Making an Object of Yourself: On the Intentionality of the Passions in Hume

Shortly after opening Book II of the Treatise, Hume presents us with a curious claim. He declares that “pride and humility, tho’ directly contrary, have yet the same OBJECT. This object is self.”1 This passage is puzzling on several counts, not least of which is deciding what to make out of this idea of the self. For the penultimate section of Book I, concluded a scant 14 pages before, develops a highly skeptical account of personal identity that seems to deny that we have a well-defined sense of self. Hume there takes aim at those “who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF, … certain, …its perfect identity and simplicity.” Instead, he maintains:

when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.