Blackmore, Tim (Author)
Gressis, Robert (Author)
British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Volume: 25
Issue: 2
Pages: 244-264
Many think that the aim of Hume’s Dialogues is simply to discredit the design argument for the existence of an intelligent designer. We think instead that the Dialogues provides a model of true religion. We argue that, for Hume, the truly religious person: (1) believes that an intelligent designer created and imposed order on the universe; (2) grounds this belief in an irregular argument rooted in a certain kind of experience, for example, in the experience of anatomizing complex natural systems such as the eye; and (3) retains this belief, on the basis of these reasons, even after careful scrutiny. We argue that two of the Dialogues’s characters, Philo and Cleanthes, exhibit true religion. A third character, Demea, exhibits false religion and a persistent impiety. Taken as a whole, we see the Dialogues as an educational performance for the benefit of Pamphilus, Cleanthes’s ward, as well as for the benefit of readers of the Dialogues. Specifically, we think, given that its lessons concern theology and the principles of religion, the dynamics of the Dialogues’s discussion and the interplay between its characters can be seen as a demonstration of a method for becoming truly religious.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Dyde, Sean;
(2015)
George Combe and Common Sense
(/isis/citation/CBB001551284/)
Article
Lolordo, Antonia;
(2000)
Probability and Skepticism about Reason in Hume's Treatise
(/isis/citation/CBB000111575/)
Article
Christian Maurer;
(2016)
Archibald Campbell and the Committee for Purity of Doctrine on Natural Reason, Natural Religion, and Revelation
(/isis/citation/CBB162756479/)
Book
C. B. Bow;
(2018)
Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment
(/isis/citation/CBB560299497/)
Book
Wilson, David B.;
(2009)
Seeking Nature's Logic: Natural Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment
(/isis/citation/CBB001021266/)
Article
Reed Winegar;
(2015)
Kant's Criticisms of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
(/isis/citation/CBB192170146/)
Book
James A. Harris;
(2019)
Hume: An Intellectual Biography
(/isis/citation/CBB460332792/)
Article
Russell, Paul;
(2003)
The Material World and Natural Religion in Hume's Treatise
(/isis/citation/CBB000670511/)
Book
Souleymane Bachir Diagne;
(2018)
Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with the Western Tradition
(/isis/citation/CBB753847772/)
Book
Carlos Fraenkel;
(2012)
Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy
(/isis/citation/CBB712280521/)
Book
Bonin, Therese M.;
(2001)
Creation as Emanation: The Origin of Diversity in Albert the Great's on the Causes and the Procession the Universe
(/isis/citation/CBB000101929/)
Article
Michael LeBuffe;
(2015)
The Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms: Miracles, Monotheism, and Reason in Spinoza
(/isis/citation/CBB525797691/)
Book
Bottéro, Jean;
Herrenschmidt, Clarisse;
Vernant, Jean Pierre;
(2000)
Ancestor of the West: Writing, reasoning, and religion in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Greece.
(/isis/citation/CBB000110020/)
Book
Alessio Bottone;
(2022)
Settecento dialogico. Scienza, militanza, letteratura
(/isis/citation/CBB407856342/)
Article
Melissa McBay Merritt;
(2015)
Varieties of Reflection in Kant's Logic
(/isis/citation/CBB489711838/)
Article
Bruegel, Martin;
Chevet, Jean-Michel;
Lecocq, Sébastien;
(2014)
Animal Protein and Rational Choice: Diet in the Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001201310/)
Article
T. J. Martinson;
(2019)
Sense and Supersensibility: Kantian Aesthetics in Lamarckian Evolutionary Theory
(/isis/citation/CBB019213234/)
Article
Silvia Manzo;
(2019)
Historiographical Approaches on Experience and Empiricism in the Early Nineteenth-Century: Degérando and Tennemann
(/isis/citation/CBB444177107/)
Chapter
Klemme, Heiner F.;
(2003)
Scepticism and Common Sense
(/isis/citation/CBB000471407/)
Article
Steigerwald, Joan;
(2003)
The Dynamics of Reason and Its Elusive Object in Kant, Fichte and Schelling
(/isis/citation/CBB000340873/)
Be the first to comment!