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.
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