Provides fresh and even groundbreaking perspectives on Humes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. It is essential reading for students and scholars of Hume, the history of modern philosophy, philosophy of religion and the history and philosophy of science.
David Humes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical and literary classic of the highest order. It is also an extremely relevant work because of its engagement with issues as alive today as in Humes time: the Design Argument for a deity, the Problem of Evil, the dangers of superstition and fanaticism, the psychological roots and social consequences of religion.
In this outstanding and unorthodox collection, an international team of scholars engage with Humes classic work. The chapters include state-of-the-art contributions on the central interpretive questions posed by the Dialogues as well as major contributions relating the work to contemporary issues in Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Moral Psychology, and Social Philosophy. Additional contributions tackle the historical and philosophical background of the Dialogues, relating it to Humes own systematic philosophy, to the work of other key seventeenth and eighteenth-century figures Locke, Clarke, Bayle, Cudworth, Malebranche, Spinoza, Lord Bolingbroke, and Voltaire, among others to early modern neo-Epicureanism in the life sciences, and, notably, to what Darwin missed by thinking too much like William Paley and not enough like Humes Philo.
Overall, this volume provides fresh and even groundbreaking perspectives on Humes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. It is essential reading for students and scholars of Hume, the History of Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion and the History and Philosophy of Science.
Introduction Kenneth Williford Part 1: Two Overtures to Raillery
1.
Humes Dialogues: Cautious, Artful and Funny Simon Blackburn
2. Recipes or,
Philosophy for Fun Clark Glymour Part 2: Theistic "Proofs"
3. A Bayesian
Double Negative: A Critique of Humes Treatment of the Design Argument in the
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and A Critique of the Design Argument
Itself Elliott Sober
4. Cleanthes Challenge and the Irregular Argument
from Design Todd Ryan
5. Hume, Locke, and the Demonstrability of Gods
Existence Annemarie Butler Part 3: Matters of Interpretation
6. Humes
Artful Masterpiece: The Dialogues and the Concealed Case for Atheism Andrew
Pyle
7. Not Hoist with his own Petard: Humes Dance with Skepticism in
Dialogues, Part I Evan Fales
8. Demeas Departure Revisited Lorne Falkenstein
9. Humes Palimpsest: The Four Endings of the Dialogues Emilio Mazza and
Gianluca Mori Part 4: Religion, Passion, and the Limits of Reason
10. Natural
Religions "Dangerous Consequences" David OConnor
11. Reason and Passion in
Humes Philosophy of Religion John P. Wright
12. Philos Two Designers and
Humean Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone Charles Nussbaum Part 5:
Epicurus and Darwin, Strato and Spinoza
13. Hume, Darwin, and the "Epicurean
Hypothesis" John Reiss
14. Philos Trojan Horse: The World Soul Hypothesis
and the Necessitarianism Inside Peter LeGrant
15. Philo, Strato, and Spinoza
Kenneth Williford. Index
Kenneth Williford is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at The University of Texas at Arlington, USA. He works primarily in Philosophy of Mind, Phenomenology, and the History of Modern Philosophy.