Vivacity, pleasure and habit: the constitution of the subjectivity in David Hume

• Grant number: 18/03829-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): July 01, 2018
• Effective date (End): March 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Pedro Paulo Garrido Pimenta
• Grantee: Dario de Queiroz Galvão Neto
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 19/14764-9 - The animal reason: animality in Hume's science of man, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the constitution of the subjectivity in Hume's philosophy, focusing on the main works of the philosopher. Since there is no subject before the impressions, we need to understand how, by these very impressions, an organisation of the mind may be produced. That way we also question what is the nature of this organisation, properly conceived as an effect of more fundamental principles of the thought. Through the study of the connexions that, according to Hume, are established by the imagination and by the passions, as well as of the mutual influence between these two, we intend to inquire how a collection of perceptions, without order and connexion among themselves, becomes an articulated system, with tendencies and faculties. We sustain that, in Hume, the constitution of the subjectivity occurs in a way that is fundamentally pragmatic: according to the circumstances (contingent) and based on pleasure and pain, as response to the impositions of life. In this regard, we argue that the articulation between the conceptions of vivacity, pleasure and habit offers a privileged approach to the question. As a result, we expect to show that conceiving the mind as effect allows us to define the statute of reasoning in Hume's philosophy.