Hume’s Dialogues: a natural explanation of natural religion?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Hannah Lingier
Keyword(s):  
Natural Explanation ◽  
Natural Religion

Nicolas Gueudeville's Enlightenment Utopia

Moreana ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (Number 209) (1) ◽  
pp. 24-60
Author(s):  
Russ Leo
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Political Anthropology ◽  
French Translation ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Original Length ◽  
English Law

Nicolas Gueudeville's 1715 French translation of Utopia is often dismissed as a “belle infidèle,” an elegant but unfaithful work of translation. Gueudeville does indeed expand the text to nearly twice its original length. But he presents Utopia as a contribution to emergent debates on tolerance, natural religion, and political anthropology, directly addressing the concerns of many early advocates of the ideas we associate with Enlightenment. In this sense, it is not as much an “unfaithful” presentation of More's project as it is an attempt to introduce Utopia to eighteenth-century francophone audiences—readers for whom theses on political economy and natural religion were much more salient than More's own preoccupations with rhetoric and English law. This paper introduces Gueudeville and his oeuvre, paying particular attention to his revisions to Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce, Baron de Lahontan's 1703 Nouveaux Voyages dans l'Amérique Septentrionale. Published in 1705, Gueudeville's “revised, corrected, & augmented” version of Lahontan's Voyages foregrounds the rational and natural religion of the Huron as well as their constitutive aversion to property, to concepts of “mine” and “yours.” Gueudeville's revised version of Lahontan's Voyages purports to be an anthropological investigation as well as a study of New World political economy; it looks forward, moreover, to his edition of Utopia, framing More's work as a comparable study of political economy and anthropology. Gueudeville, in other words, renders More's Utopia legible to Enlightenment audiences, depicting Utopia not in terms of impossibility and irony but rather as a study of natural religion and attendant forms of political, devotional, and economic life. Gueudeville's edition of Utopia even proved controversial due, in part, to his insistence on the rationality as well as the possibility of Utopia.

Part Eight

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Fogelin
Keyword(s):  
Cloud Formation ◽  
Striking Similarity ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
Argument From Design

Philo expands on the nature of his objections to the natural religion of Cleanthes: far-fetched comparisons are dismissed in matters of common life, but are appropriate objections when we rise to the level of abstruse and remote reasoning. He offers a counterargument to the design-designer hypothesis, citing Epicurus. Constancy and change are discussed; cloud formation is one example. Philo’s critique of Cleanthes’ argument from design moves through stages, with striking similarity to Agrippa’s suspension of belief as presented by Sextus Empiricus.

scholarly journals Low-Energy Optical Conductivity of TaP: Comparison of Theory and Experiment

Crystals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 567
Author(s):  
Alexander Yaresko ◽  
Artem V. Pronin
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Optical Conductivity ◽  
Low Energy ◽  
Spin Orbit Coupling ◽  
Spin Orbit ◽  
Natural Explanation ◽  
Weyl Semimetal ◽  
Unintentional Doping ◽  
Mott Formula ◽  
Theory And Experiment

The ab-plane optical conductivity of the Weyl semimetal TaP is calculated from the band structure and compared to the experimental data. The overall agreement between theory and experiment is found to be best when the Fermi level is slightly (20 to 60 meV) shifted upwards in the calculations. This confirms a small unintentional doping of TaP, reported earlier, and allows a natural explanation of the strong low-energy (50 meV) peak seen in the experimental ab-plane optical conductivity: this peak originates from transitions between the almost parallel non-degenerate electronic bands split by spin-orbit coupling. The temperature evolution of the peak can be reasonably well reproduce by calculations using an analog of the Mott formula.

Naturalizing Sharīʿa: Foundationalist Ambiguities in Modern Islamic Apologetics

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 45-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew F. March
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Ethical Systems

This essay discusses an important feature of much modern Islamic writing on law, politics and morality. The feature in question is the claim that Islamic law and human nature (fiṭra) are in perfect harmony, that Islam is the “natural religion” (dīn al-fiṭra), and thus that the demands of Islamic law are easy and painless for ordinary human moral capacities. My discussion proceeds through a close reading of the Moroccan independence leader and religious scholar ʿAllāl al-Fāsī (d. 1974). I discuss the ambiguities within Fāsī’s theory and suggest that the natural religion doctrine might be better understood less as a reduction of Islamic law to “natural law” and more as an apologetic effort to defend the realism and feasibility of Islamic law. In the hands of reformers like Fāsī, this project is beset with unresolved ambiguities around the constraining quality of revealed law in practice and the moral validity of non-Islamic political and ethical systems.


scholarly journals No Abiding City: Hume, Naturalism, and Toleration

Philosophy ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Clark
Keyword(s):  
Political Regime ◽  
Attractive Alternative ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Political Drama ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Naturalistic Account ◽  
Humean Theory ◽  
Explicit Discussion

AbstractThis paper rereads David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion as dramatising a distinctive, naturalistic account of toleration. I have two purposes in mind: first, to complete and ground Hume's fragmentary explicit discussion of toleration; second, to unearth a potentially attractive alternative to more recent, Rawlsian approaches to toleration. To make my case, I connect Dialogues and the problem of toleration to the wider themes of naturalism, scepticism and their relation in Hume's thought, before developing a new interpretation of Dialogues part 12 as political drama. Finally, I develop the Humean theory of toleration I have discovered by comparison between Rawls's and Hume's strategies for justification of a tolerant political regime.

Hume's Tacit Atheism

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Echelbarger
Keyword(s):  
General Tendency ◽  
Positive Contribution ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Ultimate Cause ◽  
The Universe

A recent paper, ‘Hume's Immanent God’, (in (I))* by George Nathan, contains an insightful interpretation of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (henceforth, briefly, D). Insight is no guarantee against error. I shall argue that Nathan's interpretation is mistaken, and then offer my own.Nathan observes that the general tendency in scholarship on D has been to focus on its sceptical side. He proposes to ‘bring out Hume's positive contribution’. Nathan's thesis, briefly, is that D best supports a modestly theistic interpretation according to which God is the ultimate cause of order in the universe.

TeV Scale B – L Phenomenology at LHC

2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (31) ◽  
pp. 5889-5908 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Abbas ◽  
W. Emam ◽  
S. Khalil ◽  
M. Shalaby
Keyword(s):  
Standard Model ◽  
Gauge Boson ◽  
Cross Sections ◽  
Branching Ratios ◽  
Higgs Production ◽  
Neutrino Masses ◽  
Natural Explanation ◽  
The Standard Model ◽  
The Cross

We present the phenomenology of the low scale U(1)B–L extension of the standard model and its implications at LHC. We show that this model provides a natural explanation for the presence of three right-handed neutrinos and can naturally account the observed neutrino masses and mixing. We study the decay and production of the extra gauge boson and the SM singlet scalar (heavy Higgs) predicted in this type of models. We find that the cross sections of the SM-like Higgs production are reduced by ~ 20% – 30%, while its decay branching ratios remain intact. The extra Higgs has relatively small cross sections and the branching ratios of Z′ → l+l− are of order ~ 20% compared to ~ 3% of the SM results.

scholarly journals A natural explanation for periodic X-ray outbursts in Be/X-ray binaries

2001 ◽  
Vol 377 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. T. Okazaki ◽  
I. Negueruela
Keyword(s):  
Natural Explanation ◽  
X Ray ◽  
X Ray Binaries

scholarly journals Palaeoclimates: the first two billion years

2006 ◽  
Vol 361 (1470) ◽  
pp. 917-929 ◽  
Author(s):  
James F Kasting ◽  
Shuhei Ono
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Oxygen Isotopes ◽  
Natural Explanation ◽  
Witwatersrand Basin ◽  
Late Archaean ◽  
Bacterial Sulphate Reduction ◽  
Climatic Constraints ◽  
The Mean ◽  
High Concentrations ◽  
Earth’S Climate

Earth's climate during the Archaean remains highly uncertain, as the relevant geologic evidence is sparse and occasionally contradictory. Oxygen isotopes in cherts suggest that between 3.5 and 3.2 Gyr ago (Ga) the Archaean climate was hot (55–85 °C); however, the fact that these cherts have experienced only a modest amount of weathering suggests that the climate was temperate, as today. The presence of diamictites in the Pongola Supergroup and the Witwatersrand Basin of South Africa suggests that by 2.9 Ga the climate was glacial. The Late Archaean was relatively warm; then glaciation (possibly of global extent) reappeared in the Early Palaeoproterozoic, around 2.3–2.4 Ga. Fitting these climatic constraints with a model requires high concentrations of atmospheric CO 2 or CH 4 , or both. Solar luminosity was 20–25% lower than today, so elevated greenhouse gas concentrations were needed just to keep the mean surface temperature above freezing. A rise in O 2 at approximately 2.4 Ga, and a concomitant decrease in CH 4 , provides a natural explanation for the Palaeoproterozoic glaciations. The Mid-Archaean glaciations may have been caused by a drawdown in H 2 and CH 4 caused by the origin of bacterial sulphate reduction. More work is needed to test this latter hypothesis.

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