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ОглавлениеIf my philosophy, therefore, makes no addition to the arguments for religion, I have at least the satisfaction to think it takes nothing from them, but that everything remains precisely as before.
—T, 1.4.5.35
Hume framed his arguments about God within a climate of philosophical discourse on religion that generally reinforced the theism of popular Christianity. His philosophical mission was, in part, to expose the God of popular religion to be an unstable concept masquerading as religious truth. To Hume, the vulgar theism of this brand of false religion was both impractical and dangerous; it relied on a method of reasoning that betrayed the principles of understanding and distorted the natural powers of the mind. On his account the idea of a morally worthy deity was misleading, belief in worship-worthy divinity created factionalism, and the concept of a God with moral attributes was unintelligible. Hume’s devastating critique of popular theism relied on a moral stance (that God was not the source of our moral judgment), a political commitment to stability of the social order, historical awareness (from which he deduced that religion was most often destabilizing), and his approach to understanding the limits of the human mind. The latter interests frame the argument of this chapter.
An important focal point of Hume’s philosophical writings was his description of the process by which we come to hold beliefs and ideas. These foundations were important for his later “religious” writings. In the Natural History of Religion (NHR) what Hume called “vulgar theism” (as in common, general, or customary theistic beliefs) was a distortion that arose from the natural tendency of our imagination to form the idea that “the order of the universe proves an omnipotent mind” (T, app., 18n). In his first philosophical work he explained that the creative powers of the imagination—guided by associative principles—fashioned ideas of necessary connection, causal power, and regularity that were indispensable for experience. Some of these ideas struck the mind with vivacity, found support in conventions of social life (i.e., popular religion), and became beliefs. Hume’s argument, like any observational science, presupposed order and regularity (though he was critical of causal regularity). In fact, modern science—understood as knowledge of prediction—can proceed only if events and objects exist and produce specific effects according to their nature. Perhaps a Humean perspective would add a further stipulation: for science to be possible our minds must function in a way that makes it seem that events and objects exist and produce specific effects according to their very own mysterious natures.
Approaching Hume’s work through the lens of our speculative Humean true religion provides warrant for us to consider the presuppositions of Hume’s philosophy, at least provisionally, as a kind of “basic theism.” Reflecting on his work from this angle allows insight into his underdeveloped notion ‘genuine theism’ and provides grounds to determine if it might be justifiably positioned within religion’s proper office.
The Author of Nature
The order of the universe proves an omnipotent mind; that is, a mind whose will is constantly attended with the obedience of every creature and being.
—T., app., 18n
Basic Theism: The Source of Vulgar Theism and Genuine Theism
Hume’s philosophy, like any science, rested on the general assumption of a rudimentary form of causal regularity. It affirmed both our belief in hidden powers in nature (a source for what we take to be the principles of human nature) and our instinctive perception that the universe is ordered and regular. I name this “basic theism” because, on Hume’s argument, to assume a constantly dynamic order is to invite the mind to the idea of an Orderer. Another way to say this—and this is accepted in Hume scholarship—is that the presupposition of order and regularity irresistibly orients the mind to the idea of an Author of Nature. For Hume, the source of this basic belief was neither a causal regress nor the ascription of intention in the universe based on observable effects; it was—more simply—common life’s suggestion and a propensity of the imagination to regard the universe as purposive.1 Unlike the later Kantian approach, the Humean style was not preoccupied with establishing conditions for the possibility of its own observational science. For Hume, true philosophy unself-consciously accepted premises that could not be proven. The Humean approach was invested more in questions that spoke to everyday curiosities instead of philosophical quandaries. Thus, what we can say about this assumption—a dispositive propensity—is that it was sustained by habits of the mind and reflective customs of common life. While the disposition to order and regularity made the belief in “invisible, intelligent power” irresistible, this basic theism presupposed by Hume’s philosophy had little to do with conventional religion. Hume was adamant that belief in an all-knowing, omnipotent deity with a moral plan for the universe was unintelligible, historically divisive, and morally contentious. My reading basic theism in Hume’s philosophy calls the reader’s attention to what is presupposed by Hume’s philosophy—more than the sum of what was given in experience—and thereby set up his notion of genuine theism for our speculative Humean true religion.
I am mindful that it may be confusing to name a presupposition of Hume’s philosophy, even provisionally, a basic theism and that some may disagree with this choice, though I have exercised caution by defining it as a disposition rooted in the simple assumptions of order and regularity. It is of use-value in this study because Hume used the terms “vulgar theism” and “genuine theism” as opposites. He explicitly and repeatedly remarked that the vulgar theism of popular religion was a distortion of mind. We can fairly presume that the genuine theism of true religion was an enlargement of mind. It follows that for each case we ask, what is being distorted or enlarged? I submit that it is the natural disposition to belief in an Author of Nature. This temperament, the willingness to tacitly cosign belief in an Author of Nature, is what I conditionally call “basic theism.” On Hume’s science of human nature, it is grounded in the assumption of a natural order, essential for any observational science and fundamental for the form of scientific rationality that undergirds Enlightenment thought. Does Hume’s philosophical project presuppose this basic theism or does the argument of the Treatise foreclose the intelligibility of basic theism? How can basic theism fund the genuine theism of our Humean true religion? I shall begin to pursue these questions through a brief assessment of Hume’s iconoclastic intervention in philosophy. After setting aside the deep skeptical reading of Hume by arguing that—on Donald Livingston’s phenomenology of common life—Hume was a mitigated skeptic who left room for true philosophy and true religion (with its genuine theism), I posit some sources for belief in basic theism in his philosophy. A Deleuzian reading of Hume’s theory of mind and an interpretation of his thoughts on natural belief as understood by Norman Kemp Smith furnish two methods of understanding how basic theism might be understood as both a presupposition for and a consequence of Hume’s philosophy of the imagination and common life.
Though my moderate claim for the irresistibility of the belief in an Author of Nature is largely uncontroversial, some might challenge my assertion that theism exists in the Treatise on grounds that the work took little or no interest in religion.2 My approach, however, acknowledges the significant religious interest underneath Hume’s intense philosophical focus. Hume’s philosophy was concerned with how we come to hold beliefs, particularly belief in deity; thus it was crucial for theism. In the well-cited section of the Treatise, “Of the Immateriality of the Soul,” Hume took a direct stand against both Spinozist and Cartesian positions on theism by claiming “anything may be the cause or the effect of anything” (1.4.5.32). Further, he stated—concerning the existence of God—that “existence of any object is no addition to the simple conception of it” (1.3.7, 2) and that our “idea of deity,” if it were to be intelligible on the standards of abstruse reason, should rely on an impression like our other ideas (1.3.14.10). These few examples (there are others) stand against the prevailing view that Hume’s religious writings are the only ones to be consulted for his views on deity. Paul Russell’s important work on Hume’s irreligion, whose conclusion—that Hume was against popular religion—I support, stands against the conventional reading. Russell argues that “the debate concerning our idea of God is implicated and involved in almost every aspect of Hume’s project throughout the Treatise,” and it is “a mistake to assume that Hume’s various discussions in the Treatise . . . are irrelevant to the question concerning our idea of God.” Russell concedes “the fact that Hume rarely mentions the term ‘God,’ and says little directly about the nature and origin of this idea.” He stresses that this “should not obscure the importance of all that he has to say as it relates to the divine attributes.” In short, Hume did not successfully “castrate” all the religious or “nobler” parts of his Treatise. His early philosophical work offered useful insights for and criticisms of theism and discourse on religion.3
It is not surprising that the Treatise took up the topic of religion to expose the fragile sources of traditional arguments for God.4 Hume repeatedly stated that the vulgar theism of false religion was dangerous in part because it stood on unstable foundations. At the same time, he adamantly denied the charges of atheism and rejected the label of “deist.” Hume’s letters (especially the Letter to Mure, 1743), the first Enquiry (1748), Natural History of Religion (1757), and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) demonstrated the obvious: that Hume seriously and strategically considered both more and less useful forms of theism. Given his abiding interest in religion and the textual evidence for it, it is fair to presume that he began thinking about theism very early in his literary career. That Hume seriously considered theism does not mean he believed religion to be an automatic remedy for social ills (he did not) or that popular versions of theism were intelligible on his theory of mind (they were not). It is merely a Humean acknowledgment that what he called the “whimsical condition of mankind” (E, 12.2.7) was a state in which the mind seemed to naturally go beyond experience to “the assent of the understanding to the proposition that God exists” (LET, 1.50.21). This basic theism in Hume’s philosophy highlighted the mind’s assumption of a (hidden) source for what was given to us in experience, our natural presupposition of a (unseen) cause of perceptions, our sense that the principles of human nature had an (invisible) author, the feeling that there was an ultimate cause behind the (secret) powers of nature, and a disposition to teleology (the feeling that an unknowable purpose probably lightly guided nature).
An interesting debate exists in the secondary scholarship as to whether Hume’s discussion of necessary connection and causation resulted in him holding the position that causal power was real.5 This debate bears heavily on discussions of theism in Hume. I try to circumvent its worries and take advantage of its insights by separating ontological concerns from epistemological ones. I restrict my interest in basic theism and my speculation that the proper office of religion might include a genuine theism to the realm of our thoughts and beliefs. I accept Hume’s fundamental caveat that “as long as we confine our speculations to the appearances of objects to our senses, without entering into disquisitions concerning their real nature and operations, we are safe from all difficulties” (T, app., 35). I do not take this to mean that Hume sought to limit reality simply to our ideas. His nondogmatic skepticism left him open to the possibility of mind-independent reality. Still, I have no pretensions to chime in on this debate; I simply take the path of least resistance in describing basic, vulgar, and genuine theism by situating them entirely within the parameters of the mind and the bounds of the imagination. My interest is in the mind’s supposition of order and causal power and how it invites a mental disposition toward basic theism. This predilection of mind, that “a purpose, an intention, a design, is evident in everything” (NHR, 15.1), can inspire either a vulgar theism—the miracle performing, anthropomorphic God of popular Christianity—or genuine theism, the moderate belief in an unobtrusive Author of Nature. I shall return to the debate surrounding Hume’s causal realism. What is important here is that Hume’s philosophy is built around the idea that the mind assumes regularity and accepts that “the future resembles the past” (T, 1.3.12.9). This assumption makes the idea of the Author of Nature irresistible to the mind (this is why I call it “basic theism”). Whether causal power is real or the Author of Nature actually exists is a different matter indeed.
Of course, Hume challenged the very notion that we could have a “feeling” without an impression, and he thought any causal chain that linked the future to the past was unintelligible on the existing standards of reason. This suggests that naming Hume’s sense of order as a “basic theism” does not quite comport with his scathing denunciations of popular forms of Christianity, his exasperation with both false religion and traditional metaphysics, or his approach to philosophical truth. But Hume’s personal animus for traditional theism and his critical disposition toward vulgar religion do not automatically preclude a basic theism either. In fact, one can reconcile the theistic openness of his work with the elements that seem to oppose it: for example, his self-styled skepticism, his moral critique of popular Christianity, and his idea that to “conceive of something adds nothing to our idea of it” remain viable, crucial features of his thought even as we consider the modest sense of theism at its foundations. What I identify as Hume’s basic theism leaves room for expressions of doubt, invites moral criticism of anthropomorphic conceptions of God, and is consistent with the idea that the existence of something adds very little to our idea of it. It also supports his unique form of skepticism, an obstacle to which we will later attend. Whether I am pushing him further than he wanted to go remains an interesting question.
HUME’S EARLY SCIENCE OF SELF-UNDERSTANDING
Hume, raised Presbyterian by a single mother, claimed to have “never had entertained any belief in religion since he had begun to read Locke and Clarke” (around his twentieth birthday).6 These thinkers were seminal for his first philosophical work, now canonical, which was published when he was twenty-eight years old. John Rawls, in his Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, reminds us that its general content was “projected” when the author was fourteen, “planned” before he turned twenty-one, and largely “composed” before he was twenty-five. Thus it is safe, albeit somewhat cheeky, to note that this text, described as the greatest work of philosophy written in the English language, was conceived by a Scottish “tween” and written on his first major trip beyond his homeland. It is likely, given both the deep religious sentiments of his day and his break from the religious tradition of his family, that the young man’s first major effort would attend—even if only in an iconoclastic fashion—to issues pertinent for religion, especially belief in God. Perhaps the “new scene of thought” he referenced in his famous “Letter to a Physician” (LET, 1.17.3) would even recast religion and reconceive theism in ways that Locke and Clarke would appreciate.
As he matured, Hume distanced himself from the 1739 Treatise. In an autobiographical essay written just months before his death, he claimed, “Never a literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise. . . . It fell deadborn from the press” (L, 4). The description of the Treatise as “deadborn” was, in part, literary performance; by then he had breathed life back into it, corrected its errors, and rendered many of its most important arguments clearer in an Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748).7 Revisions notwithstanding, Hume did not distance himself from philosophical discourse on religion. The first Enquiry, in fact, consisted of twelve sections, two of which were explicitly and harshly critical of popular religion: “Of Miracles” and “Of Providence and Any Future State.” These sections, “castrated” from the early Treatise, challenged important beliefs of Christian believers. Their analysis rested, however, on the foundations of the critique of religion contained in the first philosophical work.
Despite Hume’s expressed disavowal of the Treatise and his rebranding of its most important interventions under a new banner, it still holds a unique place in Western thought and is usually given priority when it comes to the study of his philosophy. It is also elemental for his philosophy of religion. What is it about Hume’s philosophical first let serve that has allowed it to survive as the cornerstone of his thought in spite of his repudiations of it? What did the young Hume, suffering through his own “disease of the mind” during the planning and composing of the text, articulate here that survived redaction, landed in the first Enquiry, and served as foundational for his body of thought? What has brought my interest in basic theism to the doorstep of his inchoate philosophical classic?
The answers to these questions have to do with subtle historical and interpretive factors surrounding Hume’s early work.8 On the larger questions of the survival and canonization of the Treatise, perhaps this is a matter of the temperament behind the argument. The text is, in many ways, a radical statement written by a man-child in the Enlightenment Promised Land, convinced that philosophy was in need of an intervention. To him, the grand philosophical systems of the seventeenth century (e.g., Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza) were abstruse and built on “weak foundations” (T, introd., 1). They employed self-certifying principles to establish timeless and transcendent truths about the nature of the universe and the essence of matter that led to vulgar theism and popular religion. Against these weak foundations the iconoclastic young man searched for firmer and more powerful ones to illuminate the moment of arising and evolution of our ideas, beliefs, and customs. Hume observed that nature, customary associations of the mind, tacit knowledge inherent in the customs of common life, and the passions served to ground our ideas, actions, and beliefs. The Treatise was both an original work of philosophy and an analysis of the state of philosophical discourse. It deftly raised questions about the overall aims of philosophical reflection—what made its claims intelligible, what its foundational criteria were, and how it might do something more than the trivial and the disputational. In this regard, the bold, unsullied, youthfulness of the Treatise made it stand out. Rejecting the standard positions and well-worn arguments regarding metaphysical reason, moral motivation, and the sources of religious belief, Hume’s challenge to philosophical authority seemed, paradoxically, both to undermine and celebrate belief in things that we could neither see nor touch.
To some of his contemporaries, the Treatise contained flashes of brilliance. To most it exposed him to be something of a philosophical acolyte trying to address the quandaries that dogged philosophical discourse and preoccupied religious thinkers from the position of an outsider. Acute in his recognition that the “love of wisdom” was stuck in a bind, he poignantly expressed a profound disillusionment early in the text: “We have, therefore, no choice left but betwixt a false reason and none at all. For my part, I know not what ought to be done in the present case” (T, 1.4.7.7). The dilemma, as Hume saw it, was either to work within the confines of a philosophical method that strove for rational verification in the mode of Descartes or to abandon this sort of philosophical enterprise and discover a more adequate source for understanding our actions that would render our ideas intelligible. Hume thought the way to enhance our self-understanding and make our ideas clearer was to interrogate their sources. To serve this aim, he inaugurated a self-styled natural “science” in which he was, technically, both participant and observer. As the sole recorder and reporter of his own “scientific” data, he situated himself as an unchallengeable authority on experience. The mostly probable and provisional descriptions that he offered were marked by his unique reflective powers, which crucially relied on and critically undermined the very terms and categories that he interrogated (including the ideas of a self, Designer, and external objects). The flexible ideas ‘nature’ and ‘common life’ were the unique cornerstones of his extension of Baconian method.
In effect, the Treatise turned out to be something like a hand grenade thrown into the bunker of Enlightenment rationalism. The first Enquiry has, in some ways, remained its gentler companion text. The explosive critical elements of the Treatise guaranteed, paradoxically, that Hume would never receive a job in the academy and that he would be immortalized by it. Its skeptical aspects offended many, but even its moderate constructive elements, particularly the appeal to nature and affirmation of common life—crucial for the basic theism I am discussing—violently shook the tree of philosophical convention. To readers of his day, Hume did not offer an appropriate way out of the philosophical predicament he exposed; he merely illuminated the bear trap in which philosophy was caught. The young thinker unmasked the emptiness of abstruse reason: it could not live up to its claims for rational certainty or moral truth. Philosophers and nonphilosophers alike, “who must act and reason and believe,” would remain unable, to Hume, “by their most diligent enquiry, to satisfy themselves concerning the foundation of these operations, or to remove the objections, which may be raised against them” (E, 12.2.7).
Some of the seeming gaps in the Treatise are filled by pointing out the basic theism that was fundamental to its logic. The Treatise reasoned that the functions of the mind were based on passions and that its ideas depended on associations. Both passions and associations were unstable categories to the rationalists. On the Humean standard, however, passions and associations were stabilized by the assumption of hidden causes, also known as “original qualities of human nature” (T, introd., 8) and “powers of nature” (1.4.4.5). The “ultimate principles” and “general rules” of human nature consistently guided the mind to form and associate ideas. Idea formation requires the mind to relate a collection of distinct perceptions, that is, to do something that goes well beyond the scope of immediate experience. Given this, we might say that the formation of ideas and their subsequent association was partially an act of transcending what was given in experience. Another way to state this is to say that ideas were formed by the mind’s immediate collation of what experience provided. For the Humean, this act of collating perceptions depended on principles of collation itself that were mysteriously given by hidden powers of nature. This means that the principles of human nature that guided the mind transcended the mind (and possibly nature). Gilles Deleuze, in his fascinating study of Hume, Empiricism and Subjectivity, remarked that Hume’s empiricism was defined by just this kind of dualism. He contended that in the Treatise “an empirical dualism exists between terms and relations, or more exactly between the causes of perceptions and the causes of relations, between the hidden powers of nature and the principles of human nature.” Deleuze’s idea of a “transcendental empiricism” expands our ability to keep track of the basic theism at the core of Hume’s philosophy. He reminds us that our subjectivity, for example, is constituted by, but not reducible to, what is given to us in experience. This means that there is something beyond experience, that Hume is not a strict empiricist, and that—for Deleuze—Hume embraces a form of transcendence. I label the disposition for this sort of transcendence “basic theism.” Deleuze explains it as follows: “We cannot make use of the principles of association in order to know the world as an effect of divine activity, and even less to know God as the cause of the world; but we can always think of God negatively as the cause of the principles [of human nature]. It is in this sense that theism is valid.”9
My claim that Hume’s early philosophy has a basic theism—a sense of order and regularity—can be articulated in both strong and weak forms. The stronger statement is that basic theism is a presupposition of Hume’s philosophy; the weaker one is that Hume’s early philosophy does not foreclose the possibility of basic theism. Neither position demands religious expression nor requires Christian deity. Both rely very minimally if at all on traditional metaphysical arguments for theism, or make any claims about the nature of this “Author.” The disposition I want to direct our attention to is a simple and basic belief, a foundational assumption from which Hume launched into his philosophical work. This belief in basic theism makes experience comprehensible due to the fact that it gives the mind mysterious principles to form an identity by associating ideas of the imagination. If the mind is, as Deleuze argues it is for Hume, a mere “assemblage” of “things as they appear,” then there must be something beyond it, something that is not given in this assemblage but required by it.10 Basic theism is the acceptance of this background for the mind: it meets the Humean standard of reasonability and allows the mind to hold fictions of identity, constancy, and uniformity as it composes ideas. This basic belief and the fictions it both relies on and produces have merit for true and false forms of religion. From the perspective of my speculative project for true religion, the value of documenting this assumption in Hume’s early philosophy is that it allows us to discuss how basic theism might morph into more of a genuine theism.
The evolution of basic theism to genuine theism mirrors the logic of the evolution of basic theism to vulgar theism. NHR explains the latter: the direct passions, fear and hope, modify the disposition basic theism into the vulgar theism of false religion. Thus, it follows that calm passions can modify belief in basic theism into the genuine theism of true religion. Following the path of basic theism to false religion exposes “sick men’s dreams” (15.6), yet conjecturing on how basic theism might lead to true religion makes Hume’s ideal for religion less opaque. The rare, true religion could, under very exceptional conditions, help to “reform Men’s Lives, to purify their Hearts, to inforce all moral Duties, & to secure Obedience to the Laws & civil Magistrate.”11 Note Hume’s use of the infinitive form of verbs: “to reform,” “to purify,” “to inforce,” and “to secure.” Cumulatively and in significant part, we might say that these are the functions of a Humean true religion.
It is important not to overstep: the fact that Hume “warmly endorses what he calls ‘true religion’” and “sometimes speaks approvingly of ‘true religion’” does not dismantle his powerful conviction that most of the time our unmediated fears and hopes shape the natural propensity for basic theism into belief in a particular providence or a personal god, the vulgar theistic attitude of false religion.12 He writes, “Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded that they are other than sick men’s dreams: or perhaps will regard them more as the playsome whimsies of monkeys in human shape” (NHR, 15.6). He seems to at least allow, however, for a less vulgar alternative, a basic or general “universal propensity to believe in invisible, intelligent power, if not an original instinct, being at least a general attendant of human nature” (15.5).
POTENTIAL RESPONSES TO MY ARGUMENT FOR BASIC THEISM
My emphasis on basic theism in Hume’s early philosophy is likely to generate four responses. I name them the standard, fideist, moderate, and skeptical readings. The standard interpretation vehemently rejects the designation ‘theism’ when it is applied to Hume’s work. This position begins by reducing the idea of religion to a system of beliefs about God, an error generally made by those who hold conventional conceptions of both theism and religion. Theism, on this view, is conceived as veneration of a worship-worthy, omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent deity and taken as the substance of religion. From this perspective Hume is considered irreligious due to his frontal assault on popular religion and his trenchant criticisms of traditional metaphysics.13 It follows that if religion is purely reducible to theism, then Hume’s irreligion must be the equivalent of antitheism. This way of reading Hume completely ignores the basic theism in his philosophy and leaves us with a nontheistic and irreligious David Hume.14
The standard interpretation is useful: it reaffirms Hume’s seminal criticisms of religion and reminds us of the close connections between religion and theism. To completely reduce religion to theism, however, delimits our capacity to consider nontheistic traditions as religious and restricts the possibility that our beliefs in “universal principles” (T, 1.1.4.1), “elements and powers of nature” (T, 1.4.4.5), and order in the universe (e.g., T, app., 18n) might mark a nonconventional, basic theism. Additionally, from this view Hume’s claim that the “whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author” (NHR, 1.1) is comprehensible only as ironic, deceitful, or cunning. Finally, the standard interpretation diminishes our ability to think creatively about the proper office for religion and truncates the conversation about the role nontraditional theism might play in a speculative, Humean-inspired true religion. In short, the standard position gives us no traction in our quest to use Hume as a generative resource in religious studies.
A second response to the idea that Hume’s work contains a basic theism is the fideist view. This position claims that Hume’s skepticism concerning reason along with his refusal to explicitly discard theism make his work compatible with those who hold the idea that reason is not warranted to justify religious belief.15 Fideists ground this contention on the belief that Hume’s statement, “our most holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason” (E, 10.2.27), was a critique of rationalist theology and an endorsement of an authentic Christian faith. They allow that for Hume, God is unknowable through reason and the universe is ultimately mysterious. On this view, Hume accepts God and God’s ineffability on faith.
The fideist interpretation is important: it reminds us not to lose sight of the fluidity between skepticism and faith, a binary that is hierarchical, invertible, and codependent (as Derrida taught). The fideist reading also refuses to toss aside Hume’s noncritical claims about theism and religion as simply ironic. Hume was neither invested in a Kierkegaardian leap of faith to Christian belief nor willing to cosign any extant religious doctrine such that he would recommend dogmatic commitment to it. He argued that direct-passion hopes and fears—always on a continuum—were the sources of our popular religious beliefs, and he mounted a scathing moral challenge against these false beliefs. His intentions were more humble than the fideists allowed: to observe the machinery of the mind in common life, understand its principles of association of ideas, and illuminate sources of our beliefs and actions. Hume accepted that our natural sense of universal order and regularity was not warranted by either abstruse reason or faith. It is safe to say that he recognized, as Deleuze wrote, that “the subject goes beyond what the mind gives it.”16 Still, Hume did not endorse faith as a means to the truth as fideism generally holds; rather, he observed religious practice in common life and described it as grounded in a set of imaginative beliefs. Further, he suggested that Christianity took root because of the psychic relief it provided for human fears and hopes, not because of the faith it inspired.
A more moderate view constitutes the third response to the contention that Hume’s work confirms the idea of basic theism. This position holds that Hume’s philosophy admits our belief in a genuine sense of order and regularity in the universe due to the mind’s functioning as a cause-seeking tool. Best represented in the work of J. C. A. Gaskin and Keith Yandell, it rests on statements such as “our idea, therefore, of necessity and causation arises entirely from the uniformity observable in the operations of nature, where similar objects are constantly conjoined together, and the mind is determined by custom to infer the one from the appearance of the other” (E, 8.5). Gaskin locates what he calls an “attenuated deism” in Hume’s work. This form of deism is the belief that God is a remote, unknowable Orderer of the universe, unconcerned with human existence. It does not, on Gaskin’s argument, recommend itself to any religious vision nor does it inspire morality. It is meaningless for religion. Similarly, Yandell calls Hume’s position a “diaphanous theism”—a theistic worldview that is too thin to merit anything positive for religion.17
The moderate position as taken up by Gaskin and Yandell is important. It thoughtfully attempts to sort out the theistic dimensions of Hume’s claim that our minds are hardwired to think causally. The verdict that Hume’s theism (or deism, for Gaskin) is completely irrelevant for human life is, however, overstated. What is curious about this position is its uncritical reliance on conventional approaches to both theism and religion. Gaskin and Yandell rightfully point out that our belief in order and regularity has little relevance for popular religion. They miss the crucial role, however, that this belief might play for true religion and true philosophy. Their insight, that Hume’s idea of false religion supplied a vulgar theism and led to factionalism, is attenuated by their oversight regarding Hume’s basic theism. The very existence of the category ‘true religion’ in Hume’s thought grants some possible religious meaning to his basic theism, which is clearly useful for his philosophy. Unfortunately, Gaskin and Yandell leave these options unconsidered; thus, their slightly modified version of standard theism gives us no greater purchase on Hume’s true religion.
True religion and vulgar religion are similarly formed. Hume tells us that vulgar religion is grounded on vulgar theism; it follows that true religion is based on genuine (or true) theism. Vulgar theism is formed by our direct-passion fears and hopes of unknown causes (NHR, secs. 1–5). We can presume then that genuine theism is formed by the moderation of our fears and hopes of unknown causes. To put it in a way that privileges a more conventional religious perspective: patient acceptance of the order and regularity of experience—particularly when experience does not seem ordered and regular—is a kind of peacefulness. We can understand this sort of equanimity, a trait normally associated with religious faith, as an effect of true religion. Thus construed, the genuine theism of true religion—the source of which is the basic theism of Hume’s philosophy—has religious significance: it points us toward another dimension of the universe, sustains our overall sense of order and relationality, bears on our sense of who we are and what we can do, and opens us to possibilities beyond those that we can conceive. Perhaps Hume would have taken something like this genuine theism as implicit for his true religion. This fundamental belief in general providence, unlike its counterpart in false religion (belief in particular providence), could lead to a sense of equipoise, stability, and humility. These are the practical life outcomes and amenable results of religion when it remained in its proper office.
Cartesian Rationalism and Pyrrhonian Skepticism
To establish either or both weak and strong forms of my premise—that the Treatise does not foreclose a sense of basic theism—we must rescue the text from its skeptical interpreters. The conventional skeptical reading forecloses the possibility of our justifiably holding belief in basic theism. It also nullifies the constructive potential of Hume’s descriptive project and denies the tacit knowledge inherent in custom. Further, a thoroughly skeptical reading of the Treatise prohibits us from intelligibly attaching meaning to many of our most useful ideas and beliefs. Thus, to read the text simply as a skeptic is automatically to eliminate the possibility that a basic theism might be presupposed by its argument. Against traditional skeptical interpretations, I argue that Hume’s philosophy successfully navigated between a critique of Cartesian rationalism and the embrace of Pyrrhonian skepticism. Charting a way between Pyrrhonism and Cartesianism, the Treatise shows dexterity and some ambiguity in its approach to skepticism. These nuances are often lost by that slice of interpreters who quickly reduce Hume to a skeptic, and they are overlooked by those who reject his basic theism out of hand.
The Treatise acknowledges both Cartesianism and Pyrrhonism as coherent systems of thought and compelling philosophical approaches.18 Skeptical interpretations situate the text either as full-blown in the Pyrrhonian spirit or as a critical annihilation of the Cartesian approach. There is partial truth to each of these claims. The Treatise, however, neither thoroughly embraces nor fully rejects either method; it merely repositions them in relation to experience and belief. For example, against Pyrrhonism, the Treatise affirms the inescapability of certain ideas and beliefs; against Cartesianism, it confirms that we have warrant to hold certain ideas and beliefs as projections of our imagination or habits of the mind. For Hume, philosophy that begins with universal doubt (Cartesianism) and philosophy that refuses to assert conclusions (Pyrrhonism) are species of dogmatism. The Cartesians reason demonstratively to timeless conclusions of false philosophy and vulgar religion; they dogmatically resist the power of experience. Pyrrhonism, a brand of excessive skepticism, employs skeptical arguments that ultimately lead to nowhere; they dogmatically resist the power of belief. Hume writes, “the skeptical and dogmatical reasons are of the same kind, tho’ contrary in their operation and tendency” (T, 1.4.1.12).
CARTESIANISM
The introduction to the Treatise implies that it was partially catalyzed by Cartesianism: “Principles taken upon trust, consequences lamely deduced from them, want of coherence in the parts and of evidence of the whole, these are everywhere to be met with in the systems of the most eminent philosophers, and seem to have drawn disgrace upon philosophy itself” (T, introd., 1). This disgrace is multiplied, Hume claims, because the philosophical method of “the most eminent philosophers” (e.g., Descartes) supports the beliefs of popular religion. This is disturbing to Hume, for “the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous” (1.4.7.13).
Hume’s dissatisfaction with false metaphysical speculation and the conclusions it inspired for popular religion, namely the innate idea of a supernatural deity and immortal, immaterial souls, led him to work from the “analogy of nature” (T, 1.4.6.35) and the observation of experience. This approach challenged seminal aspects of the Cartesian method as it built on Newton’s quest (best represented in his 1687 Principia mathematica) to find evidence through observation of the physical world to ground scientific and theological principles. Descartes commenced his project with universal doubt from the consciousness of an individual human subject and employed a priori concepts in service of timeless, transcendent ideas. To a large extent, the experimental method of Newton sidestepped this deep doubt. It allowed that nonmaterial forces caused physical effects (Newton held no notion of uniformity or necessary connection) and denied both Cartesian dualism and the immortality of the soul. Still, like Descartes, Newton embraced a conception of God as infinite and eternal. Roughly speaking, Hume cosigned Newton’s “experimental method of reasoning.” He worked from experience, or the “bottom up,” in response to Descartes’s “top-down” approach to philosophical “truths.” Against Cartesianism he wrote, “If we reason a priori, anything may appear able to produce anything” (E, 12.3.6) and “Cartesian doubt, therefore, were it ever possible to be attained by any human creature (as it plainly is not) would be entirely incurable” (12.1.3). Hume wanted to subdue the passions for a priori method with his a posteriori technique. Further, he affirmed nature, habits of mind, and the power of common life against metaphysical reasoning. His work privileged experience and belief over abstruse reason and skepticism: he aimed “only to represent the common sense of mankind in more beautiful and more engaging colours” (1.4).
Hume relied on Descartes’s privileging of the mind and individual subjectivity, but he directly challenged two prominent conclusions derived from the a priori method that were important for religion: the innate idea of an infinite, omnipotent God and the notion that the soul was immaterial and immortal. Descartes’s statement, “true ideas, which are innate in me, of which the first and most important is the idea of God” was contested by Hume: “The Cartesians, proceeding upon their principle of innate ideas, have had recourse to a supreme spirit or deity. . . . But the principle of innate ideas being allow’d to be false, it follows that the supposition of a deity can serve us in no stead” (T, 1.3.14.10).19 Note his dissatisfaction is with the idea of God as innate, not the belief in order and an Orderer (basic theism). The Treatise argues that we gain little usable knowledge when we merely assume the existence of deity at the beginning of our philosophical quest. We learn most about the operations of our mind and discover a more usable conception of deity as we observe humans undergoing repeated experiences “as they appear in the common course of the world, by men’s behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures” (introd., 10).
Descartes, whose views on the soul evolved throughout his career, not only inherited the notion of the soul as immaterial and immortal from the Scholastics but also became an apologist for it with his assertion, in the Sixth Meditation, that the res cogitans was indivisible and therefore immaterial and eternal. Hume refuted this conclusion by arguing that it went well beyond the proper purview of philosophy. He wrote, “matter and spirit are at bottom equally unknown and we cannot determine what qualities may inhere in the one or in the other.”20 I take this to mean that the soul cannot bring about the effects that the Cartesians expect (i.e., thought). For “we shall never discover a reason, when any object may or may not be the cause of any other” (T, 1.4.5.30). As far as Hume was concerned, the soul was not the source of thought and Descartes’s argument for the soul as both immortal and immaterial rested on weak foundations.
Hume’s early philosophical works navigated between and responded to a vast array of philosophical strategies and temperaments. Against Cartesian a priori conceptions of deity, he highlighted experience and nature and described our predilection to believe in basic theism as largely derived from hidden powers of nature and teleological principles of mind. In tone and content the Treatise asserted probabilistic conclusions in response to the hubris of Cartesian claims. Adroit in his contentions and mostly modest in his conclusions, the Humean flair that manifested in the Treatise offered a stylistic challenge to the Cartesian method. More or less, in the presence of strong deistic assertions (Tindal and Morgan), Hume emphasized the skeptical. When the skepticism went extreme (as in atheism and Pyrrhonism), Hume affirmed the propensity for belief. He mitigated abstruse philosophy (Cartesianism) with nature and common life, and to those who read him as dogmatically antireligious he had a basic theism and an inchoate category ‘true religion.’ Intellectually nimble and philosophically dexterous, the young Hume borrowed from Descartes yet moved beyond him to accept implicit beliefs mediated through custom, which could not satisfy the seminal demands of abstract reason of the Cartesian approach.
PYRRHONISM
In the unfolding literary drama of Hume’s early work, his response to Pyrrhonism further reflected the adeptness of his approach. Concerning Hume’s skepticism, Nicholas Capaldi writes that “no issue has engendered more misunderstanding in Hume scholarship than this one.”21 I shall not delve into the full range of skeptical interpretations here. I simply explain that Hume equated Pyrrhonism with an egregious form of skepticism, then he relied on nature, beliefs, and habits as fundamental for experience. Hume generally possessed an affinity for skeptical solutions in epistemology and sensitivity to the Pyrrhonian suspension of judgment. He offered, however, two inseparable arguments against the Pyrrhonian attitude.22 The first held that one cannot actually act from a thoroughly Pyrrhonian consciousness in common experience; thus, Pyrrhonism was impossible. The second argument stipulated that the Pyrrhonian method of hesitation produced no convictions; therefore, Pyrrhonism was impractical.
The Treatise gives mostly probable conclusions, makes provisional judgments based on observation, and traces the origins of our most significant beliefs. On its argument the complete suspension of judgment is simply not viable for a philosophical thinker. It is, in fact, impossible. Thus, Hume’s early work conciliates between belief and skepticism. His “mitigated skepticism” reminds him to be humble in his judgments and “diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical convictions” (1.4.7.14). Defending himself in his Letter from a Gentleman against being labeled a Pyrrhonian, Hume writes,
As to Scepticism with which the author is charged, I must observe, that the doctrine of the Pyrrhonians or Scepticks have been regarded in all ages as Principles of mere Curiosity, or a Kind of Jeux d’ esprit, without any Influence on a Man’s steady Principles or Conduct in Life. In Reality, a Philosopher who affects to doubt of the Maxims of common Reason and even of his Senses, declares sufficiently that he is not in earnest, and that he intends not to advance an Opinion which he would recommend as Standards of Judgment and Action. (2)
