This essay examines the relation between philosophical questions concerning personal identity and character development in Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s philosophy. Shaftesbury combines a metaphysical account of personal identity with a normative approach to character development. By contrasting Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s views on these issues, I examine whether character development presupposes specific metaphysical views about personal identity, and in particular whether it presupposes the continued existence of a substance, as Shaftesbury assumes. I show that Hume’s philosophy offers at least two alternatives. Moreover, (...) I consider whether and how Hume’s philosophy leaves scope for character development and how he departs from Shaftesbury’s normative project of self-formation. (shrink)

According to Thomas Reid, an agent cannot be free unless she has the power to do otherwise. This claim is usually interpreted as a version of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. Against this interpretation, I argue that Reid is committed to the seemingly paradoxical position that an agent may have the power to do otherwise despite the fact that it is impossible that she do otherwise. Reid's claim about the power to do otherwise does not, therefore, entail the Principle of (...) Alternate Possibilities. When it is an agent's character that deprives her of alternate possibilities, she is not thereby deprived of either power or freedom, and this is true even if the agent was not free or active in the formation of her character. (shrink)

This thesis traces the dynamic between labour and learning as it was figured by Scottish writers in the period 1759-1828. Vocational specialization and engagement with a literary field that traversed professional and disciplinary boundaries were the twin imperatives of the Scottish Enlightenment’s modernising credo. But the division of labour was also associated with a narrowing of intellectual and moral capacity thought to be incompatible with the exhortations of politeness and civility. Leisured cultivation offered readers and writers a middle ground in (...) which to negotiate between these contradictory demands. This study explores the way in which this culture of intellectual improvement was claimed by authors and readers involved in manual labour as a counterinfluence to the rigours of work, and as a civilizing prerogative that extended to all social levels. But others registered significant anxiety towards the destabilising effects of excessive delicacy or refinement, and feared that these might be exacerbated by contact with the necessity of bodily labour. I argue that this contributed to a redressing of the content and purpose of popular education that sought to match it to the role of the lower classes within the economic and political order. Particular attention is paid in the following study to authors who either claimed or were ascribed a labouring identity such as Robert Burns and James Hogg, but I also deal with lesser-known writers, and frame their engagement with intellectual improvement through broader eighteenth-century discourses on the division of labour and the theory of mind. In doing so, I discuss a variety of genres and forms, including philosophical and economic treatises, poetry, memoir, biography, the novel, and the literary periodical. (shrink)