My concluding chapter discusses the possible usefulness of attending to genuine theism, practical morality, and moderate hope in Hume’s work. It highlights the closeness between Thomas Nagel’s recent naturalist teleology and Hume’s genuine theism, notes how my reading of Hume can be deployed against radical atheists and evangelicals alike, and discusses some general theories of religion amenable to my argument for Hume’s true religion. By doing so, it attempts to provide further justification for why we might benefit from having scrutinized Hume’s inchoate category ‘true religion.’ Or, to put it slightly differently, it gives Hume’s argument value for thinkers in religious studies. Philosophers have traditionally dismissed Hume’s category ‘true religion’ on the grounds that it is useless as religious worldview, that Hume was insincere in his assertions of it, or that it was a simple way to subvert religion. These approaches refuse to appreciate the breadth of religious theories, methods in the study of religion, and diversity within the history of religion. Reflection on religion demonstrates that affection-based worldviews that celebrate nature yet posit no worship content or those that have a broad sense of a deity with no attributes and refuse to stipulate a firm moral code can still be referred to as “religion.”
A general theme that runs through my argument is that the field of philosophy of religion is a mode of inquiry that perennially raises the questions of what constitutes religion and how we might talk about it. This reminds us that religion always manifests as a specific set of beliefs, actions, and reflections located in a particular tradition. These traditions are always fluid and malleable; in part, they are shaped by social forces, habits of common life, political contexts, geographical location, and so on. We should, therefore, consistently challenge our presuppositions about religion and keep track of the various commitments that we import to our discussions of it. I hope that readers will use Hume’s work as a source for reenergized discourse in the field of religious studies. If our speculative, Humean-influenced true religion is constituted by a humble philosophical theism, a moral commitment to happiness, and a moderate way of hoping, then we have extended the set of tools we have to work with in religious studies. Still, “I am apt, in a cool hour, to suspect, in general, that most of my reasonings will be more useful by furnishing hints and exciting people’s curiosity than as containing any principles that will augment the stock of knowledge that must pass to future ages” (LET, 1.16.39).
But if we consider the matter more closely, we shall find, that this interested diligence of the clergy is what every wise legislator will study to prevent; because in every religion, except the true, it is highly pernicious, and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the true, by infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly, and delusion.
—HE, 3.135–36
The majority of the literature on David Hume is relatively silent about what he takes the proper office of religion to be. This is understandable given Hume’s powerful critique of traditional Christian doctrine and the fact that he neither offered a prescriptive language for religion nor detailed its proper office. Unlike his peers who assumed the natural progress of history (Smith), proposed a Christian vision for society (Locke), or accepted that the universe had a moral dimension (Hutcheson), Hume challenged these ideas and contested the philosophical justification of religion. Still, his work was rich with constructive insights—some inchoate and others implicit—that contemporary thinkers in religious studies might benefit from considering. Taking his Ciceronian influences into account and reading Hume through the lens of our speculative true religion brings these constructive elements into view. From this perspective, Hume’s arguments regarding causation, his sense that passions can be moderated, and his commitment to a practical morality (T, 3.3.6.6) supply content for what Hume might have meant by religion’s proper office. This chapter elaborates on the rare form of religion that “regulate[s] the heart[s] of men” and “humanize[s] their conduct” (DCNR, 12.12) and attempts to extend Hume’s project for religion so that it might be useful for contemporary discourse in the philosophy of religion.
Hume’s explicitly stated aim regarding religion was to discern its manifestations in common life, explain its foundations in reason, and narrate its “origin[s] in human nature” (NHR, introd). His actual reflections on religion went a bit further: they were multidimensional and included penetrating observations as well as moderate suggestions couched in the terms he inherited: false religion and true religion.1 Characteristically, the critical framework of Hume’s science easily conveyed his distaste for false religion: “a species of philosophy” (E, 11.27). His positive project for religion, however, was largely concealed in indirection. Isabel Rivers offers a crucial reminder: we must “be aware of what is taken for granted, the unstated moral and theological assumptions” in the work of Radical Enlightenment philosophers.2 Her point, that the aspirations of some thinkers cannot find expression in their theoretical framing due to the critical structure of their work, is an important filter for the following investigation. To effectively consider what Hume may have meant by religion’s proper office, that is, to detect his mild suggestions for religion so we might build on them, we should generally work from a positive philosophical temperament and keep in mind the broad aims of his project.3
We expand our understanding of Hume when we acknowledge both the trenchant criticisms and tacit recommendations for religion across his writings. To be sure, Hume’s generically voiced project for religion was mostly a critical one directed against the Evangelical Presbyterianism in which he was raised. Though his work contained inconsistencies and incongruities, his critical disposition toward religion did not vary: he dubbed popular forms of Christian practice and doctrine “false religion” and he loathed them. Hume further derided the theism of popular religion that stipulated that God had moral attributes and was worship-worthy; he detested both superstition and enthusiasm due to their reliance on extreme passions, and he declared that vulgar religion had a corrupting influence on moral character. These vituperative positions constituted his direct response to the religious wars of his time and place, problems that deeply troubled him and ones that he prioritized in his work. Given his strategic choice to make more of a critical intervention against popular religion instead of a constructive one, he did not describe religion’s proper office with systematic detail. Still, it is fair to presume from his near obsession with religion, his Presbyterian background, his reading of Cicero, his commitment to moderation and the reflective, true philosophy, as well as his investment in social stability, that the question of the most effective form of religion remained near to his thinking. Further, Hume’s attitude toward religion was never simply a critical one. He offered (indirect) insights for true religion. We may extract from these (indirect) reflections—and cobble together substance for his undeveloped idea ‘true religion’—by reading between the multiple overlapping strands of his writings, assessing what is underneath his sometimes tacit intentions and closely attending to the fertile oppositions he implies between true and false religion. This sanctions our appraisal of what he may have taken, what he did not explicitly state that might be implicitly present in his work. Beginning with two productive premises—that Hume’s powerful work left us some positive resources for religion and that we can build a Humean-inspired true religion from these resources—the following argument posits three Humean commitments that, when combined, might serve as the foundation for a speculative true religion.
The riddle of both true and false religion in Hume is, ultimately—as he says in the last paragraph of his most important work on religion, the Natural History of Religion—“an enigma.” We can, however, holding the earlier-stated objectives in mind, give some provisional content to