Hume and the Religious Significance of Moral Rationalism

Hume Studies Volume XXVI, Number 2, November 2000, pp. 211-223 Hume and the Religious Significance of Moral Rationalism J. B. SCHNEEWIND Hume notoriously criticized religion and its defenses, and in particular Christianity. The Dialogues, the Natural History, the chapters on miracles and on providence in the first Enquiry, some of the essays, and many passages in the History are usually taken to be the main presentations of his objections. As Edward Craig points out, it adds up to a great deal—to more than Hume wrote on any other single philosophical subject.1 There are in addition several obvious attacks on religious beliefs in the Treatise. But it is not noticed in the literature that a number of Hume's arguments in the Treatise tell against propositions that are important for religion even when they are not labelled as being so. I give only one example. In the course of arguing that causes must precede their effects, Hume remarks that everyone accepts the principle "that an object, which exists for any time in its full perfection without producing another, is not its sole cause." The point reappears later as one of the rules for judging cause and effect.2 At neither place does Hume make explicit one of the implications: that either God is not the sole cause of his creation, or else the creation is co-eternal with God. Both of these alternatives would of course be unacceptable to Christians. In this paper I argue that Hume's critique of moral rationalism is yet another unlabelled attack on religion. 1 do not propose to add to the literature assessing the arguments against rationalism. I raise instead a question about their point in Hume's campaign against religion. John Balguy voiced a commonplace eighteenth-century view of the relations between religion and J. B. Schneewind is Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, 347 Gilman Hall, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. e-mail: jbsl@jhu.edu 212 /. B. Schneewind morality when he remarked that "whatever promotes the cause of revealed religion befriends morality, and whatever strengthens morality adds force to religion."3 Hume, everyone agrees, was trying strenuously to separate the two; and he knew he was bound to be understood as threatening both in so doing. A look at the religious signficance of rationalist moral thought should bring out some of the philosophically pertinent motivations he had for attempting to destroy this view of morality. It may also add some clarity to the vexed issue of what Hume himself "really" thought about God. On this matter, as we all know, the variety of opinion is considerable. Was he, as his early critics charged, an atheist? Was he a concealed believer—a theist perhaps? Did he hold some version of deism? For present purposes the question of the relation between Hume and deism is central. It is not unusual to identify Hume as an adherent of this movement. Thus Gawlick cites an extensive German literature from the eighteenth century onward which treats Hume, more or less hesitantly, as a deist. Gawlick himself thinks the matter is debatable. What chiefly separated Hume from deism, Gawlick thinks, "was not his rejection of rationalism" but his own "final despair" about attaining the defining goal of the deists, which he takes to have been ridding the world of superstition, intolerance, and clerical authority.4 Agreeing about Hume's pessimism on the practical matter, Gaskin argues nonetheless that Hume is an "attenuated deist," and that what separates him from the deists is his "attack on two arguments: that from design and that from first cause."5 Foster agrees with Gaskin.6 I think that both of these views about Hume's relation to deism are mistaken . Of course no one thinks it matters much exactly what label we attach to Hume's religious position. He is not apt to fit into a pre-existing category so in any case we will have to explain what our label means. But in order to understand Hume's standpoint we must be able, like the sympathetic moral spectator, to put ourselves imaginatively into the position of those most affected by the debates that he was...

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