Encyclopedia of Science and Religion | Hume, David

David Hume (1711–1776) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on April 26, 1711. He was educated at home in the Presbyterian parish of Chirnside, near Berwick, and studied at the University of Edinburgh from 1723 until 1726, without taking a degree. Before leaving the university, he had projected his Treatise of Human Nature, and between the ages of fifteen and twenty-three he read widely and methodically in philosophy and other branches of learning, making the study of human nature his principal concern and the source from which he would draw all true conclusions in philosophy, morality, and criticism. In 1734 Hume went to France where he lived quietly for three years composing his revolutionary systematic study of human nature, which was published in three volumes in London from 1739 to 1740. The first volume concerns the understanding, the second the passions, and the third morality.

Finding that the work "fell dead-born from the press without reaching such distinction, as even to excite a murmur among the zealots," Hume penned a review of his own work, which he had anonymously published as a pamphlet: An Abstract of a Book lately Published, Entitled, A Treatise of Human Nature, &c. Wherein The Chief Argument of that Book is farther Illustrated and Explained (1740). This remarkable pamphlet is still the best brief guide to the central arguments and conclusions of Hume's theoretical philosophy, so it is unfortunate that a copy of it did not come to light until 1933. Though Hume's Treatise was a commercial failure during his lifetime, it is now almost universally regarded as one of the greatest works of systematic philosophy in the English language. However, because he was so disappointed with its reception and was inclined to blame himself for this fact, he recast the first volume into An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), and the third volume into An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1758), both of which have become philosophical classics.

The Treatise is firmly within the empiricist tradition of John Locke (1632–1704). No ideas are innate: all are derived, either directly or indirectly, from outer or inner experience. Experience is also the arbiter of all belief. Hume may be regarded as advancing a sophisticated Lockean viewpoint that has benefited greatly from the acute criticisms of Locke made by George Berkeley (1685–1753) and others. The universally accepted maxim that "every event has a cause" has no basis in reason. Nor does the ubiquitous assumption that what has happened in the past will happen in the future have any basis in reason. The problem of induction is emphasized and shown to be insoluble by reason alone. The faculty of reason is demoted from its historical hegemony at the same time as the nonrational faculty of imagination is promoted. The imagination, however, does not associate or connect ideas at random. It operates according to principles and associates resembling ideas, or ideas of objects that are contiguous in space and time or that are causally related: "Here is a kind of attraction, which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and show itself in as many and as various forms." Reason gives way to instinct, custom, and habit. The three types of association "are the only ties of our thoughts," so "they are really to us the cement of the universe." Many items that reason allegedly discerns are reduced to projections or expressions of human nature. In the Abstract, Hume unequivocally describes his system as "very sceptical": "Philosophy wou'd render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it." His considered position is that of a moderate or mitigated scepticism, or one whose otherwise extreme conclusions have been somewhat "corrected" by common sense. This is the Hume who woke Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) from his "dogmatic slumber."

Philosophy of religion

From an early age Hume was preoccupied with religion and science. Before he was twenty, he set down in a notebook "the gradual progress" of his thoughts on theism: "It begun with an anxious search after arguments to confirm the common opinion: Doubts stole in, dissipated, return'd, were again dissipated, return'd again; and it was a perpetual struggle of a restless imagination against inclination, perhaps against reason." It therefore is unsurprising that the Treatise as originally written contained several antireligious sections and remarks that Hume prudently removed before publication. In 1737 he told a friend that he was "castrating" his manuscript, or "cutting off its nobler parts" so that it would "give as little offence as possible." He deleted an essay on miracles and probably also one on the immortality of the soul. But notwithstanding these precautions, the very first notice of the work warned readers of its "evil intentions," evident from the book's motto alone: "Seldom are men blessed with times in which they may think what they like, and say what they think".

Hume must have realized that a discerning reader of the Treatise would have detected echoes of principles and doctrines prominent in the works of Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), Anthony Collins (1676–1729), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), and other "free thinkers." He therefore should not have been surprised when, in 1745, he applied for a chair in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and the local clergy defeated his candidacy by charging him with advocating "universal scepticism" and "downright atheism." They also accused him of "denying the immortality of the soul" and of "sapping the foundations of morality, by denying the natural and essential difference between right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice; making the difference only artificial, and to arise from human conventions and compacts." Hume defended himself against these misunderstandings and misrepresentations, but thereafter his writings became increasingly antireligious.

In 1748 Hume published his essay on miracles, in which he argued that there is no reason to believe that any miracle has ever occurred. His argument was attacked by many contemporaries, including William Adams, John Douglas, Richard Price, and George Campbell, whose criticisms are still worth reading. In the same collection Hume devoted an essay to arguing that there is no reason to believe in a particular providence or a future state. This attack on the argument from design was elaborated in Hume's posthumously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), which is modelled upon Cicero's De Natura Deorum.

The historian Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) regarded the Dialogues as "the most profound, the most ingenious, and the best written of Hume's philosophic works." It remains the classic discussion of the argument from design (or argument a posteriori), and some regard it as the most important work in the philosophy of religion in English. Had William Paley (1743–1805) carefully studied it, he might never have written Evidences of Christianity (1794) or Natural Theology (1802). Along the way Samuel Clarke's (1675–1729) a priori argument for the existence of God is refuted, and the objections to theism from the existence of evil are forcefully presented.

The Dialogues involves three disputants: the orthodox rationalist theologian Demea, the "careless sceptic" Philo, and the scientific theologian Cleanthes, who frequently echoes Bishop Butler's Analogy of Religion (1736). Though the argument from design is subjected to sustained criticism, and the attentive reader may be convinced that the canons of scientific reasoning do not issue in theism, at the end Cleanthes seems to emerge as the winner, leading some mistakenly to conclude that Cleanthes speaks for Hume himself. But the Dialogues were so "artfully written" that Philo the sceptic only appears to be "silenced." In a private letter Hume said that he objected "to everything we commonly call religion, except the Practice of Morality, and the Assent of the Understanding to the Proposition that God exists." But in the Dialogues the concept of God is virtually evacuated of all meaning, so such "assent" amounts to little or nothing. Hume's friend Dr. Hugh Blair, who advised against publishing the Dialogues during Hume's lifetime, remarked that they are "exceedingly elegant" and "bring together some of his most exceptional reasonings, but the principles themselves were in all his former works." Most scholars now hold that Philo represents Hume himself. Hume denied that he was an atheist or a deist, so he is perhaps best viewed as a not-socareless sceptic.

In the Treatise Hume argued that morality is not founded on reason, but on passion. Reason alone cannot motivate people to act, and one cannot logically derive statements about what one "ought" to do from statements about what "is" the case. One's sense of justice rests upon self-interest, limited generosity, utility, human conventions, and sympathy or fellow-feeling with the sentiments of others. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) said that the scales fell from his eyes when he read this part of Hume's work. Though utility enters into his explanation of the evolution of morality, Hume himself was not a utilitarian. But he was one of the first to insist upon the autonomy of morality, and especially its independence from religious belief. In the Natural History of Religion (1757) he inquired into the causes of religion and speculated as to how monotheism had evolved from primitive polytheism, while emphasizing the absurd doctrines and immoral consequences of most world religions. His critics argued that, though his temperament enabled him to be just without being religious, most people require the sanctions of religion in order to be just.

Anonymous writings

Hume counted several of the more liberal Church of Scotland ministers as friends but resented those evangelical ministers who had lobbied against his appointment to a professorship at Edinburgh and Glasgow and who, in the mid-1750s, had unsuccessfully tried to have the Church of Scotland excommunicate him. He carefully cultivated the character of a "virtuous infidel" by encouraging the literary projects of his clerical friends (and potential literary rivals) such as Hugh Blair, Adam Ferguson, and Robert Wallace; and by anonymously publishing favourable reviews of William Robertson's History of Scotland, William Wilkie's epic poem the Epigoniad, and Robert Henry's History of Great Britain, as well as of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. The extent of Hume's clandestine literary activity has yet to be determined.

In "My Own Life" (1777), Hume asserted that he was "a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity." Adam Smith (1723–1790) testified that his "constant pleasantry was the genuine effusion of good nature and good humour … without even the slightest tincture of malignity, so frequently the disagreeable source of what is called wit in other men." Nevertheless, under cover of anonymity, Hume composed several satires against the clergy and corrupt politicians. "The Bellman's Petition" (1751) is directed against an increase in the stipends of ministers of the Church of Scotland. The far more ambitious, lengthy, and scathing Sister Peg (1760) is directed against politicians who had defeated his friends' struggle to reestablish a militia in Scotland. An anonymous satire from 1758 is directed against the commonly felt "antipathy to the corn merchant" during times of famine and "affection for the Parson" who at such times inveighed against the supposedly greedy corn merchants. In it Hume argued that these popular sentiments were based upon ignorance, superstition, and bad reasoning; good reasoning should direct one's passions in the opposite direction, so that one should instead feel affection for the useful corn merchants and antipathy for the useless parsons who "cram us with Nonsense, instead of feeding us with Truth." In these works Hume appears to have revenged himself against those who had previously opposed him.

Political history

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Hume was best known as an historian. His multivolume History of England is not only a narrative history but is a philosophical study of the English constitution in which he never misses an opportunity to satirize the folly and hypocrisy of self-interested politicians and clergymen. His historical research was informed by his political and economic theories, which were less conservative than many have assumed. Believing that the first duty of a historian is to be accurate and impartial, while the next is the be instructive and entertaining, he succeeded so well in fulfilling these obligations that his history is still read, while those of most of his contemporaries have sunk into oblivion. Though born a Scotsman, Hume always strove to write an elegant and correct English and to surpass the best English stylists. Occasionally some vanity is evident in his writings, which gives them a conversational tone and an engaging character. Hume believed that good writing "consists of sentiments, which are natural, without being obvious." He repeatedly revised his works in order to perfect them. His views in philosophy, politics, economics, theology, history, and criticism were generally original and unobvious and so artfully expressed as to disguise his artfulness.

Hume died on August 25, 1776, and was buried in Calton Hill cemetery, overlooking Edinburgh. At his internment someone was overheard to say: "Ah, he was an atheist." To which another answered: "No matter, he was an honest man."

See also DESIGN ARGUMENT; EMPIRICISM; GOD; HUMAN NATURE, RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS; IMAGINATION; KANT, IMMANUEL; MIRACLE; MONOTHEISM; MORALITY; NATURAL THEOLOGY

DAVID RAYNOR