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RELIGION AND HUME'S LEGACY CLAREMONT STUDIES IN THE OF RELIGION General Editors: D. Z. Phillips, Rush Rhees Research Professor, University of Wales, Swansea, and Danforth Professor of , Claremont Graduate University, California; Timothy Tessin At a time when discussions of religion are increasingly specialized and determined by religious affiliations, it is important to maintain a forum for philosophical discussion which transcends the allegiances of and unbelief. This series affords an opportunity for philosophers of widely differing persuasions to explore central issues in the philosophy of religion. Titles include: Stephen T. Davis (editor) PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGICAL D. Z. Phillips (editor) CAN RELIGION BE EXPLAINED AWAY? RELIGION AND D. Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin (editors) RELIGION WITHOUT TRANSCENDENCE? RELIGION AND HUME'S LEGACY Timothy Tessin and Mario von der Ruhr (editors) PHILOSOPHY AND THE GRAMMAR OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF

Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-333-71465-2 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are rublished by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case o difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Religion and Hume's Legacy

Edited by

D. Z. Phillips Danforth Professor of Philosophy of Religion Claremont Graduate University and Rush Rhees Research Professor University of Wales Swansea

and

Timothy Tessin Hochschule fiir Musik 'Franz Liszt' Weimar Germany First published in Great Britain 1999 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-27737-7 ISBN 978-1-349-27735-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-27735-3

First published in the United States of America 1999 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-22526-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Religion and Hume's legacy I edited by D.Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin. p. em. - (Claremont studies in the philosophy of religion) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-22526-1 (cloth) 1. Hume, David, 1711-1776-Contributions in philosophy of religion Congresses. 2. Religion-Philosophy Congresses. I. Phillips, D. Z. (Dewi Zephaniah) II. Tessin, Timothy. III. Series. B1499.R45R46 1999 210'.92-dc21 99-21892 CIP © Claremont Graduate University 1999 Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1999 978-0-333-74853-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

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10987654321 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 In memory of R. W Beardsmore 1944-1997 Contents

Acknowledgements X Notes on the Contributors xi

Introduction by D. Z. Phillips XV

Part I Hume' s Epistemological and Moral Critique 1 Playing Hume's Hand 3 Simon Blackburn

2 Morality and Religion: Towards Meeting Hume' s Challenge 17 William H. Brenner

3 Voices in Discussion 35 D. Z. Phillips

Part II Hume' s 'True Religion' 4 Hume' s 'Mitigated Scepticism': Some Implications for Religious Belief 47 M. Jamie Ferreira

5 Is There Anything Religious about Philo's 'True Religion'? 68 Van A. Harvey

6 Is Hume' s 'True Religion' a Religious Belief? 81 D. Z. Phillips

7 Voices in Discussion 99 D. Z. Phillips

vii viii Contents Part III Hume on Miracles 8 Hume and the Miraculous 111 R. W. Beardsmore

9 Beardsmore on Hume on Miracles 131 Stephen T. Davis

10 Voices in Discussion 138 D. Z. Phillips

Part IV Hume on Superstition 11 Hume on Superstition 153 Martin Bell

12 Passion and Artifice in Hume' s Account of Superstition 171 jane L. Mcintyre

13 Voices in Discussion 185 D. Z. Phillips

PartY Philosophy of Religion after Hume 14 Can Religion be Rational? 193 Antony Flew

15 Overcoming Hume on His Own Terms 206 Nancey Murphy

16 Religion after Hume: Tightrope Walking in an 221 B. R. Tilghman

17 Voices in Discussion 235 D. Z. Phillips Contents ix Part VI Hume in Historical Context

18 Hume on Context, Sentiment and Testimony in Religion 251 Peter Jones

Index 278 Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the contributors to this volume, not only for partic• ipating in the 1997 Claremont Conference on the Philosophy of Religion, but for their generous support of the fund which con• tributes to the holding of future conferences. I am indebted to Jackie Huntzinger, Secretary to the Department of Religion at Claremont, and my research assistant Keith Lane for their administrative assist• ance, and to the graduate students who helped, in various ways, to make the conference run smoothly. I am also grateful to Mrs Helen Baldwin, Secretary to the Department of Philosophy at Swansea, for administrative assistance in planning the conference. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support for the conference provided by Claremont Graduate University, Pomona College and Claremont McKenna College. I also want to acknowledge Jerry Gill, Terence Penelhum and John Whittaker, visitors to the conference, who made valuable contributions to the discussions. I am grateful to Keith Lane for typing the Introduction and the Voices in Discussion and to my fellow-editor, Timothy Tessin, for seeing the book through the press, preparing the index, and proof• reading the collection.

D. z. PHILLIPS

X Notes on the Contributors

R. W. Beardsmore was Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Wales, Swansea, and author of Moral Reasoning, Art and Morality and of papers on , and Wittgenstein.

Martin Bell is Professor of Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the editor of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and of papers on Hume. He is currently completing a book on Hume as a writer of philosophy.

Simon Blackburn is the Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He also holds an adjunct Chair at the Australian National University Research School of Social Sciences. From 1969 to 1990 he was Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Pembroke College, Oxford, and editor of from 1984 to 1990. His books include Spreading the Word; Essays in Quasi-Realism; The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy; and Ruling Passions.

William H. Brenner teaches at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. He is the author of : Descartes to Kant; and Philosophy: an Integrated Introduction; and translator (with John H. Halley) of Joachim Schulte's Wittgenstein: an Introduction. His forthcoming book is called Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.

Stephen T. Davis is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of Faith, Skepticism and Evidence; Logic and the Nature of God; Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection; and has edited and contributed to Encountering Evil and Encountering jesus.

M. Jamie Ferreira is Professor of Philosophy of Religion in the Departments of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. She is the author of Doubt and Religious Commitment: the Role of the in Newman's Thought; Scepticism and Religious Doubt: the British Naturalist Tradition; Transforming Vision:

xi xii Notes on the Contributors Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith; and of articles on Locke, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Newman, James and Kierkegaard.

Antony Flew is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in the University of Reading. His most relevant publications are: Hume's Philosophy of Belief; God and Philosophy (reissued in 1984 as God: a Critical Enquiry); The Presumption of and Philosophical Essays on God, Freedom and Immortality (reissued in 1984 as God, Freedom and Immortality); The Logic of Mortality; and Atheistic .

Van A. Harvey retired in 1996 as George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. He is the author of A Handbook of Theological Terms; The Historian and the Believer; and Feuerbach and the Interpretation of Religion, which won the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in 1996. He has written extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Protestant thought.

Peter Jones is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies in the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Philosophy and the Novel; Hume's Sentiments; A Hotbed of Genius; and Adam Smith Reviewed.

Jane L. Mcintyre is Professor of Philosophy at Cleveland State University. She is a Hume scholar whose work concerns personal identity and Hume' s theory of the passions. Her papers include 'Personal Identity and the Passions' (Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1989); 'Character: A Humean Account' (History of Philosophy Quarterly, 1990); 'Hume's Underground Self' (Studies in , 1993); and 'Hume: Second Newton of the Moral Sciences' (Hume Studies, 1994).

Nancey Murphy is Associate Professor of at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena. She is the author of Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning, which won the American Academy of Religion Award of Excellence and a Templeton Prize; Reasoning and Rhetoric in Religion; Beyond Liberalism and : How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda; On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, and Ethics (with George F. R. Ellis); and Anglo-American : Philosophical Notes on the Contributors xiii Perspectives on Science, Religion and Ethics; and has co-edited many collections.

D. Z. Phillips is Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University, California and Rush Rhees Research Professor, University of Wales, Swansea. He is the author of The Concept of Prayer; Moral Practices (with H. 0. Mounce); Death and Immortality; Faith and Philosophical Enquiry; Sense and Delusion (with ilham Oilman); Athronyddu am Grefydd; Religion without Explanation; Through a Darkening Glass; Dramau Gwenlyn Parry; Belief, Change and Forms of Life; R. S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God; Faith after ; From Fantasy to Faith; Interventions in Ethics; Wittgenstein and Religion; Writers of Wales: f. R. Jones; Introducing Philosophy; Recovering Religious Concepts; and Philosophy's Cool Place. He has edited books by Rush Rhees and many collections. He is the editor of the journal Philosophical Investigations and the Macmillan series, Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and Swansea Studies in Philosophy.

B. R. Tilghman is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Kansas State University where he taught from 1967 to 1994. He is the author of The Expression of Emotion in the Visual Arts; But is it Art?; Wittgenstein, Ethics and Aesthetics; and An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. Introduction D. Z. Phillips

In 1976, in the Preface to my Religion without Explanation, I wrote: 'I take as my starting point the enormous influence Hume has had on of religion. His emphasis on the one world in which we live and move and have our , and his thorough-going attack on attempts to infer the of God from that world or features of it, have given us a philosophical legacy we cannot ignore.' In 1998 there is no need to modify these remarks. No serious philosopher of religion can ignore Hume's arguments. The papers in the present collection show conclusively why this is so. This does not mean that all are agreed in their reactions to Hume: far from it. I need only quote further remarks in my Preface to bring out the deep philosophical differences between the contributors to this volume. I said: 'It is important to recognize that, given its assumptions, Hume' s attack on certain theistic arguments is entirely successful. It is equally important to see that many forms of reli• gious belief are free from these assumptions.' This statement would not command assent from all the philosophers in this volume. For some, Hume' s epistemological and moral critique of religion is entirely successful. It destroys the traditional beliefs of theism, and shows how religion leads, inevitably, to the defilement of morality. If Wittgenstein, or any other philosopher, attempts to show that there are religious possibilities which escape these criticisms, the trouble, it is argued, is that there is an enormous divergence between these possibilities and the actual widespread practices of popular religion. For others, however, these possibilities are the central religious beliefs which are confused again and again in the philosophy of religion. In this context, Hume can be seen as showing us the results of these philosophical confusions. Religion is led into the poverty of an attenuated deism. The trouble with Hume, it is said, is that, unlike Wittgenstein, after criticising some ways in which religion may be confused, he shows little interest in contemplating other possibilities. Indeed, he is, for the most part, blind to what these possibilities express. This disagreement as to

XV xvi Introduction how Hume should be read is a central feature of the first part of the collection. The increasing attention given to Hume' s writings has led to new suggestions concerning the insights which can be found there. As with all great philosophers, conflicting claims are made concerning what these insights are, and what measure of importance should be accorded to each of them. For example, it is argued that Hume's mitigated scepticism has implications for his treatment of religious belief. Hume argued that despite the force of sceptical arguments, nature simply does not allow us to be sceptical about everything. There are certain paradigmatic, instinctive natural beliefs, such as belief in an external world, or belief in the continuous existence of physical objects, which, although ungrounded and not based on , yet are perfectly rational to hold. Are there not indica• tions in Hume' s Natural History of Religion and in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion that he also wants to leave room for a similar instinctive, non-inferential religious belief in God as the author of Nature? For others, this claim is too positive. They admit that Philo does express an awe at the author of Nature, but, at the same time, also emphasise that he expresses disdain at all theological attempts at articulating what this confessional reaction comes to. In this respect, Philo has special significance for our modernity. His condition is that of many of our contemporaries, a primitive religious feeling is recognised, while, at the same time, theological attempts to place it in an intellectual system are regarded with extreme scepticism. Philo is to be admired for not saying more than he knows. But both accounts of Philo are contested. After all, Philo's claim is a bare one: that the author of Nature bears some remote inconceiv• able analogy to human contrivance or design. Nothing more can be said about the author's nature and the belief is said to have no implications whatsoever for human conduct. So far from being a primitive religious confession, or something akin to a natural belief, Philo's bare claim is the useless rump which remains when religious sensibilities have been eroded. It is the result of subjecting the reli• gious belief in creation to scientific approval. Further, if Hume' s objections to comparing 'the world' to a house were pressed to their logical conclusions, there would not be a 'something' called 'the world' whose existence an author is supposed to explain. These radically different readings of Hume's 'true religion', Philo's bare claim, are found in the second part of the collection. Introduction xvii There is an equally wide disagreement over how Hume' s attack on miracles should be read. It has been argued that Hume does not deny the possibility of miracles, but, rather, the of ever believing that a miracle has occurred. This is because, in the weigh• ing of testimonies, the greater probability always counts against a miracle. Where the miracle is said to involve a violation of a law of nature, it has against it, Hume argues, the uniformity of . But this reading is contested, since the experience is not uniform. That simply discounts the testimony relating to miracles. Further, when one considers that the motivation of those who testify is part of the evidence to be assessed, we can see that a circular argument is employed. We are to consider that people who testify to miracles are barbarous. What do we mean by barbarous people? Those who testify to miracles. But there is a strong argument against miracles if Hume' s analysis of causal connections, in terms of constant con• junction, is replaced by one that stresses the causal understanding that comes from seeing how things work. We then see that water cannot be changed into wine, and that dead people do not rise again. This causal' cannot' is absent in Biblical times where there is no conception of . We do not know what religious significance wonders had then and there is no philosophical neces• sity that their interest in such things has to be a causal one. But given that causal interests do dominate our , we can and do say that water cannot be turned into wine, and that the dead do not rise. Not even God can cause such things to happen. It is not that we understand these matters, but do not believe they happen. Rather, we do not understand what it is we are being asked to contemplate. Others dispute this conclusion. It depends, it is said, on a natural• istic world-view. If, however, one has a supernaturalist world-view, all our causal understanding reveals is the extent of the obstacles which God has to overcome in bringing about his effects. By what philosophical fiat, it is asked, can a naturalistic perspective rule out a supernatural perspective? This question looms large in the third part of the collection, along with the issue of whether, in reacting to alleged miracles, the only choice facing us is between two causal understandings of what has happened: natural causation or super• natural causation. In the fourth part of the book, the contributors explore Hume' s conception of the mechanism by which religious beliefs are formed. When we understand what the mechanism amounts to, it is argued,