Nietzsche and the Philosophers (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy) by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781138233065
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-12-08T05:00:00+00:00

Hume’s Naturalistic, Historical Account of Religious Belief

In the Natural History of Religion, Hume gives a naturalistic, historical account of the origin of religious belief in human nature and the human condition.22 Since he has undermined any theoretical foundation for belief in God (and perhaps shown the very idea of God to be meaningless), he’s now in a position to explain how and why, given the creatures we are, we come to believe in an invisible superior being. Note that Hume is concerned with the epistemology of belief: what are the mechanisms by which one comes to a particular belief? Is the belief justified, i.e., grounded in experience? Is the belief avoidable if it’s not justified?

Hume argues, first, that polytheism precedes monotheism, and, second, that it’s our negative emotions (mainly), stirred by the vicissitudes of nature and fate to which we are subject, that first give rise to the conception of a deity:

Agitated by hopes and fears [i.e., the “ordinary affections of human life”] … especially the latter, men scrutinize, with a trembling curiosity, the course of future causes, and examine the various and contrary events of human life. And in this disordered scene, with eyes still more disordered and astonished, they see the first obscure traces of divinity.23

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