Hume: Philosophy of Religion

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)

Nos proponemos llevar a cabo una aufhebung de la crítica a la religión de Hume. De un lado queremos «superar» la crítica humeana mediante el crisol del evangelio de Jesús de Nazaret. Pero no solo es necesario «superar», también hay que «recuperar» en un estadio superior la crítica que Hume realiza a la religión. El Dios de Hume, su concepción de la religión y su proyecto socio-político tienen una nada oculta pretensión legitimadora y sustentadora de la organización social liberal-burguesa. Pero (...) Hume nos puede aportar un impulso para llevar a cabo el proyecto cristiano hoy: nos enseña que debemos «respetar» a Dios y no rebajarlo a un diosesito a la medida de nuestras necesidades; que la razón humana debe tener en cuenta sus propios límites sin absolutizarse; y que la religión puede ser una mediación de humanidad. El riesgo estriba en que, históricamente, las religiones han caído en una perversión de su ser, en una falsa creencia, alejándose de su verdadera tarea, es decir, ser un factor de realización del hombre en la sociedad, y ser el medio en el que se pueden relacionar el hombre y Dios. We propose to realize an aufhebung about the Hume’s religion critic. By one hand, we want to “overcome” the Hume’s critic through of the Gospel of Jesus from Nazaret. But it is not just necessary to “overcome” it, but it is also necessary to “recuperate” in a superior way the critic that Hume makes about the religion. The Hume’s God, his conception about religion and his social-politic project have a very clear intention which is an authentic support for the social liberal-bourgeois organization. But Hume can contribute us with a thrust to realize the christian project nowadays. He teaches us that we must “respect” God ant not to reduce him like a little-god according to our necessities; what the human reason must remain its own limits without absoluting, and that religion can be an instrument for constructing the human society. Historically, the risk rest on the fact that the religions have become in a perversion of its being, in a false belief, moving away from its real task, that is to say, to be a factor of achievement of man in society, and being the way in which man and God con be related. (shrink)

David Hume puede ser considerado con toda justicia como el representante más preclaro de la crítica religiosa de la Ilustración. Su diálogo con la tradición crítica desde Epicuro, así como la toma en consideración de la nueva filosofía nacida al calor de la ciencia newtoniana, le hacen acreedor de una toma en consideración más avisada en el contexto actual. Tanto si queremos dialogar con la modernidad secularizada, como si queremos hacerlo con el amplio espectro de las religiones mundiales en un (...) contexto de crisis de la razón moderna, Hume se convierte en el mediador necesario. La crítica de las pruebas de la existencia de Dios –núcleo de este artículo– es la médula del pensamiento crítico humeano. Toda la filosofía de la religión se ha enfrentado con esta misma problemática y no ha hallado respuesta más coherente y filosóficamente estructurada que la de Hume. Él es el gozne de todo el pensamiento crítico de la religión desde Epicuro. (shrink)

In this paper I compare two models of expert judgment: the art critic in Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste” and the “wise man” in “Of Miracles.” The art critic is a true judge of beauty because he has made himself into a person who is optimally receptive to beauty. He possesses the virtues of taste: “Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice”. But the virtues of the art critic, I (...) argue, are also those of the “wise man,” the person who consistently “proportions his belief to the evidence”. Comparison of these two characters reveals that for Hume the virtues fundamental to the art critic’s critical competence are also epistemic virtues. Hume’s exposition of aesthetic excellences should thus be of interest for virtue epistemology. Because contemporary virtue epistemologists have tended to focus almost exclusively on the relationships between intellectual and moral virtues, Hume offers something new: an account of epistemic virtues based on aesthetic virtues. (shrink)

Given Hume’s theory of belief and belief production it is no small task to explain how it is possible for a belief in a miracle to be produced. I argue that belief in a miracle cannot be produced through Hume’sstandard causal mechanisms and that although education, passion, and testimony initially seem to be promising mechanisms for producing belief in a miracle, none of these is able to produce the belief in amiracle. I conclude by explaining how this poses a problem (...) for Hume’s theory of belief and I briefly investigate the alternatives available for solving this problem. (shrink)

Popular religions are practical; they are used as guides to living. But philosophical religion has no implications for how we should live. Hume thought that philosophical theism and popular monotheism cannot be coherently united. Yet incoherent unification is precisely what has happened in our own culture.

ABSTRACT This article proposes to show how David Hume's critique of contractualism is the political consequence of his analysis of causality. Hume rejects contractualism mainly for methodological reasons: explanations based on final causes are never satisfying. Therefore, contractualism applies to the political sphere the argument from design presented in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. The genesis of politics unfolded in A Treatise of Human Nature must be seen as a particular application of the only pertinent way of explaining phenomena, i.e., (...) natural history, in which sympathy immanently configures and reconfigures society. The final cause must be replaced by the efficient cause. Hume's political theory—either positive or negative—and epistemology cannot be dissociated. (shrink)

Cet article se propose de montrer comment la critique de la théorie contractualiste opérée par David Hume est la conséquence politique de son analyse de la causalité. Hume rejette le contractualisme avant tout pour des raisons méthodologiques : une explication par les causes finales n’est jamais une explication satisfaisante. Or, le contractualisme applique au domaine politique l’argument du desseinprésenté dans les Dialogues sur la religion naturelle. La genèse du politique déployée dans le Traité de la nature humaine doit alors être (...) envisagée comme l’application particulière du seul mode d’explication pertinent des phénomènes, l’histoire naturelle, où la sympathie configure et reconfigure, de manière immanente, la société. À la causalité finale, il faut substituer la causalité efficiente. La théorie politique de Hume dans ses deux versants, négatif et positif, est indissociable de son épistémologie.This article proposes to show how David Hume’s critique of contractualism is the political consequence of his analysis of causality. Hume rejects contractualism mainly for methodological reasons: explanations based on final causes are never satisfying. Therefore, contractualism applies to the political sphere the argument from design presented in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. The genesis of politics unfolded in A Treatise of Human Nature must be seen as a particular application of the only pertinent way of explaining phenomena, i. e., natural history, in which sympathy immanently configures and reconfigures society. The final cause must be replaced by the efficient cause. Hume’s political theory-either positive or negative-and epistemology cannot be dissociated. (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)

This book is a defense of Hume's philosophical principles in the Treatise of Human Nature. Nelson shows that Hume's new philosophy was a uniquely original and profound masterpiece in philosophical literature, worthy of serious study and acceptance. It is argued that Dialoguesis a reflective philosophical autobiography of Hume himself.

Ten of the most widely read works on philosophy of religion are collected in this volume. Structured around these classic texts, this book includes a number of essays to provide students with a sense of the way philosophers think today about the central issues of philosophy of religion.

In such a chain too, or succession of objects, each part is caused by that which preceded it, and causes that which succeeds it. Where then is the difficulty? But the WHOLE, you say, wants a cause. I answer, that the uniting of these parts into a whole, like the uniting of several distinct counties into one kingdom, or several distinct members into one body, is performed merely by an arbitrary act of the mind, and has no influence on the (...) nature of things. Did I show you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of the parts. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es revisar las posturas de Pierre Bayle y David Hume en torno al problema del mal, para determinar si la postura de Hume se reduce a la de su predecesor o si existen diferencias más profundas entre ambos. Bayle propone una solución fideísta, declarando que se trata de un misterio que está por encima de la razón al que debemos adherir a partir de la creencia, mientras que Hume se limita a suspender el juicio al (...) respecto. En primer lugar, se reconstruye el planteo del problema del mal y sus consecuencias sobre la moral en los dos autores. Luego, se revisan sus críticas a la teología racional y el papel que juega el escepticismo respecto de la religión. Se concluye que la influencia de Bayle sobre Hume está centrada en mostrar las limitaciones de la razón humana para abordar el problema, y que el aporte original de este último se vincula con la defensa de la filosofía como un tipo de especulación autónoma. (shrink)