Hume's System: An Examination of the First Book of His Treatise: An Examination of the First Book of his ^ITreatise^R - Softcover

`Professor Pears, as was to be expected, has presented the philosophical world with most acute analyses of the problems of causation, personal identity and perception in Hume's Treatise.'Dr Paul Tomassi, University of Edinburgh

'Hume's System is a thorough and carefully argued encounter with Hume's Treatise.' Christian K. Campolo, Hume Studies, Volume XIX, Number 1

'excellent study ... Pears excels at putting back those considerations that Hume inconsistently neglects, and having put them back he is able to explain Hume's vacillations as the result of his failure to face up to those alternatives. Pear's book is an excellent contribution to our understanding of the problems that Hume addresses in the Treatise ... his prose style is a delight to read, possessing a polished elegance that is all too rare in academic work. The book is also free of misprints and contains a comprehensive and highly useful set of internal references in the footnotes.'Adrian Heathcote, University of Sydney, Australian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 71, No. 2, June 1993

In this book, Professor Pears examines the foundations of Hume's system as laid down in the first book of his Treatise, where his ideas are oresebted in their first fresh and undiluted form. The author steers a middle course between the two extreme views adopted in recent writings on Hume: that he relies exclusively on a theory of meaning, or that he relies exclusively on a theory of truth and evidence. Professor Pears argues that Hume's theory of ideas serves both functions, and he examines in detail its application to three difficult problems: causation, personal identity, and sense-perception. Hume's solutions are shown not to be theories which can be given a place in a standard classification of philosophical theories, but rather to depend upon a subtle form of naturalism not altogether unlike Wittgenstein's naturalism.