David Hume and the Naturalness of Religion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/RF.2018.028Keywords
David Hume, religion, scepticism, naturalismAbstract
The paper traces Hume's naturalism on both empirical and methodological levels. By ignoring the absolutness of Hume's distinction between the natural and the artificial, we can see that religion is natural in both senses. Firstly, it appears from the natural instincts and natural curiosity, and while the speculative metaphysics involved in it deforms those sentiments, the basic mechanisms of religion are still reducible to them. Secondly, and far more importantly, because Hume's skeptical epistemology tends to reduce the metaphysical overhang, what remains of religion is purely of this world and as such is prone to be the subject of natural sciences, just like the physical world is prone to be the subject of natural philosophy.
References
Bailey Allan and Dan O’Brien. Hume’s Critique of Religion: ‘Sick Men’s Dreams’, The New Synthese Historical Library 72. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014.
Banasiak, Bogdan. Filozofia integralnej suwerenności. Zarys systemu Markiza de Sade. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2007.
Dennett, Daniel. Breaking the Spell. Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. London: Penguin Books, 2007.
Dennett, Daniel. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. Evolution and the Meanings of Life. London: Penguin Books, 1996.
Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Hume, David. Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, rev.2nd edn. Ed. Eugene Miller. Indianapolis: Library Classics, 1987.
Hume, David. The Natural History of Religion. London: A. and H. Bradlaugh Bonner, 1889.
Hume, David. Selected Essays. Ed. S. Copley & A. Edgar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Hume, David. Treatise on Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.
Mackie, J.L. Hume's Moral Theory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
O'Day, Ken. “Hume's Distinction between the Natural and Artificial Virtues”. Hume Studies XX, no. 1: 121–142.
Russell, Paul. The Riddle of Hume's Treatise. Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion. Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2008.
Schellenberg, John L. Evolutionary Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Segal, Robert A. “Hume's Natural History of Religion and the Beginning of the Social Scientific Study of Religion”, 1994 (24): 225–234.
Sieczkowski, Tomasz. „Suma wszystkich instynktów. Hume, nawyk i naturalizacja religii”. Hybris 31 (2015): 37–57.
Sieczkowski, Tomasz. David Hume. Krytyka episteologii. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2017.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Stats
Number of views and downloads: 497
Number of citations: 0
