Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion was published posthumously in 1779, three years after he died. It was published without a publisher’s name on its title page, a clear sign that it contained controversial material that could have serious ‘consequences’ for all those involved. Various obstacles to the publication of this work had been in play for a number of years. Much of the Dialogues was written and completed around 1751–52, when Hume was just forty years old. Almost three decades would pass before it was eventually published. Following the advice of his friends, Hume decided not to publish his Dialogues when they were first written. Publishing the Dialogues was, nevertheless, important enough to Hume that in the final months of his life he asked his close friend Adam Smith to see to it that the Dialogues were published. Smith, however, expressed strong reservations about this and refused to do it.Footnote ¹ Clearly disappointed by Smith’s refusal, Hume wrote to his long-time publisher William Strahan in the hope of persuading him to publish the Dialogues. ‘Some of my Friends’, Hume tells Strahan, ‘flatter me, that it is the best thing I ever wrote’.Footnote ² Strahan, however, after hesitating for a period, also decided against publishing the Dialogues. Fortunately, Hume, in a codicil to his will, anticipated these difficulties and made alternative arrangements for the publication of the Dialogues.

These considerations relating to the difficulties that Hume faced regarding the publication of the Dialogues present contemporary readers of Hume with a significant problem of interpretation. How, given these conditions of repression and coercion, should we interpret Hume’s work (e.g., the Dialogues), given that ‘prudence’ and care was obviously required by any author who hoped to advance views of the kind that Hume presents?

In the Dialogues, Hume presents and examines two arguments for the existence of God and his particular attributes. They are the argument from design (or the argument a posteriori) and the cosmological argument (or argument a priori). Both these arguments were widely accepted and defended by theologians and philosophers in Hume’s context, and they continue to command support among theists.Footnote ³ The Dialogues pays particular attention to the design argument, which is presented and defended by ‘Cleanthes’ in Part II, and goes on to occupy the Dialogues until the end of Part VIII.Footnote ⁴ Although Hume regards the argument from design as the principal argument for ‘divine existence’, he also devotes all of Part IX to an examination of the cosmological argument. In the context of the Dialogues, the proponent and defender of this argument is ‘Demea’. The cosmological argument continued to enjoy considerable prestige and support well into the second half of the eighteenth century.Footnote ⁵

Having considered, and criticized, the argument from design and the cosmological argument, the Dialogues turns its attention to the problem of evil (Parts X and XI). The problem of evil, as presented primarily by ‘Philo’, lays the foundation for an argument against the existence of God, at least any God with an orthodox set of attributes. The fourth and final argument that the Dialogues takes up concerns the relationship between religion and morality. By the time this issue arises, Demea has departed, which leaves the discussion between Cleanthes and Philo (Part XII). The positions that they defend are directly opposed. Cleanthes defends the view that religion and, in particular, the doctrine of a future state, is a necessary ‘security to morals’. ‘Religion, however corrupted’, Cleanthes maintains, ‘is still better than no religion at all’ (D, 12.10/219; EU, 11.28–29/147; EM, 9.14/279). Against this, Philo argues that religion, at best, provides unsteady and unreliable support for morality and, more commonly, it has a corrupting and pernicious influence on human conduct (D, 12.11–32/220–27).

**

One question that may be asked is why Hume uses the dialogue format to consider and assess these arguments and positions? A few points may be noted in relation to this matter. First, Hume’s use of the dialogue format follows established practice.Footnote ⁶ It is widely recognized, for example, that Hume’s Dialogues is modelled after Cicero’s De Natura Deorum in a number of respects.Footnote ⁷ Beyond this, the dialogue format was also adopted by a number of modern philosophers who presented their views on religion in this form, in works that Hume was almost certainly entirely familiar with.Footnote ⁸ Second, the dialogues format allowed Hume to camouflage and conceal, to some extent, his own identity and commitments. This provides a certain degree of protection given the climate that his work was published in. More importantly, however, one of Hume’s fundamental concerns in the Dialogues is to give a fair and accurate account of the various views and arguments under consideration. Whatever side of this debate Hume may have been partial to, he was anxious to allow the reader to arrive at her own conclusion on the basis of a fair, accurate, and impartial presentation of the relevant arguments.Footnote ⁹

An obvious upshot of these conflicting considerations is that Hume’s own commitments are not always easy to discern or decide. One way to approach this is to ask: Who speaks for Hume in the Dialogues? There are any number of responses to this question, but the two most convincing discussions are provided by Kemp Smith and Gaskin. Although their answer to this question is qualified in various ways, both agree ‘that Philo, from start to finish represents Hume’.Footnote ¹⁰ Nevertheless, even if we agree with Kemp Smith and Gaskin that Philo serves as Hume’s principal spokesperson in the Dialogues, this still leaves us with a large problem that has also been widely debated. That is, what is Philo’s final view about this matter? In regard to this issue, there is no obvious or uncontroversial answer to be given. For our present purposes, what can be said, which might command wide but not universal agreement, is that Philo’s views are consistently and firmly irreligious.Footnote ¹¹ It remains unclear, however, what exactly this commits Philo (and/or Hume) to. There are three basic options available to us, all of which can be provided with considerable support (and all of which have been defended by various eminent Hume scholars). Described in succinct terms, the relevant options are: some form of attenuated theism or deism, or agnosticism, or atheism. Each one of these options is itself open to variable accounts and interpretation and allow for some overlap. What they all share, nevertheless, is a systematic scepticism (and hostility) to orthodox religion or ‘superstition’ of any kind.

Finally, two further questions may also be briefly considered. The first is how does Hume’s Dialogues relate to his other writings and are his other writings of any relevance when interpreting the Dialogues? It is evident that Hume’s concerns in the Dialogues are intimately linked with his other writings, since many of the arguments in the Dialogues are drawn from or elaborate upon arguments presented in his earlier works. This is, perhaps, most apparent in the discussions presented in EU, 10 and 11, as well as in his Natural History of Religion. About this there is little disagreement among Hume scholars. There remain, nevertheless, some matters of significant – if not fundamental – disagreement. Briefly stated, there are two quite different understandings of how Hume’s interest in religion emerges and develops in his philosophy considered as a whole. The first view, which was dominant until recently, is that Hume’s Treatise has little or nothing to say about religion.Footnote ¹² What brief remarks Hume did have on this subject, it was argued, had been removed (i.e., ‘castrated’) from the Treatise and only later inserted into the works that followed.Footnote ¹³ In opposition to this account, the alternative view, which is increasingly accepted, is that the Treatise is deeply and systematically concerned with matters and problems of religion – as was obvious to Hume’s own contemporaries.Footnote ¹⁴ According to this ‘irreligious’ interpretation, Hume’s Treatise lays the foundation for much of Hume’s subsequent philosophical trajectory in his later works. There is, on this view, no radical discontinuity between the Treatise and Hume’s later writings in respect of his irreligious concerns and objectives. On the contrary, Hume’s concerns with problems of religion begin with the Treatise and carry on through his entire philosophy, running from the Enquiries to the Natural History of Religion and finishing with the (posthumously published) Dialogues .

The second question, which is closely related to the first, concerns the relevant background historical context in which these arguments and debates should be understood. The relevant background debate concerning the existence of God and related religious doctrines (e.g., immortality of the soul and a future state) could be described as the ‘main debate’ among seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers. That debate centred heavily around the ‘atheistic’ philosophies of Hobbes and Spinoza and the various responses that this generated. Until recently, the significance of Hobbes and Spinoza for Hume’s philosophy was largely overlooked or ignored (as per the orthodox or established interpretation of Hume belonging to the ‘British Empiricist’ tradition).Footnote ¹⁵ This includes their relevance for Hume’s philosophy of religion and for his Dialogues in particular.Footnote ¹⁶ This situation has changed substantially over the past decade or so. As noted, the irreligious interpretation emphasizes the importance of both Hobbes and Spinoza, not only for Hume’s philosophy in the Treatise but for his philosophy as a whole, including the Dialogues. A number of recent studies have emphasized this aspect of Hume’s philosophy of religion, particularly as it concerns the Dialogues.Footnote ¹⁷ Although these studies vary in detail and in emphasis, they are all broadly consistent with the irreligious interpretation of Hume’s philosophy, at least as it concerns the Dialogues, and accept that Hobbes, Spinoza, and the atheistic tradition lie at the heart of much of Hume’s thought on this subject.

****

It is the aim of this collection to provide the reader with a survey and critical assessment of Hume’s central arguments and core concerns in the Dialogues, accompanied by discussion of some important contributions by Hume that directly relate to this work. Related to this, the collection also aims to keep the reader informed about the most recent and significant developments and debates arising out of the study of Hume’s Dialogues, as presented by some of the leading scholars in the field.

The contributions that follow do not require any summary account. The authors and titles speak well for themselves. A brief overview of these studies may, however, be of some help for the reader. This collection is divided into two parts. Part I is focused on the Dialogues and, consistent with the text, pays particular attention to the design argument. The contributions by Dan O’Brien (Chapter 1), Graham Oppy (Chapter 2), and Thomas Holden (Chapter 3) address various aspects of Hume’s critique of the design argument. The two essays that follow both consider Hume’s arguments in the Dialogues in relation to two other thinkers of historical significance. Kelly Clark (Chapter 4) considers Hume’s philosophy of religion in relation to Thomas Reid (one of Hume’s most eminent critics among his own contemporaries and a significant philosopher in his own right), while John Beatty (Chapter 5) considers in what way Charles Darwin was influenced by his reading of Hume’s Dialogues. The next contribution, by Angela Coventry (Chapter 6), takes up Hume’s critique of the cosmological argument in D, 9. Following it, Robin Le Poidevin (Chapter 7) offers an analysis of Hume’s discussion of the problem of evil as found in D, 10 and 11. The last three essays in Part I are all concerned, in different ways, with a range of issues, rather than any of the specific arguments that we have described. Kevin Meeker (Chapter 8) examines the relationship between sceptical attitudes and religious belief in the Dialogues. After that, Andre Willis (Chapter 9) offers an interpretation of Hume’s Dialogues as viewed via the lens of literary theory. In the last contribution of Part I, Paul Russell (Chapter 10) considers the question of ‘atheism’ as it arises in Hume’s Dialogues.

Part II of this collection is composed of four additional essays that delve into Hume’s other writings on religion. The works primarily concerned here are the first Enquiry (1748), the Natural History of Religion (Reference Hurd1757); and Hume’s two ‘suppressed’ essays on suicide and the immortality of the soul. Jennifer Marušić (Chapter 11) examines Hume’s discussion in EU, 11 which, she argues, is an attempt to sketch a method for natural theology and show the limits of what natural theology can establish. Following this, Peter Millican’s essay (Chapter 12) assesses the cogency of Hume’s famous argument against testimony for miracles (EU, 10). In his contribution, Amyas Merivale (Chapter 13) considers Hume’s views in his Natural History of Religion and, in the final essay, Willem Lemmens (Chapter 14) reconstructs the argument of Hume’s two suppressed essays, on suicide and the immortality of the soul.