The deity, figured and dis figured: Hume on philosophical theism and vulgar religion

Abstract

David Hume is usually understood as an early modern champion of atheism, having exposed the absence of rational arguments for the existence of God and the presence of irrational factors in the formation of all religious belief. In this essay I intend to develop a more complex picture of Hume. At the beginning of the Natural History of Religion, Hume makes a distinction between genuine theism and vulgar religion. I will argue that Hume rejects the latter, but endorsees the former. To each of these two forms of religion Hume associates a certain model of the deity: one ascertained by the faculty of empirical reason, the other generated by passions deeply rooted in the anxieties of finitude. The model to which one is inclined will depend largely upon one’s ethical profile.