ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that if ‘Of Personal Identity’ part of a more general theoretical enterprise, an explanation of David Hume’s lamentations in the Appendix. Defining ‘identity’ in terms of the invariableness and uninterruptedness of an object ‘thro’ a suppos’d variation of time’, and defining ‘diversity’ in terms of ‘a distinct idea of several different objects existing in succession, and connected by a close relation’, Hume notes that the ideas of identity and diversity ‘are generally confounded with each other’. Any adequate interpretation of Hume’s discussions of personal identity must explain why he considered the discussion in the body of the Treatise a veritable ‘labyrinth of contradictions. Although Hume seemed very optimistic that he had provided an adequate account of one’s belief in personal identity when writing in the body of the Treatise, this optimism was reduced to gloom in the Appendix.
