The Hamann–Hume Connection

1987 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Redmond
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Isaiah Berlin

It is well known that the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher and sceptic David Hume was a severe critic of religious belief, but what may not be so familiar, and has been brought to our attention in recent years by Isaiah Berlin, is that some religious believers have found in Hume's sceptical arguments a source of nurture for their religious faith. In particular, Berlin singles out the example of Hume's contemporary, Johann Georg Hamann (17388), a devout but unconventional believer as well as one of the leaders of the German Counter-Enlightenment. Hamann's primary claim to fame, however, rests upon his influence upon the Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard. Although Kierkegaard never met Hamann, he was familiar with his writings, and calls Hamann ‘his only teacher.’ Kierkegaard's vast influence on modern Christianity, especially Protestantism, is, of course, a commonplace. What, though, is often overlooked, and Berlin calls our attention to, is that this man who influenced Kierkegaard was himself deeply influenced by Hume. The student of religion, as well as the philosopher, cannot help but be struck by this historical connection between Hume and believers such as Johann Hamann and thus, ultimately, between David Hume and modern Protestantism.

Philosophy and Theology in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 56-68
Author(s):  
Thomas Ahnert
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Philosophy And Religion ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Solid Foundation ◽  
Theological Argument

Near the end of his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding David Hume declared that the ‘best and most solid foundation’ of divinity and theology was ‘faith and divine revelation’. Many other passages can be found where Hume uses similar fideist arguments to criticize the application of philosophical reason to religious questions. The question addressed in this chapter is how Hume’s criticism of the use of philosophy in religious and theological argument compares to the beliefs of his contemporaries on the same subject. In particular, it examines his intellectual relationship with the two main groups within the mid-eighteenth-century Presbyterian Kirk, the ‘Orthodox’ and the ‘Moderates’. Claiming that the fideist language used by Hume was not as similar to the position of orthodox Presbyterians as has sometimes been suggested, the chapter also argues that Hume’s sceptical, fideist arguments about philosophy and religion were closer to the beliefs of these Moderates, including Hutcheson, Leechman, Robertson, and Blair, than has often been realized. Nevertheless, they and Hume differed significantly in their explanations for the emergence of religious belief in human societies.

INTERPRETATION OF THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN MODERN POLITICAL THEORIES

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-96
Author(s):  
Sayyora Saidova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Human Heart ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Religious Policy ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Religious Factor ◽  
Religious Aspect

In the Middle East, the processes for leadership among religious and democratic progress in North Africa require that the state pursue secular policy on a scientific and dialectical basis. Because religious beliefs have become so ingrained in secular life that it is difficult to separate them. Because in the traditions and customs of the people, in various ceremonies, there is a secular as well as a religious aspect. Even the former Soviet Constitution, based on atheism, could not separate them. Religious faith has lived in the human heart despite external prohibitions. National independence has given freedom to religious belief, which is now breathing freely in the barrel. The religious policy of our state strengthens and expands this process and guarantees it constitutionally.

Moral canals: trust and social capital in the work of Hume, Smith and Genovesi

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigino Bruni ◽  
Robert Sugden
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
Trading Partners ◽  
History Of

It is a truism that a market economy cannot function without trust. We must be able to rely on other people to respect our property rights, and on our trading partners to keep their promises. The theory of economics is incomplete unless it can explain why economic agents often trust one another, and why that trust is often repaid. There is a long history of work in economics and philosophy which tries to explain the kinds of reasoning that people use when they engage in practices of trust: this work develops theories of trust. A related tradition in economics, sociology and political science investigates the kinds of social institution that reproduce whatever habits, dispositions or modes of reasoning are involved in acts of trust: this work develops theories of social capital. A recurring question in these literatures is whether a society which organizes its economic life through markets is capable of reproducing the trust on which those markets depend. In this paper, we look at these themes in relation to the writings of three eighteenth-century philosopher-economists: David Hume, Adam Smith, and Antonio Genovesi.

scholarly journals Emotions vocabulary and the reconceptualisation of emotions in Ann Radcliffe’s “The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents”

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-58
Author(s):  
Elena D. Andonova-Kalapsazova
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
History Of

The article undertakes the analysis of Ann Radcliffe’s novel The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797) from a history of literary emotions perspective which, I argue, yields insights into the attitudes towards emotions embedded in Radcliffe’s works. A reading of the novel from such a perspective also complements the critical studies of the artist’s engaging with the eighteenth-century cult of sensibility. The novel is read as a text that registered but also participated in the dissemination of an epistemology of emotional experience articulated in the idiom of eighteenth-century moral philosophers – Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith - at the same time as it retained some of the older, theology-based conceptions of passions and affections. The dynamic in which the two frameworks for understanding the emotions exist in the novel is explored through a close reading of the vocabulary in which Radcliffe rendered the emotional experiences of her fictional characters. In this reading it is the passions which are found to have been invested with a variety of meanings and attributed a range of moral valences that most noticeably foreground the movement from a generally negative towards a more complex appreciation of powerful emotions.

Philosophy

Unfelt ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 24-68
Author(s):  
James Noggle
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Eliza Haywood ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
David Hartley ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Contents

This chapter examines how the late seventeenth-century British philosophy of sensation, feeling, and selfhood responded to the challenges of mechanism with the idiom of the insensible. It shows how this idiom carries forward from John Locke and Robert Boyle to philosophers of the mid-eighteenth century, the age of sensibility, who use it to address a variety of problems. The consistent, Lockean element in these usages by David Hartley, Étienne Bonnet de Condillac and David Hume, Eliza Haywood and Adam Smith, is that they do not refer to mental contents. One does not hear of “insensible perceptions.” There are no “unconscious thoughts” or “unfelt sensations” in the British tradition surveyed here. Writers in this tradition rather describe insensible powers that affect the mind without themselves being mental. They are nonconscious, not unconscious. This is an implication carried by the idiom into articulations of quite a wide variety of other ideas. All of them indicate the persistent usefulness in philosophies of feeling of a stylistic gesture toward something beyond the reach of both feeling and philosophy.

Parents’ Expectations of Religious Congregations

2021 ◽  
pp. 191-216
Author(s):  
Christian Smith ◽  
Amy Adamczyk
Keyword(s):  
Religious Education ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Religious Development ◽  
Religious Congregations ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Youth Ministers

Church leaders, youth ministers, and volunteers are likely curious about the extent to which parents find congregations useful in transmitting religious beliefs and behaviors. This chapter explores how parents use religious congregations to transmit religious belief. The chapter discusses why parents tend to feel that they, rather than their congregations, are primarily responsible for passing on religious faith. Many parents select their congregations for fairly practical reasons, they have a lot of confidence in their own understanding of religion, and they want to be involved in all aspects of their child’s life, including religious development. This chapter also unpacks what parents see as the most valuable contributions that congregations provide for their children. These include the congregation’s role in providing religious education, making religion fun for their children, and transmitting cultural traditions.

History of Religion as Critique of Religion?

2021 ◽  
pp. 10-30
Author(s):  
Hans Joas
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Universal History ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Literary Character ◽  
History Of

The Scottish eighteenth-century philosopher and historian David Hume can be considered a pioneer of the “natural history of religion” in the sense of a universal history of religion that is not based on theological presuppositions. This chapter offers a characterization of his methodological achievements and a reevaluation of his empirical claims concerning monotheism, polytheism, religion and tolerance. It also interprets the German reception of Hume in Herder and other eighteenth-century thinkers as a serious critical continuation that is free from Hume’s anti-Christian motives. This continuation opens the perspective of a serious study of the literary character of religious texts, in this case of the Bible. All simple contrasts between Enlightenment and religion are overcome as soon as we take this interaction of thinkers into account.

scholarly journals David Hume, the Académie des inscriptions and the Nature of Historical Evidence in the Early Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Pedro Faria
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Common Experience ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Belles Lettres

Philosophical history became the Enlightenment genre of historical writing par excellence supposedly by “defeating” established humanist erudite history and antiquarianism. This article argues that, contrary to established perceptions, philosophical history developed out of a concern expressed by early eighteenth-century erudite historians about the nature of historical evidence: both David Hume—leading philosophical historian—and the members of the French erudite Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres shared a broadly Lockean approach to historical evidence, choosing verisimilitude to common experience as the key criterion of certainty. Indeed, Hume likely drew directly from the académiciens. Historical certainty is achieved, both sides concluded, by providing a verisimilar chain of causes of historical events, rather than mere lists of historical facts. Philosophical historians like Hume departed from the reformulated eighteenth-century version of erudite history by making causes the main object of history rather than merely a foundation of trustworthy factual accounts.

Commerce, Virtue, and Politics: Adam Ferguson's Constitutionalism

1983 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 536-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary L. McDowell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral Philosophers

Adam Ferguson was one of several moral philosophers who contributed to the Scottish Enlightenment, a period aptly described as one of “remarkable efflorescence.” The works of Ferguson and his fellow Scotsmen — Adam Smith, David Hume, Dugald Stewart, Lord Kames, Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid — were widely distributed, seriously read, and vigorously debated during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The greatest contribution of this Scottish school to the history of political thinking was the refinement of the idea of commercial republicanism, the synthesis of modern notions of polity and economy.

Leaps and Circles: Kierkegaard and Newman on Faith and Reason

1994 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Jamie Ferreira
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Faith And Reason

Søren Kierkegaard (in the Climacus writings) and John Henry Newman have starkly opposed formulations of the relation between faith and reason. In this essay I focus on a possible convergence in their respective understandings of the transition to religious belief or faith, as embodied in metaphors they use for a qualitative transition. I explore the ways in which attention to the legitimate dimension of discontinuity highlighted by the Climacan metaphor of the ‘leap’ can illuminate Newman's use of the metaphor of a ‘polygon inscribed in a circle’, as well as the ways in which Newman's metaphor can illuminate the dimension of continuity operative in the Climacan appreciation of qualitative transition.

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