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On the Interpretation of Hume's Dialogues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

John Bricke
John Bricke
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Kansas
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Extract

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?

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1975 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

Page 1 note 1 Hume, David, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Smith, Norman Kemp (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1947).Google Scholar All page references to the Dialogues appear within parentheses in the text.

Page 2 note 1 Smith, Norman Kemp, ed., Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, esp. pp. 57–75.Google Scholar

Page 2 note 2 Pike, Nelson, ed., Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), esp. pp. 204–238.Google Scholar

Page 2 note 3 Wollheim, Richard, ed., Hume on Religion (New York: World Publishing Company, 1963).Google Scholar

Page 2 note 4 Nathan, George J., ‘Hume's Immanent God’, Hume, ed. Chappell, V. C. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966).Google Scholar

Page 2 note 5 Noxon, James, ‘Hume's Agnosticism’, The Philosophical Review, LXXIII (1964), pp. 248–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 2 note 6 Hendel, Charles W., Studies in the Philosophy of David Hume (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963). chaps. X–XII.Google Scholar

Page 3 note 1 Smith, Kemp, pp. 58–59.Google Scholar

Page 3 note 2 Pike, , p. 235.Google Scholar

Page 3 note 1 Smith, Kemp, p. 63.Google Scholar

Page 4 note 1 Hume, David, Enquiries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), pp. 149–165.Google Scholar

Page 8 note 1 Pike, , pp. 207–224.Google Scholar

Page 8 note 2 Pike's, defence of this interpretation is on pp. 224–238.Google Scholar In fairness to Pike it should be noted that he proposes the present interpretation with some hesitation: ‘I might say at the outset that I am not convinced that the interpretation we are about to review is correct. I am convinced, however, that it is worth very careful consideration.’ (p. 224)

Page 10 note 1 Pike does not discuss Cleanthes's second curious example, that of the vegetating library. It is clear, however, that Philo could object to it as well in ways similar to those just discussed.

Page 12 note 1 Wollheim, , op. cit., p. 16.Google Scholar

Page 13 note 1 Hume, David, My Own Life, in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Smith, Norman Kemp, p. 239.Google Scholar Cf. p. 233 where Hume says: ‘A passion for literature…has been the ruling passion of my life.’

Page 13 note 2 Ibid., p. 235.

Page 14 note 1 The Letters of David Hume, ed. Greig, J. Y. T. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), I, 223.Google Scholar

Page 14 note 2 Ibid., II, 334. Kemp Smith, referring frequently to this remark (pp. 66, 70, 91), takes ‘artful’ to be equivalent to, say, ‘cunning’ or ‘deceitful’. Read in this way, Hume's remark to Adam Smith lends some support to Kemp Smith's view that Hume, covering his tracks, is disguising his meaning when he has Philo make his more theistic comments. I would suggest, however, that it is certainly not clear that Hume was using ‘artful’ in this way. It is at least equally possible that he was using this term in the sense of ‘done with (artistic) skill,’ as I suggest in the body of the text. In Johnson's Dictionary both meanings, among others, are assigned to this and cognate terms. Thus, Johnson's fourth definition of ‘art’ is ‘artfulness; skill; dexterity’, while his fifth definition is ‘cunning’. Similarly, though somewhat more ambiguously, his first definition of ‘artful’ is ‘performed with art’, while his third is ‘cunning; skilful; dexterous’. ‘Artfully’ is defined, simply, as ‘with art; skilfully; dexterously’. The first meaning of ‘artfulness’ is ‘skill’, the second ‘cunning’. Curiously enough, even ‘cunning’ is not unambiguous. Johnson's second definition of the adjective ‘cunning’ is ‘performed with skill; artful’, while his third definition is ‘artfully deceitful; sly; designing; trickish; full of fetches and stratagems; subtle; crafty; subdolous’. Clearly, Kemp Smith's reading of ‘artful’ is at least questionable; typically, in Johnson's Dictionary, Kemp Smith's meaning is listed after that which I employ in the text. See Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London: W. Strahan, 1755)

Page 15 note 1 Hume criticises Cicero himself on the grounds that Atticus, one of the characters in his dialogues, ‘receives his instructions, with all the deference which a scholar owes to his master’. Hume, David, ‘Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences’, Essays, Literary, Moral and Political (London: Ward, Lock and Company, n.d.), p. 74.Google Scholar

Page 15 note 2 Letters, I, 154.

Page 15 note 3 Letters, I, 155.