Death and Character

Reviewing Annette Baiers 1995 work Moral Prejudices in the London Review of Books, Richard Rorty predicted that her work would be read hundreds of years hence; Baiers subsequent work has borne out such expectations, and this new book further extends her reach. Here she goes beyond her earlier work on David Hume to reflect on a topic that links his philosophy to questions of immediate relevancein particular, questions about what character is and how it shapes our lives. Ranging widely in Humes works, Baier considers his views on character, desirable character traits, his treatment of historical characters, and his own character as shown not just by his cheerful deathand what he chose to read shortly before itbut also by changes in his writings, especially his repudiation of the celebrated A Treatise on Human Nature. She offers new insight into the Treatise and its relation to the works in which Hume cast anew the material in its three books. Her reading radically revises the received interpretation of Humes epistemology and, in particular, philosophy of mind.