Abstract

Starting from an excerpt of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (section 7, part I), this article compares the conceptions that Hume, Locke and Malebranche uphold regarding the experience we have of the power of our will. It stresses how Hume reproduces some arguments directly taken from Malebranche’s occasionalism in order to criticize the Lockean thesis according to which our idea of power derives from our reflection on the causality of the will. It then argues that this textual evidence reveals the existence of a major divergence, within the confines of empiricism, regarding the extent of the experience we have of our will.