religion and the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, or in his cor-
respondence that he had ever heard of Buddhism.
And Hume was willing to write about his conversations with his Jesuit colleagues,
and to remark on their curious ways. In a letter to George Campbell, he writes:
It may perhaps amuse you to learn the first hint, which suggested to me that ar-
gument which you have so strenuously attacked. I was walking in the cloisters of
the Jesuits’ College of La Flèche, a town in which I passed two years of my youth,
and engaged in a conversation with a Jesuit of some parts and learning, who was
relating to me, and urging some nonsensical miracle performed in their convent,
when I was tempted to dispute against him; and as my head was full of the topics
of my Treatise of Human Nature, which I was at the time composing, this argument
immediately occurred to me, and I thought it very much graveled my companion;
but at last he observed to me, that it was impossible for that argument to have any
solidity, because it operated equally against the Gospel as the Catholic miracles;—​
which observation I thought proper to admit as a sufficient answer. I believe you
will allow, that the freedom at least of this reasoning makes it somewhat extraordi-
nary to have been the produce of a convent of Jesuits, tho perhaps you may think
 Introduction ( 21 )

Attention to this central role of custom, along with appreciation of

Hume’s Pyrrhonism, explains why Laird is wrong to say that “Hume set
out to lay the foundations of pure sensory phenomenalism” (1932, 25).28
Part of the burden of this book, as I indicated out the outset, is to show
that Hume is not pursuing a primarily epistemological project (at least in
any sense other than that of naturalized epistemology), and certainly not
an ontological project in the Treatise. But it is equally important to note
that when he does turn to the question of the nature and source of our
knowledge, whether or not founded in sensation, it is always modulated by
custom. Sensation might provide the starting point for cognition, but the
normative dimensions of knowledge derive not from its sensory origins,
but from our psychological and social epistemic customs. In short, Hume is
too much an externalist to be any kind of phenomenalist.
One might wonder why it is that custom plays such a central role in
Hume’s philosophical program. As we will see in the next chapter, the
origins of Hume’s thought about custom lie in debates about custom in
the law, and about the relationship between customary and common
law in England that occupied British legal theory in the eighteenth cen-
tury. Hume’s understanding of normativity and necessity as grounded
in custom directly reflects his understanding of the foundational role of
custom in the law.

the sophistry of it savours plainly of the place of its birth. (Letter 194 to George
Campbell, 1762, in Hume 1932, 361).
If he had met Desideri and heard tales of Tibet, or if arguments from exotic Tibet
struck him as undermining Catholic orthodoxy, he would surely have remarked on it.
Moreover, even though Hume did read Bayle’s entry on Spinoza, nothing resembling
the material in the footnote on Buddhism appears in the Treatise. Hume clearly makes
use of Bayle’s discussion of Spinoza in his own treatment of the Spinozistic philosophy
[1.4.5.18–​26, 240–​44], but makes no use of the material on Buddhism, suggesting that
if he read it, he did not take it to be important. I conclude that—​although Gopnik is
correct to assert that Hume had the opportunity to learn about Buddhism at La Fleche,
both from colleagues and from texts available in its library—​there is in fact no evi-
dence that he actually knew anything of the Buddhist tradition, either Theravāda or
Mahāyāna.
But this does not mean that there is no connection, only that Gopnik has not
found the right one. As McEvilley (1981, 2002) and Beckwith (2015) have argued,
the Pyrrhonian tradition and Madhyamaka probably evolved in conversation with
one another, partly through Pyrrho’s documented visit to India in the entourage of
Alexander, and partly through the mediation of the intellectual milieu in the Persian
court, in which Indian and Greek philosophers each participated. Hume is picking
up on the fruits of this mediation not through conversations with recently returned
missionaries, but through his reading of Bayle and Montaigne. Sidelle (1989), although
he mentions neither Hume nor the Madhyamaka tradition in his study, presents a spir-
ited defense of conventionalism that is very much in a Humean or Mādhyamika vein.
28. Also see Passmore (1952) for a concurring opinion.
 ( 22 ) Methodological Preliminaries

4. THE NOMINALIST ANALYSIS OF PSEUDO-​I DEAS

One of the more remarkable features of Hume’s philosophical program,

often overlooked, is that he often provides not an analysis of a concept
he sets out to investigate, but rather the verdict that, despite our convic-
tion to the contrary, we have no such concept, in virtue of having no cor-
responding impression. So, the fourth principle of interpretation is this:

The Pseudo-​idea Principle

Assume that for most philosophically important terms, Hume will
not provide an analysis of an idea, but a demonstration that no idea
corresponds to a term that appears to make sense.

So, for instance, rather than ask what Hume’s analysis is of the concept of
a self, of causation, or of external existence, we will ask how Hume shows
that we have no such ideas at all. We will then ask how Hume understands
our use of the terms that appear to denote such ideas. This will take us back
to the previous two principles of interpretation. Often it will turn out that
while it appears that a custom for using a term is justified by the fact that
to that term corresponds an idea, Hume argues that there is in fact no such
idea. Nonetheless, he often argues that it does not follow that the term it-
self cannot be used meaningfully.29
That is, in cases such as this, Hume shows that our linguistic customs,
while they may “bewitch” us, to use Wittgenstein’s term—​leading us to sup-
pose ideas where there are none—​may nonetheless be perfectly in order,
so long as we are not deceived by them.30 This, we will see, leads Hume to
a very radical kind of nominalism—​a genuine precursor of Wittgenstein’s
use theory of meaning—​according to which meaning often consists purely
in verbal customs. Hume can advance this semantic nominalism (Sellars

29. Green (1968) observes that with regard to the idea of a persistent object, “Such
an idea being according to Hume’s principles impossible, the appearance of our having
it was the fiction he had to account for; and he accounts for it, as we find, by a ‘habit of
mind’ which already presupposes it. His procedure here is just the same as in dealing
with the idea of vacuum. In that case . . . having to account for the appearance of there
being the idea of pure space, he does so by showing, that having ‘an idea of distance not
filled with any coloured or tangible object,’ we mistake this for an idea of extension”
(256). Note here the connection that Green observes between this strategy of Hume’s
and his reliance on custom (a habit of mind). See also Dauer (2011) for an argument
that Hume adopts this attitude toward necessary connection.
30. The affinities to Candrakīrti’s remarks that mundane practices and conventions
are just fine, so long as we do not subject them to analysis, are obvious (Cowherds
2010; Garfield 2015).
 Introduction ( 23 )

was to call this position “psychological nominalism” a few centuries later)

precisely because of the normative force he assigns to custom: as I noted
previously, his naturalism, his skepticism, his commitment to custom as an
explanatory device, and his nominalism are hence intimately connected,
and this in virtue of the normative force of custom.
Hume hence also distinguishes between believing something about the
world and believing a sentence to be true. We might believe that the sun
rises in the east, and, in virtue of that, believe that the sentence “The sun
rises in the east” is true. But we also might believe that a sentence is true
while having no idea what it means (even if we think we do). Many of us
probably believe things like E = mc2 in just such a fashion. Or we might
believe that when someone we trust asserts sincerely a sentence in a lan-
guage we do not speak that the sentence she utters is true, whatever it
means.31
Hume compares the illusion that we have a belief or concept that we
could not possibly possess to phantom limb illusions among amputees.
They take themselves to be feeling a sensation in a limb that they no longer
have, just as we might take ourselves to have ideas or beliefs that we cannot
possibly have [1.3.9.17, 117]. Another important application of this prin-
ciple occurs in the context of Hume’s discussion of agent freedom. In this
context he argues that we have a “false sensation or experience . . . of the
liberty of indifference” [3.2.2.2, 408]. That is, we believe ourselves to have
an impression of a free will, which we do not in fact have, and consequently
believe ourselves to have an idea of the freedom of the will, which idea we do
not even have.32 Hume also argues [1.4.3.9–​10, 222–​23] that the ancients
thought that they had an idea of substance, an idea that, he argues, they
could not have had.
Henry James Richter ([1797] 2000) accuses Hume of incoherence in this
regard, arguing that in order even to deny that we have an idea, we must
know the idea we deny ourselves to have, and so must have it. In the con-
text of Hume’s denial that we have any idea of necessary connection (to
which we turn in c­ hapter 6), Richter writes:

Those who resolve to abide by the principle [that any idea depends upon a
precedent impression] . . . should at least be as candid as Mr. Hume has been,

31. Hume worries that those who attend Latin mass become so inured to believing
that utterances in a language they do not understand are true that they come to believe
the truth of theological sentences in English, and thereby take themselves to come to
have beliefs about the world that they cannot possibly have, simply because no ideas
attach to the words those sentences contain [1.3.8.4, 99–​100].
32. See Baier (1991) and Garrett (1997) for excellent discussions of this passage.
 ( 24 ) Methodological Preliminaries

and first, carefully examine whether there be not some impression from which
it might be derived; after that, they may, if they please, deny its existence, as
a dogmatical shoemaker might swear you have no feet, because his shoes will
not fit them.
But it may be said, according to Mr. Hume’s system, an idea is in fact no
idea, unless it be derived from some impression; nor till he has discovered that
impression, does he speak of it positively as such, he calls it only a supposed
idea. What an excess of refinement is this! . . . [H]‌ere is an idea which exists
only in idea.
I shall not, however, attempt to prove the existence of this idea [of necessary
connection] as to those who have not the idea, it would be impossible, and to
those who have, superfluous. Yet it may not be amiss to apprize those who deny
its existence, of the dilemma to which they are reduced. Either they must ac-
knowledge they have the idea, whose existence they deny; or confess they have
no idea of what they deny. (Richter [1797] 2000, 25–​26)

This objection would indeed have force were Hume’s analysis of pseudo-​
ideas not grounded in his nominalism. For then he could fairly be charged
with forming the idea of ideas that we cannot have. But once we appre-
ciate Hume’s account of the relation between language and universals,
the objection can be dismissed. Hume’s argument can now be read as
having as its conclusion simply that we falsely believe that certain words
refer to ideas. There is surely no incoherence in claiming that some terms
we take to refer in fact fail to do so. Hume, that is, is not engaged in a
metaphysical deconstruction of real concepts, so much as in showing that
our verbal behavior is often best explained not by assigning a concept to
every predicate.
Hume is also often charged with a kind of crude metaphysical or epis-
temological analysis leading to the denial that we have any knowledge of
the external world,33 or that we can make any sense of personal identity
or causal explanation. He is then treated as a mere whipping boy for Kant.
I will argue that instead he is engaged in a principled refusal of the kind of
metaphysical analysis that Kant thought was necessary, replacing it with an
empirical account of verbal practices that require no metaphysical ground;
he is a psychologist and a naturalist. Hume on this reading will turn out to
be more a postmodern than an early modern thinker, and so a much more
interesting philosopher than he is often made out to be.

33. As both Moore and Stroud understand him (Stroud 1984, 106ff.).
 Introduction ( 25 )

5. THE PRINCIPLE OF THE UNIFORMITY OF METHOD

The final methodological principle that drives my reading is a conviction

that when we see the Treatise aright, we see that, despite its often appar-
ently conflicting remarks and youthful exuberances, it is methodologically
remarkably homogeneous. Hume has a vision, both of how to do philos-
ophy, and of what human nature and a science of human nature look like,
and it is when we lose sight of that vision and the method to which it gives
rise that we misread Hume. The final methodological principle that drives
my reading then is this:

The Principle of the Uniformity of Method

Assume that Hume’s arguments and analyses are uniform in
structure.

Like all of the preceding principles, this principle is heuristic and defeasible.
Hume, like any philosopher, is entitled to employ arguments and analyses
of various forms. Nonetheless, I will argue in what follows, he almost al-
ways deploys exactly the same form of argument: a Pyrrhonian dissolution
of an apparently irreconcilable duality, a demonstration that a custom we
thought required grounding is in fact itself the ground, and an exploration
of how we think that is aimed at providing a theory of human nature.
And Hume’s theory of human nature is one according to which we are
creatures of custom, that we can never be more than this, and also that this
is no cause for despair. He therefore seeks explanations of our capacities
not in any transcendental metaphysics or epistemology, but in empirical
social, developmental, and cognitive psychology. This same form of argu-
ment, this same pattern of analysis, will be present whether we are talking
about the self, causation, justification, ethics, or even theology. If I am
right, demonstrating this consistency in method and vision will be the
most important contribution of this study.
Kemp Smith (1941) famously defends a similar principle on the grounds
of Hutcheson’s thoroughgoing influence on Hume. He writes:

Hutcheson’s teaching leads up to [“Hume’s New Scene of Thought”], though by

steps which Hutcheson certainly never contemplated. . . . [I]‌f the fundamental
judgments of morals, as of aesthetics, rest on feeling, not on reason; and if in
matters of moral conduct Nature has been thus careful in providing us, inde-
pendently of all calculation and reflexion, with these “immediate monitors,”
may it not be so likewise in the professedly theoretical field? May not our so-​
called judgments of knowledge in regard to matters of fact and existence be
 ( 26 ) Methodological Preliminaries

really acts of belief, not of knowledge—​belief being a passion and not a form of
insight, and therefore, like all passions, fixed and predetermined by the de facto
frame and constitution of our human nature? (1941, 43–​44)

Kemp Smith argues that Hutcheson’s influence on the Treatise is broad,

extending to Book I as well as to Books II and III, where it may be more
apparent. Here he argues that the role Hutcheson assigns to the passions
and moral sense in determining moral judgment is taken up by Hume and
extended to the domain of ordinary empirical knowledge and reasoning,
and hence that Hume’s commitment to belief as more a matter of the “sen-
sitive than of the cogitative part of the soul” [183] derives indirectly from
Hutcheson.34
Kemp Smith extends this account of Hutcheson’s impact on the uni-
formity of method to note an intriguing analogy between Hutcheson’s
treatment of the passions and Hume’s treatment of the idea of necessary
connection. He points out that Hutcheson (as would Hume) takes the
passions all to be impressions of reflection, and that moral qualities are not
directly observed in nature, but are projected based upon the observation
of the relevant impressions of reflection. (We will return to this point in
­chapter 3.) Just so, according to Hume, in the case of causation: no neces-
sary connection is observed between events in nature; instead, an impres-
sion of reflection gives rise to a projection of a connection between events.
Unlike Kemp Smith, I do not believe that all of the uniformity in Hume’s
method is explained by the impact of Hutcheson; nevertheless, I am in-
clined to agree with him that this much is well explained by that influence.35

34. Note that here I follow Kemp Smith only in the insistence on a uniformity of
method in the Treatise. We disagree about what that method is: Kemp Smith argues
that Hume uniformly takes feeling to be the basis of our epistemic and moral life; I em-
phasize the role of custom.
35. Baier also gestures toward this uniformity (and its relationship to Hume’s natu-
ralistic understanding of custom) when she writes:
Our ideas copy our impressions not merely in their “simple” content, but in
their perceived relationships, in their keeping company, and their ganging up. It
is perceived relations and associations between persons that provide the models
for the Humean mental relationships, and his idea-​associates can be “kin.” Our
social relationships are the outcome of our biological mammalian nature, of our
friendships, and of the social artifices and inventions we have made, and all three
affect Locke’s, Hume’s and our perception of our mental and feeling states and their
relationships. (1991, 29)
But see Norton (1982) for a dissenting view. Norton argues (53ff.) that Hume’s ap-
proach to ethics is diametrically opposed to his approach to epistemology, that he is a
realist and a naturalist in the ethical domain, but not in the epistemological domain.
 Introduction ( 27 )

As I noted at the top of this chapter, I do not take the considerations

I offer here in favor of these principles of interpretation to be decisive, only
motivating. The only convincing argument for them is the reading of Hume
that emerges from them. I set them out here so that the reader can see
what I am doing and that I have nothing up my sleeve. We now turn to a
second set of preliminary methodological questions: Why, when writing
about Hume, am I focusing on the Treatise, and why, within the Treatise,
am I so focused on Book II? And why on custom?

Norton also argues that Kemp Smith exaggerates the impact of Hutcheson on Hume
(and indeed that he misunderstands Hutcheson). I disagree, and find Kemp Smith’s
observations that Hume adopts so much not only of Hutcheson’s framework, but also
his idiosyncratic vocabulary (e.g., perceptions in lieu of Locke’s ideas and the distinction
between direct and indirect passions) very convincing in this regard (Kemp Smith 1941).
 CHAPTER 2
w
Why the Treatise? Why Book II?
Why Custom?

I n this chapter, I explain why I focus directly on the Treatise, as opposed,

for example, to what might be thought to be Hume’s more mature
thought in the Enquiries; why within the Treatise I take Book II to be foun-
dational; and how Hume understands custom, an explanatory principle
that does so much work in the Treatise, and whose role, I believe, is often
misunderstood or underappreciated.
I am writing a book about the Treatise, not about Hume’s thought in gen­
eral, and, as I note in the preface, the interpretation I offer differs from many
others in two principal respects. First, I will argue—​as noted above, fol-
lowing both Kemp Smith and Baier—​that it is Book II, not Book I, that is the
conceptual foundation of the Treatise. Second, I will argue that we cannot un-
derstand Hume’s project without an appreciation of his own understanding
of custom, and in particular, without an appreciation of the grounding of his
thought about custom in the legal theory and debates of his time.
Custom is the source of Hume’s thoughts about normativity, not only
in ethics and in political theory, but also in epistemological, linguistic, and
scientific practice, and is the source of his insight that our psychological
and social natures are inextricably linked. The centrality of custom and
the link between the psychological and the social are closely connected,
because it is in the account of the passions in Book II that Hume directly
links his thought about custom to human psychology. I now take each of
these points in turn, and will conclude this chapter with some remarks on
the textual horizons that contextualize my reading. But first, a few remarks
on why I am choosing to write about the Treatise, per se.

( 28 )
 W H Y T H E T R E AT I S E ? ( 29 )

1. WHY THE TREATISE?

Annette Baier begins her masterpiece A Progress of Sentiments (1991) by

asking the question, “Why another book on Hume?” (vii) I agree with her
answer:

Because he is a philosopher who invited “the latest posterity” to reinterpret

him, because my own interpretations differ in some ways from others, including
those to which I am very much indebted, and because my own interpretations
of the Treatise would “loosen and fall of themselves, when unsupported by the
approbation of others . . .” [1.3.7.2, 264–​65] (1991, vii)

Hume does invite posterity to reinterpret him, and I, like Baier, offer an
interpretation that I take to be somewhat different from those of others,
including “those to which I am very much indebted,” including even, in
some details, Baier’s own. I also agree with Baier’s remark in the next para-
graph that the Treatise must be read as one book. On the other hand, Baier
never asks, “Why the Treatise, as opposed, say, to the Enquiries?” After all,
Hume regarded the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals as his finest
work, and many, Hume included, have taken the Enquiries to be the more
mature, careful articulation of Hume’s views. Hume himself in a letter to
Hutcheson (September 17, 1739, in Hume 1932, vol. 1, 32–​36) expressed
embarrassment over both the tone of the Treatise and what he saw as errors
in that work. (“I must own, my Proofs were not distinct enough & must be
alter’d” [36].)1

1. Strawson argues that one should only read the Treatise account of causality in
the context of the discussion of causality and induction in the Enquiry Concerning the
Human Understanding. He writes:
The main case [for his account of Hume’s analysis of causality] rests on the Enquiry.
Some have claimed that the Enquiry is somehow of less importance than the earlier
Treatise, but there is every reason to take it as more representative of Hume’s
considered views on causation than the Treatise—​even if one thinks . . . that one
can simply take no notice of Hume’s partial repudiation of the Treatise in the
Advertisement which he prefaced to the Enquiry in the last year of his life. Hume
was at the height of his powers when he wrote the Enquiry. He had not gone soft
in the head. He had had more time to think. He was trying to make his position as
clear as possible. He meant what he said and said it beautifully. (1989, 8)
One need not deny the clarity and beauty of the Enquiry to disagree with Strawson’s
hermeneutic policy here. The Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, whatever
its virtues, has a very different structure than the Treatise of Human Nature, and in par-
ticular, devotes much less attention to the role of the passions and to that of custom in
human nature than does the Treatise. Even if one thinks that Hume got things better in
the Enquiries than in the Treatise (and I do not), the Treatise demands attention on its
own, in virtue of the enormous influence it has had, and because it represents the only
comprehensive exposition of Hume’s system.
 ( 30 ) Methodological Preliminaries

Perhaps Baier, like so many who have recently written about Hume, saw
the answer to this question as too obvious to merit posing it. There is a
reason that the vast majority of recent books and articles on Hume have fo-
cused on the Treatise. Despite its youthful enthusiasm, and despite Hume’s
own later dissatisfaction with it, the Treatise remains Hume’s philosophical
masterpiece. It draws together all of the elements of Hume’s philosophical
vision in an organic unity. It explores the difficulties Hume himself found
with his own views with disarming candor. It follows all of the byways.
But more than that, while the two subsequent Enquiries revisit much of
the ground covered by Books I and III of the Treatise, neither attends with
care to Book II, and they are composed in such a way that the links be-
tween them, and in particular their relation to the issues explored in Book
II, are obscured. Hume did return to the passions in the Dissertation on the
Passions at the end of his life. But once again, that text is disconnected from
each of the Enquiries. Moreover, it recapitulates, in very much abbreviated
form, the material explored in greater detail and with more grace in Book
II of the Treatise. The organic unity of the Treatise and its enormous detail
account for its continuing fascination. That’s why I am writing about the
Treatise.

2. WHY BOOK II?

My reading of the Treatise will take Book II—​easily the least addressed book
of the Treatise—​as its starting point, an approach suggested by Baier’s own
work. I start there not because Book II is so often ignored or given short
shrift in treatments of the Treatise, although that neglect might on its own
justify this approach. I start there because it is the conceptual foundation
of the Treatise. In A Progress of Sentiments, Baier writes:

Philosophical reading habits still seem to be resistant to Hume’s attempt to link the
theses of Book One with those of Books Two and Three, indeed resistant to treating
the Treatise as a treatise, as distinct from a series of self-​contained section-​long
philosophical essays. (1991, 158)

This reflection remains true today. Many treatments of the Treatise focus
only on Book I, or, if they go beyond Book I, skip blithely over Book II to the

Also see Taylor (2002) for an argument for the superiority of the moral theory in the
Enquiry Concerning the Principals of Morals to that of the Treatise. There is also room for
debate here, and I think that the treatment of ethics in the Treatise gains particular
force because of the context of the system as a whole.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
que me han facilitado dos guardias marinas, parientes míos.
Retirose el francés, recomendándome otra vez que estuviera pronta
a las tres y media. Era la una.
Ocupeme con febril presteza en preparar mi viaje. Estaba resuelta a
abandono de todo lo que no nos fuera fácil llevar. Mariana y yo
trabajamos como locas sin darnos un segundo de reposo.
La felicidad se desbordaba en mi alma. Me reía sola... Pero, ¡ay!
una idea triste conturbó de súbito mi mente. Acordeme de la pobre
huérfana viajera, y esto produjo una detención dolorosa en el raudo y
atrevido vuelo de mi espíritu. Pero al mismo tiempo sentía que los
rencores huían de mi corazón, reemplazados por sentimientos dulces y
expansivos, los únicos dignos de la privilegiada alma de la mujer.
«Perdono a todo el mundo —dije para mí—. Reconozco que hice
mal en engañar a aquella pobre muchacha... Todavía le estará
buscando... Pero yo también le busqué, yo también he padecido
horriblemente... ¡Oh! ¡Dios mío! Al fin me das respiro, al fin me das la
felicidad que no pude obtener a causa sin duda de mis atroces faltas..
La felicidad hace buenos a los malos, y yo seré buena, seré siempre
buena... Esta tarde, cuando le vea, le pediré perdón por lo que hice con
su hermana... ¡Oh!, ahora me acuerdo de la marquesa de Falfán, y
torno a ponerme furiosa... No, eso sí que no puede perdonarse, no..
Tendrá que darme cuenta de su vil conducta... Pero al fin le perdonaré
¡Es tan dulce perdonar!... Bendito sea Dios que nos hace felices para
que seamos buenos.»
Esto y otras cosas seguía pensando, sin cesar de trabajar en e
arreglo de mi equipaje. Miraba a todas horas el reloj, que era también
de cucú, como el de aquella horrible noche de Sevilla; pero el pájaro de
Puerto Real me era simpático, y sus saluditos y su canto regocijaban
mi espíritu.
Dieron las tres. Una mano brutal golpeó mi puerta. No había dado yo
la orden de pasar adelante, cuando se presentaron cuatro hombres
dos paisanos y dos militares. Uno de los paisanos llevaba bastón de
policía. Avanzó hacia mí. ¡Visión horrible!... Yo había visto al tal en
alguna parte. ¿Dónde? En Benabarre.
Aquel hombre me dijo groseramente:
—Señora doña Jenara de Baraona, dese usted presa.
En el primer instante no contesté, porque la estupefacción me lo
impedía. Después, rugiendo, más bien que hablando, exclamé:
 —¡Yo presa, yo!... ¿De orden de quién?
—De orden del excelentísimo señor don Víctor Sáez, ministro
universal de Su Majestad.
—¡Vil! ¡Tan vil tú como Sáez! —grité.
Yo no era una mujer, era una leona.
Al ver que se me acercaron dos soldados y asieron mis brazos con
sus manos de hierro, corrí por la estancia. No buscaba mi salvación en
cobarde fuga: buscaba un cuchillo, un hacha, un arma cualquiera..
Comprendía el asesinato. Mi furor no tenía comparación con ningún
furor de hombre. Era furor de mujer. No encontré ningún arma. ¡Dios
vengador, si la encontrara, aunque fuese un tenedor, creo que habría
matado a los cuatro! Un candelabro vino a mis manos, tomelo, y a
instante la cabeza de uno de ellos se rajó... ¡Sangre! ¡Yo quiero sangre
Pero me atenazaron con vigor salvaje... ¡Presa, presa!... Todos mis
afanes, todos mis sentimientos, todos mis deseos se condensaban en
uno solo: tener delante a don Víctor Sáez para lanzarme sobre él, y
con mis dedos teñidos de sangre sacarle los ojos.
No pudiendo hundir mis dedos en extraños ojos, los volví contra los
míos... clavelos en mi cabeza, intentando agujerearme el cráneo y
sacarme los sesos. Mi aliento era fuego puro.
Lleváronme... ¿qué sé yo a dónde? Por el camino... ¡oh Satán mío!
¡oh demonio injustamente arrojado del Paraíso!... sentí el disparo de la
corbeta inglesa al darse a la vela.

fin de «los cien mil hijos de san luis»

Madrid, febrero de 1877.

 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOS CIEN MIL
HIJOS DE SAN LUIS ***

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