ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a reconstruction of Hume’s early classification of the passions, a précis of Treatise Book 2, and an indication of where its contents are picked up in Hume’s later work. It continues with a general introduction to the Four Dissertations, describing the publication history of this collection and offering a provisional argument for viewing it as a deliberately unified set (with the passions as its central theme). Next, it offers a helpful framework for approaching the early modern debate, dividing its participants into Epicureans, Stoics, Platonists, and Sceptics. Finally, it concludes with a statement of the main thesis of Part I of this book: that Hume was an Epicurean egoist and hedonist when he wrote the Treatise (in the spirit of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Bernard Mandeville), but that he subsequently embraced Joseph Butler’s Stoical anti-egoist motivational psychology. Norman Kemp Smith’s narrative of Hume as Francis Hutcheson’s protégé is called into question, and it is suggested that Mandeville and Butler were much more important influences on Hume’s earlier and later thought respectively.
