Abstract

Reflecting Subjects offers a bold and original reading of Book 2 of the Treatise, and presents a problem that has been little explored by Hume scholarship. Jacqueline Taylor's book argues that we can reconstruct what she calls a "social theory" out of Book 2 of the Treatise. Based on a detailed account of the passions that constitute social selves, the social theory of the Treatise offers, according to Taylor, rich and fine-grained explanations of the causes of difference and inequality among human beings, based on understanding the characters of individuals, their social statuses, and their differences in power. However—and this is one of the central problems that Reflecting Subjects seeks to tackle—in Book 3 of...