Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Introduction

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is David Hume's posthumously published 1779 work, widely considered his most polished philosophical writing and the most rigorous critique of natural theology in the Western tradition. Cast as a dialogue among three philosophical characters — Cleanthes (the defender of the argument from design), Demea (the orthodox theist who appeals to revelation and a priori argument), and Philo (the skeptic, generally taken as Hume's primary mouthpiece) — the work presents and analyzes the major arguments for God's existence and finds each inadequate when subjected to careful philosophical scrutiny.

Hume composed the Dialogues across decades and held them back from publication during his lifetime out of concern for the controversy they would produce. He arranged for posthumous publication and the work appeared in 1779, three years after his death. The Dialogues have shaped philosophy of religion ever since and remain the canonical statement of the skeptical case against natural theology.

Form, length, date, language

The Dialogues are a short work of approximately 60,000 words in English, divided into twelve parts. The work was composed across an extended period beginning in the 1750s and finalized in the year before Hume's death (1776); Hume entrusted the manuscript to his nephew with instructions for posthumous publication. The original language is English, in Hume's distinctively polished mature prose.

The dialogue form is integral to the work's philosophical strategy. By distributing the major positions across distinct characters, Hume can present each position in its strongest form, allow each character to respond to the others' objections, and avoid committing himself univocally to any single position. The interpretive question of which character speaks for Hume has been continuously contested; the scholarly consensus is that Philo speaks most often for Hume, but Hume's own position may be more nuanced than any single character's.

Why it was written

The Dialogues engage the philosophical defense of religion that had been developing across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly the argument from design — the inference from the apparent order and complexity of the natural world to an intelligent designer responsible for the order. The argument from design had been gaining force through the developing natural sciences (which seemed to reveal increasingly intricate mechanisms in living and physical things) and through the work of theologians and natural philosophers who deployed the argument as the foundation of rational theology.

Hume's project is the sustained philosophical critique of the argument from design and related arguments. The critique is not direct atheist polemic; it is the careful analysis of what the arguments actually establish, where they fail, and what the proper philosophical conclusion is given the available evidence. The work's restraint and rigor have made it durably influential beyond the polemical genre it might have been.

Structure and argument

Parts I–II: The argument from design introduced. Cleanthes presents the argument: the universe resembles a vast machine; machines have intelligent designers; therefore the universe has an intelligent designer (God). The argument proceeds by analogy: just as the parts of a watch are arranged for a purpose by a watchmaker, the parts of the natural world appear arranged for purposes (eyes for seeing, organisms for survival), and the proper inference is to a designer responsible for the arrangement.

Parts III–VIII: Philo's critique of the argument from design. Across multiple sections, Philo develops a sustained set of objections to the argument. The universe is unique, so the analogical inference from human artifacts (of which we have many examples) is illegitimate; the apparent order could be the product of natural processes (including a kind of primitive evolutionary process Philo gestures toward); the apparent design is imperfect in ways that count against a perfect designer; even if some intelligence were inferred from the evidence, it would be limited, not omnipotent, omniscient, or perfectly good; the universe could have many designers (a committee) rather than one; the designer could long since have died and the universe could be the work of an early apprentice of some larger divine demiurge. The objections together do not refute the argument from design conclusively; they show that the argument cannot bear the theological weight it has been asked to bear.

Parts IX–X: The a priori argument and the problem of evil. Part IX presents and refutes the a priori argument for God's existence (a version of the cosmological argument). Part X presents the problem of evil in its sharpest form: the famous Epicurean trilemma (is God willing to prevent evil but not able? then God is not omnipotent; is God able but not willing? then God is not benevolent; is God both able and willing? whence then is evil?). Demea, the orthodox theist, treats evil as a test of faith and a feature of a larger plan; Philo presses the inadequacy of these responses.

Part XI: The natural attributes of the deity. The continuing analysis of what even the best version of the argument from design could establish about the deity. Philo argues that the evidence is at best consistent with a deity who is morally neutral, neither benevolent nor malicious, the cause of the natural order but not the source of moral demands.

Part XII: The conclusion. The famously enigmatic closing Part. Philo, in his concluding remarks, offers what appears to be a more conciliatory position: the whole of natural theology resolves into a single ambiguous proposition — that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence — and this proposition affords no inference that affects human life or can be the source of any action or forbearance. The closing has been read as a final concession by Philo (a Humean fideism that leaves religion to faith alone), as ironic understatement of the negative result, or as a deliberate evasion of the question. The interpretive dispute continues.

Key passages

• Part II — Cleanthes's presentation of the design argument.
• Part V — Philo's argument that even granting the design inference, the deity could be limited, multiple, or imperfect.
• Part IX — the refutation of the a priori cosmological argument.
• Part X — the problem of evil; the Epicurean trilemma.
• Part XI — the analysis of the natural attributes.
• Part XII — the enigmatic closing.

Reception history

The Dialogues were widely read after their 1779 posthumous publication and shaped the philosophical discussion of natural theology for over two centuries. Kant's discussion of the proofs of God's existence in the Critique of Pure Reason engages the issues Hume raises (though Kant did not cite Hume directly on theology). The nineteenth-century critical-philosophical engagement with religion (Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche) developed in a tradition Hume had substantially prepared.

The Darwinian revolution gave the Dialogues renewed relevance. The argument from design's natural-historical version had been substantially weakened by Hume; Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) provided the natural-scientific account that completed the demolition. The contemporary literature on intelligent design and on the design argument continues to engage Hume directly; the Dialogues remain the foundational critical reference.

Contemporary engagement

The standard scholarly text is in Norman Kemp Smith's edition (1947) and in the more recent Cambridge edition. Major recent scholarly work includes J.C.A. Gaskin's Hume's Philosophy of Religion (1988), Paul Russell's The Riddle of Hume's Treatise (2008, which engages the broader context of Hume's religious thought), and the substantial chapters in the Cambridge Companion to Hume (David Fate Norton, ed., 1993). Active scholarly debates concern the interpretation of Part XII, the precise relation between the various characters' positions and Hume's own views, the relation between the Dialogues and contemporary philosophy of religion, and the influence of the Dialogues on Darwin and the subsequent biology.

Further reading

• Hume — the author
• Empiricism — the tradition
• Treatise of Human Nature — the companion early work
• Belief Systems — the structural framework the analysis engages
• Kant — the philosopher whose Critique of Pure Reason takes up many of the same questions
• Five Ways — the classical natural-theological arguments the Dialogues engage

The most rigorous critique of natural theology in the philosophical tradition. Hume's most polished philosophical work.