Summary

Scottish philosopher David Hume explores various approaches to theism via dialogue, featuring three central figures:

Demea Demea represents pre-Enlightenment theism, which emphasized the difference between man and God. The godhead is unintelligible and must be approached by faith alone. We must make our way through this veil of tears, holding on to the belief that everything will be put to rights in the next world. Cleanthes Cleanthes is a post-Enlightenment scientific Christian who highlights the similarities between the mind of God and human reason. To Cleanthes, man can access God, though imperfectly, through reason. When he looks at the universe, he sees a marvelous machine designed by a benevolent creator. It is the delight of man to learn more about their creator by discovering the mechanisms by which the universe operates. Philo Philo is a theistic skeptic, whose role in the dialogue is to tease out the problems in his friends’ positions. His view is closer to that of Demea but differs in conclusion, believing that it is incredibly unlikely that any human will land on a cosmology that is anywhere near the truth. Therefore, the wisest tactic would be to approach the topic with caution.

Thoughts

This was a very disorienting book for me; I ended up having to go through it twice. I think the reason for the confusion was that almost everyone I know holds views similar to both Demea and Cleanthes simultaneously. That is, if you ask a typical theist “why” questions, they tend to be perfectly able to produce answers, but at some point, there always comes a point when the answer is something along the lines of “God’s ways are not our ways, we must trust the Divine will.” For example, one of the earliest questions of this type that helped to spawn Manicheanism was asked by Epicurus:

“Would God, if willing to prevent evil but unable, be omnipotent? Would he be capable but unwilling? Then he is malevolent. Would he be both capable and willing? Then why is there evil?”

Hume, by creating two consistent characters, allows us to contrast these two approaches to understanding God. Thus, Demea will quickly point to the mystery of God, while Cleanthes will struggle to come up with a reasonable answer, which in the end is usually equally mysterious or fantastic. This doesn’t let Demea off the hook either, because for him, the idea of dogma and revelation, and basic epistemology becomes suspect. If God is beyond the reach of the human intellect, trying to pin down the true nature and motivations of the deity becomes an exercise in futility, mere guesswork. Leaning on revelation in sacred texts does not alleviate this difficulty but merely kicks the can down the road. Any system of belief built upon text quickly extends past the claims of the text itself and finds itself reliant on the reason of man, which is supposedly nothing like the mind of God.

This is the essential claim of Philo that both approaches to God, in the end, leave one unsatisfied. Meditating on the limitations and contradictions of human reason should help foster intellectual humility. This is the first step away from inquisition and towards the kind of tolerance that has become so linked with the very nature of classical liberalism. That is, there are things we are certain about, and perhaps we are certainly wrong.

#book

People/David Hume