Publication Details

Abstract

Despite the courageous concept of Western philosophy as causa sui, there is much evidence of a significant exchange of thoughts between Europe and the Orient in the early modern period. In David Hume’s case, the Oriental influence was long ignored, but in recent decades several studies have highlighted significant affinities between Hume’s ideas and those of Buddhism. In what follows, I’ll try to show, rethinking Humean and Buddhist no-self, why A. Gopnik’s “Jesuits hypothesis” is more plausible than the explanation which connects both conceptions via Pyrrhonian skepsis. Regardless of both hypotheses, I offer some arguments in favour of spontaneous convergence with no need for the intercultural transfer of thoughts, and point out some problematic aspects of a thought which promotes (with no good reasons) an impersonal description of our lives above that which is based on our intuitions and first-person perspective characterized by the sense of self and ownership.