Apart from these “internal” difficulties among Hume’s core arguments, it may also be questioned whether Hume’s alternative account of causation serves to allay or diffuse other (and deeper) worries that libertarians and incompatibilists may have about his proposed “reconciliation”. What libertarians seek – particularly but not exclusively in the 18th c. context – is an account of moral agency that rests with agents who possess active powers of some kind such that they have genuine open alternatives in the same (causal) conditions. Related to this, libertarians also insist on making a distinction between agents who can intervene in the natural causal order and, on the other side, beings who are simply part of the natural causal order and fully integrated within it. Real agency requires the causal series to begin with the agent, not to run through the agent. Hume’s revisionary “new definitions” of causation and necessity satisfies none of these fundamental concerns or requirements. Although Hume suggests that “a few intelligible definitions” should immediately put an end to this controversy (EU 8.2/81), he must have been well aware that he was far from providing the sort of metaphysical resources that libertarians are seeking or satisfying the demands that they place on free, responsible moral agency.