ABSTRACT
This chapter charts the emergence of Hume’s anti-egoism, arguing that it was the result of engaging—in the late 1730s—with Joseph Butler’s justly famous anti-egoist arguments. It is conjectured that the single paragraph in Treatise Book 2 committing Hume to anti-egoism was a late addition, prompted by Hume’s reading of Butler’s Sermons just as the Treatise was going to press. The differences between Francis Hutcheson on the one hand, and Butler and the later Hume on the other, are emphasized, and the popular view that Hume was following in Hutcheson’s footsteps is accordingly undermined. In the final section, it is then shown that the Dissertation on the Passions is not just a précis of Treatise Book 2, but that it differs on at least one point of substance: where the Treatise offered a hedonist and egoist account of desire, the Dissertation endorses a form of Butler’s motivational pluralism.
