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David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Otherness in History and in Text

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Robert John  and
Sheffler Manning
Robert John
Affiliation:
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
Sheffler Manning
Affiliation:
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
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Extract

In the autumn of 1915 at Princeton, the graduate student, Charles Hendel, and the professor, Norman Kemp Smith, went for a walk. Hendel thought the time auspicious to announce his desire to write a dissertation on Rousseau. As happens not infrequently between an adviser and a student, Kemp Smith attempted to dissuade his student from his intention and advised him to look into David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, instead. The professor noted that a ‘deadlock’ had long existed between those who thought the sceptic, Philo, spoke for Hume, and those who thought the theistic views of Cleanthes most nearly echoed Hume's true opinions on religion. Perhaps through researching the problem, Kemp Smith suggested, Hendel could ‘resolve that impasse and establish Hume's position on the religious question’.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 1990 , pp. 415 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 Hendel, Charles, Studies in the Philosophy of David Hume (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1925), p. vii.Google Scholar

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7 Jessop, T. E. rightly points out in his essay ‘The Present-Day Relevance of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion’, in Aristotelian Society Supplement XVIII (1939)Google Scholar that Philo's conversion in the last dialogue is the primary problem in explaining the work as a whole.

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