Ocultamento do Ser do Eu em David Hume

This short essay deals with the concealment of the being of Self in David Hume's philosophy. The process of this concealment began in late Scholasticism and attained thematic expression with John Locke's thought; for him ideas were the only object of the understanding and the concept of substance was destitute of ontological content. Thenceforth British philosophical thought was faced with two main problems: the origin of ideas, and their logical meaning. Berkley pronounced ideas to be perfectly inert and therefore quite different from Self as an active thing which thinks, wills and perceives. David Hume, again following Locke's line of thought, considered perceptions to be the only real entities, and divided them into impressions and ideas. Supposing impressions to be the primary data for human understanding, from which in turn ideas are derived, he was led to expect that amongst these impressions should be found one giving rise to the idea of Self. But, if Self is supposed to be invariably the same throughout the course of human life, and yet no single impression exists in that manner, the idea of Self must be considered an illusion. David Hume's main task was then to explain how, from unstable and ever changing impressions, such an illusive idea as Self arises, characterized by continuous perfect identity. He resolved the problem, in this case as with all ideas of substances, by demonstrating the natural human propensity to consider things, related by resemblance and causality, as if they were one and the same. Thus he came to the conclusion that «all the nice and subtle questions concerning personal identity ... are to be regarded rather as gramatical than as philosophical difficulties». In the end, however, when reviewing his assertions concerning personal identity, he was distressed to find himself in such a labyrinth that he confessed he neither knew how to correct his former opinions, nor how to render them consistent. This ontological blindness has remained a characteristic bias of British thought, still perceptible in the writings of Bertrand Russell