HUME AND HERMENEUTICS

It is not an extravagant judgement to say that most philosophers today regard Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion to be the most devastating critique of religion in the history of philosophy. Philosophers sympathetic to religion have called it ‘the greatest work on philosophy of religion in the English language’. Why should this be so? The answer lies in the fact that it has shaped, if not determined, the terms of reference within which most philosophy of religion is carried on. In any discussion of religion and modernity, there is no way of avoiding Hume.

How is Hume's work related to the hermeneutics of recollection, the hermeneutics of suspicion, and the hermeneutics of contemplation? The fundamental claim of the Dialogues is that it is impossible to infer anything substantive about God from the world about us. That being so, it would seem that Hume makes little contribution to the hermeneutics of recollection. But this is not so. Many philosophers of religion sympathetic to religion attempt to answer Hume on his own terms. The work of Richard Swinburne can be seen in this light. He has been described as a twentieth-century Cleanthes.

It is easy to see how Hume's work contributes to the hermeneutics of suspicion, although how it does so is a matter of dispute. According to some, Hume concludes that religion is the product of illusion. Others argue that although Hume merely says that we must suspend judgement where religious belief is concerned, since this situation cannot conceivably change, it demonstrates the irrelevance of religion for human life.