Le scepticisme de Hume: les Dialogues sur la religion naturelle (review)

Hume Studies Volume 33, Number 1, April 2007, pp. 179-182 Book Reviews Marianne Groulez. Le scepticisme de Hume: les Dialogues sur la religion naturelle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005. Pp. 154. ISBN 2-13-053579-8, Paperback, €12. Marianne Groulez's book has two objects: 1) it offers a general interpretation of Hume's avowed "mitigated skepticism," based on the whole corpus of Hume's works; 2) it offers a study of moderate skepticism within Hume's Dialogues concaning natural religion, which is itself naturally grounded on the previous general interpretation. It seems to me that this second object actually turns out to be a global interpretation of Hume's Dialogues. Indeed, the study of the relationship between moderate skepticism and religious belief in the Dialogues enables Groulez to examine the whole economy of this book, the main arguments and the evolution of its protagonists, the place of the author himself and, finally, the link between the dialogue genre, skepticism, and religion. The first part of the book endeavours—successfully I think—to analyse the signification of Hume's skepticism. Groulez qualifies it as a "metaskepticism," thus alluding to the fact that Hume himself characterizes its own moderate skepticism as "skeptical of skepticism." The author provides an original interpretation of it, mainly through a comparison between Hume's and ancient skepticism. Of course, M. Groulez does not overlook the fact that in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume explicitly identifies its own mitigated skepticism with Volume 33, Number 1, April 2007 180 Book Reviews the skepticism of the New Academy, whereas he rejects the pyrrhonian doubt as excessive. Nevertheless, M. Groulez recalls that Sextus Empiricus considered pyrhhonian skepticism as "metaskeptical," that is, skeptical of the potentially dogmatical tendency of skepticism itself. This remark does not lead the author to see in Hume an unconscious pyrrhonian. Indeed, she notices that Hume's metaskepticism is also "naturalist." Hume thinks that both reasoning and practical beliefs are natural necessities, whereas Sextus did not clearly state that theoretical belief belonged entirely, as Hume says, to the "sensitive part of our nature." Groulez then shows that Academic skepticism may also be characterized as metaskeptical. More interesting, Carneades, one of the most prominent figures of the skeptical Academy, provided a quasi pre-Humean description of the consistent skeptic: a genuine skeptic knows that his judgment must be suspended in all matters, he nevertheless assents to what is the most probable and, meanwhile, he perfectly acknowledges that this approval is not rationally grounded. This portrait is, indeed, very similar to Hume's own descriptions of the true skeptic (see esp. A Treatise of Human Nature 1.4). But, once again, Groulez points out an important difference between this ancient description and Hume's one. According to Hume, the skeptical assent to natural beliefs is not a privilege of the wise: his ideal skeptic is not essentially different from the common man. To this precise analysis of Hume's debt to ancient skepticism and of his distancing from it, Groulez adds a direct examination of Hume's avowed mitigated and careless skepticism. Two points seem to me particularly noteworthy: first, the difference which Hume implicitly establishes between carelessness (a positive easiness) and indolence (a negative easiness), second, the affinity between excessive skepticism and abstruse philosophy on the one hand (both rejected by Hume on account of their uneasiness and of the seclusion and melancholy they induce), and the parallel affinity between moderate skepticism and "easy" and "accurate" philosophy on the other hand (both valued by Hume in order to attain and communicate true knowledge). Finally, the author suggests that besides the form of the essay, which Hume considered as the most able manner to unite accuracy and communicability, the genre of the dialogue could also serve the same purpose. The study of the relationship between careless skepticism and religious belief in the Dialogues concerning natural religion forms the second main part of Groulez's book. In my opinion, this examination proves to be a fruitful approach to Hume's last work. Indeed, both Philo (who is explicitly presented as an adept of "careless skepticism") and Cleanthes (the adept of "experimental theism") profess to be mitigated skeptics...

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