Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

This paper's aim is threefold. First, I wish to show that there is an analogy in section nine that arises out of the interaction of the interlocutors; this analogy is, or has, a certain comic adequatic to the traditional arguments about proofs for the existence of God. Second, Philo's seemingly inconsequential example of the strange necessity of products of 9 in section nine is a perfected analogy of the broken arguments actually given in that section, destroying Philo's earlier arguments. Finally, (...) I raise the question of the designer's intent in creating such a humourous piece. (shrink)

In the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Philo and Cleanthes make use of irregular arguments—arguments whose veracity is founded on the force and vivacity with which they strike the mind. This paper provides an analysis of the irregular arguments by the two characters in the Dialogues and by Hume in the Treatise of Human Nature. Since both characters accept the veracity of irregular arguments, it seems that they are in agreement at the end of the Dialogues. The similarity between their arguments (...) and those Hume presents in the Treatise seem suggests that both characters represent Hume’s actual position. (shrink)

‘Truly this is the sweetest of theologies’, William said, with perfect humility, and I thought he was using that insidious figure of thought that rhetors call irony, which must always be prefaced by the pronunciatio, representing its signal and its justification – something William never did. For which reason the abbot, more inclined to the use of figures of speech, took William literally….

Traditionally, Demea is considered to be the weakest character in Hume’s famous Dialogues concerning Natural Religion; the stage is completely dominated by Cleanthes’ optimistic theism and by Philo’s skeptical critical manoeuvres against that. Contrary to this traditional approach, however, the ‘orthodox’ Demea will be defended here by maintaining that Demea contributes—though neither consciously intended nor recognized by Hume—the most interesting observations concerning religious belief. He points to a position lying beyond the metaphysical fantasies of theism on the one hand and (...) Philo’s destructiveness, which seems to amount to a moralized minimal version of faith on the other. It will be clear that this defense is not exegetically orientated, but rather reacts to a constellation personalized in Hume’s ‘casting’ that lets us see on which topics we shall continue to work theologically as well as philosophically today. Accordingly, a conceptual critique of Cleanthes and Philo will be elaborated, using three concrete examples to show what religious belief lying beyond metaphysical hopes that explain God as a person, as well as reductionist concessions that regard ‘God’ merely as an expression of a moral attitude, could look like. Thus Demea represents a ‘postmetaphysical’ image of religious belief—and, eventually, we are invited to belong to the “friends of Demea”. (shrink)

Many interpretations of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion have labored under the assumption that one of the characters represents Hume’s view on the Design Argument, and Philo is often selected for this role. I reject this opinion by showing that Philo is inconsistent. He offers a decisive refutation of the Design Argument, yet later endorses this very argument. I then dismiss two prominent ways of handling Philo’s reversal: first, I show that Philo is not ironic either in his skepticism or (...) in his theistic reversal. Second, I reject the suggestion that the Design Argument is a natural belief, since it differs significantly from causal and external world beliefs. Finally, I argue that the control the Design Argument exerts is the product of a youthful indoctrination that prevents Philo from consistently maintaining his skeptical position. (shrink)

In the third volume of the History of England, David Hume considers the political ramifications of the Protestant reformation with a “Digression concerning the ecclesiastical state.” He advocates the establishment of a state church, believing it will dampen religious “enthusiasm” in the polity. Unlike later secularization theorists, Hume assumes an intractable basis for religion in the human passions. Tensions in Hume’s “cooptation” strategy are evident from Adam Smith’s famous attack upon it in section five of The Wealth of Nations, and (...) in Hume’s own treatment of seventeenth century independency in the fifth volume of the History. Smith argues that public competition among sects facilitates political moderation. In History V Hume stresses the positive role of enthusiasm in fostering civil liberty. This article traces Hume’s indecision to his “external” mode of moral and historical analysis, arguing that a secular policy on religion cannot proceed fruitfully without engaging the theological particulars of the religions at issue. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to establish the importance of what is sometimes called ‘the literary and dramatic character’ of Hume's Dialogues. This importance is such that not taking this specific character of the Dialogues into account leads to conclusions opposite to the ones Hume, in the special form he gave to his work, was trying to impart to his readers. I will offer my analysis in opposition to the one, voiced by, for instance D. W. Harward, in which (...) ‘the apparent philosophical inconsistencies in the Dialogues are resolved without appeal to Hume's commitment to “literary or dramatic balance,” an appeal few of us find convincing or philosophically interesting’. The last part of Harward's statement is of course only of biographical interest; however, the attempt to offer an interpretation of Hume's Dialogues in which the literary character of the work is wilfully set aside, comes to missing a basic understanding for the man and the work. In what follows I will make this explicit by a number of points, each of which shows the importance of this literary and dramatic character of the Dialogues. In each case the result could not be reached without taking this special character into account. (shrink)

In professing to call attention to this often forgotten work of the great Scottish Philosopher one can- not help noticing how very similar the reception accorded to it by the outside world has been to its treatment at the hands of the author himself. During his lifetime he kept it in the safe obscurity of his study drawer, where it lay until the day of his death. The plan of the Dialogues had been clearly thought out by Hume as early (...) as 1750 and the active period of his contribution to philosophy proper having closed almost in the same year this excursion of his into natural theology might most fitly have been presented to his readers at once, especially if, as it seems to us now, it may he rightly regarded as the crown and consummation of his earlier speculations. indeed some such conception of the relation of the Dialogues to his other works underlies the outlining of his scheme upon its first page, where he founds his method "on the saying of" an ancient that students of philosophy ought first to learn Logics, then Ethics, next Physics, "last of all the nature of the Gods.". (shrink)

An introduction for the general reader to David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

In section 12 of the Dialogues, Hume claimed, without reference, that Seneca had written that to know God is to worship him. His source has proven hard to find. This note identifies some possibilities and argues in favour of one of them—one that has not been recognized by recent editors of the Dialogues.

In part 12 of Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Philo famously appears to reverse his course. After slicing the Argument from Design into small pieces throughout most of the first eleven parts of the Dialogues, he suddenly seems to endorse a version of it.

This book is primarily a textual analysis that demonstrates the close relationship of David Hume's The Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion with David Hume's central philosophical writings and its centrality to his relationship with scepticism.

W niniejszej pracy staram się osłabić gruntowną krytykę Dawida Hume’a dotyczącą „teizmu empirycznego” : a) odróżniam „realizm empiryczny”, który przypisuję Kleantesowi, od „idealizmu empirycznego”, koncepcji, co istotne, nie stwarzającej dodatkowych trudności teoretycznych, oraz b) wykazuję, że jeżeli przez „teizm empiryczny” rozumieć się będzie także to drugie stanowisko, ów teizm okaże się w istocie niepodatny na część zarzutów wysuniętych przez Hume’a.

This paper rereads David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion as dramatising a distinctive, naturalistic account of toleration. I have two purposes in mind: first, to complete and ground Hume's fragmentary explicit discussion of toleration; second, to unearth a potentially attractive alternative to more recent, Rawlsian approaches to toleration. To make my case, I connect Dialogues and the problem of toleration to the wider themes of naturalism, scepticism and their relation in Hume's thought, before developing a new interpretation of Dialogues part (...) 12 as political drama. Finally, I develop the Humean theory of toleration I have discovered by comparison between Rawls's and Hume's strategies for justification of a tolerant political regime. (shrink)

In the autumn of 1915 at Princeton, the graduate student, Charles Hendel, and the professor, Norman Kemp Smith, went for a walk. Hendel thought the time auspicious to announce his desire to write a dissertation on Rousseau. As happens not infrequently between an adviser and a student, Kemp Smith attempted to dissuade his student from his intention and advised him to look into David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, instead. The professor noted that a ‘deadlock’ had long existed between those (...) who thought the sceptic, Philo, spoke for Hume, and those who thought the theistic views of Cleanthes most nearly echoed Hume's true opinions on religion. Perhaps through researching the problem, Kemp Smith suggested, Hendel could ‘resolve that impasse and establish Hume's position on the religious question’. (shrink)

According to Terence Penelhum, Philo's confession in the last part of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion reveals on the side of the author a reconciliatory and pacifying attitude towards the liberal moderate clergy of his days. This article investigates whether another reading of this intriguing text is not more appropriate. It defends the idea that Philo's speeches and Cleanthes’ reactions to it in the last part of the Dialogues reveal on Hume's side an attitude of mild despair and isolation towards (...) the religious culture of eighteenth-century Scotland, in both its orthodox and more moderate form. (shrink)

According to Thomas Reid, the development of natural sciences following the model of Newton's Principia and Optics would provide further evidence for the belief in a provident God. This project was still supported by his student, Dugald Stewart, in the early nineteenth century. John Fearn , an early critic of the Scottish common sense school, thought that the rise of ‘infidelity’ in the wake of scientific progress had shown that the apologetic project of Reid and Stewart had failed. In reaction (...) to Reid and Stewart, he proposed an idealist philosophy that would dispense with the existence of matter, and would thus cut at the root what he thought was the main source of modern atheism. In this paper, I consider Fearn's critique of Reid and Stewart in his main works: First Lines of the Human Mind and Manual of the Physiology of Mind . I also consider Fearn's arguments against Hume and in favour of a renewed apologetics in An Essay on the Philosophy of Faith and the Economy of Revelatio.. (shrink)

Neste ensaio, parto da pergunta acerca da motivação original dos Diálogos sobre a religião natural de Hume : de onde a propensão para o argumento pelo desígnio obtém força suficiente para prevalecer sobre a propensão natural a se acreditar nos sentidos e na experiência? Em minha hipótese, os Diálogos, não obstante seu título, representam uma falha na compreensão mútua. Enfocando o drama da peça, pretendo mostrar que, em Cleantes, eles expõem um viés prosélito no teísmo moderno; mais especificamente, que apontam (...) subterfúgios ad hominem que se acoplam aos argumentos teístas, com o fim de evitar os argumentos do ceticismo irreligioso de Fílon. Assim, no que concerne aos argumentos filosóficos, a força do desígnio, parece-me, deve-se a uma má retórica, indício do que denomino Hipótese Prosélita, denunciada por Fílon em, pelo menos, três momentos dos Diálogos. Acredito que esse fator, pouco observado na literatura, ajuda a explicar a perseverança da propensão ao desígnio, fenômeno que sempre intrigou Hume. (shrink)

David Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, first published in 1779, is one of the most influential works in the philosophy of religion and the most artful instance of philosophical dialogue since the dialogues of Plato. It presents a fictional conversation between a sceptic, an orthodox Christian, and a Newtonian theist concerning evidence for the existence of an intelligent cause of nature based on observable features of the world. This edition presents it together with several of Hume's other, shorter writings about (...) religion, and with brief selections from the work of Pierre Bayle, who influenced both Hume's views on religion and the dialectical style of the Dialogues. The volume is completed by an introduction which sets the Dialogues in its philosophical and historical contexts. (shrink)

This paper provides a methodological schema for interpreting Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion that supports the traditional thesis that Philo represents Hume's views on religious belief. To understand the complexity of Hume's ‘naturalism’ and his assessment of religious belief, it is essential to grasp the manner in which Philo articulates a consistently Humean position in the Dialogues.

My most general concern is to dispute the widely accepted Western view that philosophizing is primarily a matter of advancing arguments and making claims and that the reading of a philosophical text ought to be a search for claims and arguments. More specifically I show by extensive textual analysis of Plato's Phaedrus and Hume's Dialogues the extent to which these philosophers, though diametrically opposed on the answers to important metaphysical and epistemological questions, are nevertheless united in the view that philosophizing (...) ought to be a social activity. Though both philosophers are "men of the text" both see the philosophical text as an instrument for initiating philosophical conversation. Both repudiate the philosophical author, and with it, the idea that reading philosophy is the attempt to determine what position the author holds. ;I argue that Plato is serious in his criticism of art and writing but that he has a constructive position also. The Phaedrus is an example of acceptable art because it is constructed according to the principles of true speech given in the Phaedrus, which are, for the purposes of textual composition, the dialectical principles of collection and division. The Phaedrus has a "dialectical structure" and therefore engages the careful reader in dialectic through the process of reading. ;I argue that Hume cannot be identified with any of the characters in the Dialogues; the importance of establishing this is to emphasize that Hume is not attempting to win an argument in this work. Indeed he has removed himself entirely as an authorial presence. I argue further that the work is actually not a dialogue at all but a first-person narration by Pamphilus. There is overall trope for the text--the mind of a young philosophical novice. The twelve sections of the Dialogues can be seen as "ideas" based upon the twelve sections of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding seen as "impressions". A section by section comparison of the two works shows their structural and thematic isomorphism. Hume is showing in the Dialogues what happens when a philosophical novice--Pamphilus--instead of engaging in a public philosophical discussion attempts to come to conclusions on his own, and worse, fails to trace his ideas to their philosophical foundations. (shrink)

One of the most striking facts about Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is the fact that it has been subject to so many mutually contradictory interpretations. It is not, to be sure, unusual that a complex philosophical work be capable of a variety of interpretations. The case of the Dialogues is, however, surely an exceptional one, for the contradictory interpretations concern what is clearly the main subject of the book: the justifiability of world-hypotheses, and specifically the justifiability of the religious (...) world-hypothesis. According to some commentators, Hume's point in the Dialogues is that no world-hypothesis whatever is justifiable, perhaps none is even intelligible. According to others, Hume not only does not deny the possibility of a justified world-hypothesis, but actually proposes some particular hypothesis as the most reasonable one. Those who agree that Hume defends some world-hypothesis, however, differ radically about its content. For some, Hume's preferred hypothesis is that the explanation of order in the universe is a deity immanent in the universe. For others, Hume subscribes to a deity distinct from the universe whose order he explains, and possessing many, at least, of the traditional attributes of God, including wisdom, power, and benevolence. Still others hold that Hume's God, while distinct from the universe, possesses only the natural, not the moral, attributes traditionally assigned to him. Some commentators have even argued that Hume's purpose in the Dialogues is to employ scepticism in defence of religious faith. How, one must ask, is it possible that so many mutually contradictory interpretations have been proposed? How is this striking fact about the Dialogues to be explained? (shrink)

Based on the original handwritten manuscript, this book provides a new, accurate edition of Hume’s important work, faithful to his original text, marginal notes, and changes. Stanley Tweyman’s comprehensive introduction gives an interpretation of the _Dialogues_ as a whole, as well as close analysis of each of the work’s twelve parts. Hume’s views on evil are discussed in four previously published articles, and the volume concludes with an extensive bibliography. Originally published in 1991.

What does David Hume do with the dialogue form in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion? I pursue this question in the context of a partial taxonomy of uses for the dialogue form in philosophy in general—although I want to emphasize the word “partial.” My driving concern here is Hume’s use of dialogue, not to list all possible uses of dialogue or to draw conclusions about the uses of dialogue in philosophy in general. My question sits between two other related questions: a (...) biographical and historical question, “What did Hume intend to do with the dialogue form?” and a question about reception by his audiences, “What did Hume actually achieve with the dialogue form?” Both of these are worthwhile questions.. (shrink)

It has been remarked, my Hermippus, that though the ancient philosophers conveyed most of their instruction in the form of dialogue, this method of composition has been little practised in later ages, and has seldom succeeded in the hands of those who have attempted it. Accurate and regular argument, indeed, such as is now expected of philosophical enquirers, naturally throws a man into the methodical and didactic manner; where he can immediately, without preparation, explain the point at which he aims; (...) and thence proceed, without interruption, to deduce the proofs on which it is established. To deliver a SYSTEM in conversation, scarcely appears natural; and while the dialogue-writer desires, by departing from the direct style of composition, to give a freer air to his performance, and avoid the appearance of Author and Reader, he is apt to run into a worse inconvenience, and convey the image of Pedagogue and Pupil. Or, if he carries on the dispute in the natural spirit of good company, by throwing in a variety of topics, and preserving a proper balance among the speakers, he often loses so much time in preparations and transitions, that the reader will scarcely think himself compensated, by all the graces of dialogue, for the order, brevity, and precision, which are sacrificed to them. (shrink)