This book brings together a team of international scholars to attempt to understand David Humes conception of the self. The standard interpretation is that he holds a no-self view: we are just bundles of conscious experiences, thoughts and emotions. There is nothing deeper to us, no core, no essence, no soul. In the Appendix toATreatise of Human Nature, though, Hume admits to being dissatisfied with such an account and Part One of this book explores why this might be so. Part Two turns to Books 2 and 3 of theTreatise, where Hume moves away from the fiction of a simple self, to the complex idea we have of our flesh and blood selves, those with emotional lives, practical goals, and social relations with others. In Part Three connections are traced between Hume and Madhyamaka Buddhism, Husserl and the phenomenological tradition, and contemporary cognitive science.

Dan OBrien is Reader in Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University, UK, and founder and organizer of the Oxford Hume Forum. He has published on Hume, philosophy of mind, epistemology, teleology, gardening, Caravaggio and cubism; his books have been translated into Korean, Portuguese and Arabic (forthcoming).

Part 1: The Self in Book 1 of theTreatise.- 1. How Sceptical is Humes Theory of Personal Identity?; Andrew Ward.- 2. Humes Bundle; Donald Ainslie.- 3. What I CallMyself; Galen Strawson.- 4. Hume and Kames on the Self and Personal Identity; Josef Moural.-Part 2: The Self in Books 2 and 3 of theTreatise.- 5. Character Development in Shaftesburys and Humes Approaches to Self; Ruth Boeker.- 6. Sympathy, Self and Others; Dan OBrien.- 7. Scottish Sympathy: Hume, Smith, and Psychoanalysis; Louise Braddock.- 8. What is Humean Autonomy?; Anik Waldow.- 9. A Fragmented Unity: A Narrative Answer to the Problem of the Unity of the Self in Hume; Lorenzo Greco.-Part 3: Humes Self and Other Philosophical Traditions.- 10. Candrakrti and Hume on the Self and the Person; Jay L. Garfield.- 11. Husserl (and Brentano) on Humes Notion of the Self; Hynek Janou¨ek.- 12. Disguising Change: Hume and Cognitive Science on the Continued Existence of Selves; Mark Collier.