Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. Norman Kemp Smith , David Hume

1936 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-234
Author(s):  
Edwin Ewart Aubrey
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Natural Religion

Brown, Thomas (1778–1820)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Bryant
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Simple Substance ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Physical Objects ◽  
The Mind

Thomas Brown was the last prominent figure in the Scottish philosophical tradition deriving from David Hume and Thomas Reid. Like Reid, he took the mind’s knowledge about itself to be a datum it is pointless to challenge or try to justify, since no other grounds can be more certain for us. But he defended Hume’s account of causation as nothing more than invariable succession. The mind, therefore, is a simple substance, whose successive states are affected by and affect the states of physical objects: the laws according to which these changes take place are no harder to grasp than the effects of gravitation. Brown’s lectures, published as delivered daily to Edinburgh students, seek to classify the laws of the mind so that we can conveniently understand ourselves, and direct our lives accordingly; the last quarter of his course draws conclusions for ethics and natural religion.

Kames and the Argument from Perceptual Reliability

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas McDermid
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Perceptual Realism

Critic and cousin to David Hume, Henry Home (1696–1782)—or Lord Kames, as he was known after his appointment to the Court of Session in 1752—had remarkably varied intellectual interests. His principal philosophical work is Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (1751, revised in 1758 and again in 1779), which contains constructive rejoinders to many of the sceptical arguments presented by Hume and Berkeley. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse Kames’s little-known defence of perceptual realism as it was set forth in the 1751 version of his Essays. As will become apparent in Chapter 3, Kames’s views about the nature of perception anticipated and inspired Thomas Reid’s plea for the view that we have immediate knowledge of a mind-independent world. This makes Kames the de facto founder of the Scottish common sense realist tradition.

Hume amongst the Theologians

2019 ◽  
pp. 301-313
Author(s):  
David Fergusson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Native Land ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Philosophical Style

The doyen of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume (1711–76) was notable for the religious scepticism evident in his writings, particularly the posthumously published masterpiece The Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. This chapter explores a series of responses to Hume from theologians and religiously inclined philosophers in his native land from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. These are grouped into three categories—the rejection of Hume as a ‘dangerous infidel’, the affirmation of Hume as the catalyst for a more rationally grounded philosophical theology, and the conviction that Hume is a sceptic of perennial religious worth. Finally, Hume’s philosophical style is commended to contemporary audiences.

scholarly journals Animal Reason and the Imago Dei

1988 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-335
Author(s):  
David Werther
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Imago Dei ◽  
Natural Religion

David Hume is widely known as a critic of natural theology. Hence he is referred to as ‘the great infidel’. Moreover, when one thinks of Hume's criticisms of natural religion one often thinks of Philo's criticisms of various theistic arguments presented by Cleanthes and Demea in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. In his preface to the Hackett edition of the Dialogues Richard H. Popkin writes,Many consider it the most decisive modern critique of some of the major arguments concerning the existence and nature of God.

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