Religion
Of course, Hume’s radical Enlightenment work cannot be separated from its generally anti-Christian, rational emphases on natural religion. At the same time, its classical influence should not be overlooked. In fact, much of Hume’s thought was a synthesis of his extensive reading of classical writers. While he made no direct citations for his specific ideas, his work explicitly referenced scores of classical texts and thinkers. On the grounds of his admitted reading of and high regard for Cicero, we can fairly presume that he was influenced by the notion that religion—at its best—could enhance social and political life and contribute to the stability of the passions and the development of excellence of character. Accordingly, three philosophical ideas concerning religion in Cicero’s work stand out: his skeptical embrace of general theism, his notion that religion could moderate the passions, and his belief that religion could enhance virtuous character development. I shall briefly treat these in order.
Nowhere in the Ciceronian corpus do we find a flat-out rejection of the idea of an Author of Nature. Neither, however do we find a full-blown description of Cicero’s notion of divinity. Cicero’s public position on theism evolved throughout his long career, and he generally concealed his personal theistic beliefs, making it difficult to pinpoint his specific position on theism. Caught in the matrix of a contested yet expanding Hellenic worldview, Cicero’s attempt to reconcile Roman political identity with the heterogeneous ethnic and fluid cultural identities that constituted the empire led him to shift between articulating a skeptical theism, suspending judgment on theism, and remaining uncommitted on the question of theism.15 The general direction of Cicero’s dynamic rhetoric on theism, which is generally discernible after a patient reading across his wide corpus, is that our minds naturally assumed a deity.16 He confirmed this in an early speech, “De haruspicum responsis” (57 B.C.E.), when he asked, “who is so witless that, when he gazes up into heaven, he fails to see that gods exist?”17 Of course, Cicero’s nondogmatic approach to the question of theism was deeply considered and informed by an ethic of utility. His commitment to traditional civic religion required that he embrace, at best, or capitulate, at worst, to a basic theism that acknowledged the inescapability of our powerful belief in a natural order governed by a sense of general providence (that divine reason suffused the cosmos).18
Second, Cicero’s self-styled Stoic commitment to the virtue of moderation was in Hume’s “eye” in “all his reasonings.”19 In De officiis (44 B.C.E.) Cicero gave sacred status to the notion that “people should obey calm of soul and be free from every sort of passion” (1.102).This sacrality invited the notion of religion, which Cicero defined in De inventione (84 B.C.E.) as “that which causes men to pay attention to, and to respect with fixed ceremonies, a certain superior nature, which men call divine nature.”20 He believed the habit for religion enhanced our capacity for self-restraint, our “superior nature” that separated us from animals. Thus, against the Platonic emphasis on knowledge-of-self as virtue (which can create detached philosophers unaware of the laws) and the Aristotelian notion of virtue as the mean between two extremes (which might encourage one to transcend the law), the Ciceronian commitment to moderation served the natural laws that reflected innate, collective duties that had been codified as laws of the state. They also linked to our theistic worldview as described in De finibus bonorum et malorum: “A study of the heavens brings in addition a certain sense of moderation when one observes the great order and control that obtains among the gods as well. To look upon the gods’ works and their acts creates in us a loftiness of spirit. And we gain a sense of justice when we understand the will, the design and the purpose of the supreme guide and lord to whose nature philosophers tell us that true reason and the highest law are perfectly matched.”21 Cicero’s conception of moderation updated Aristotle’s. Hume’s moderation of the passions would, in some ways, renew Cicero’s.
A third idea of Cicero’s that also appeared in Hume’s work is that attention to the “heavens” or “divine nature” (religio, in the previous argument) both enables moderation and assists in the development of virtuous character, a reflection of classical moral philosophy. Cicero’s self-styled Stoicism concerned itself with the political and (by default) personal benefits of religio. He supported forms of sacred worship and cultic practices that prioritized justice, which he took to be the Stoic form of natural law. If religio led to justice it follows that it assisted the human telos toward happiness because “the moral life is the happy life.”22 On this logic, one can argue that religio supported the development of virtuous behavior and human excellence to encourage stability—a condition for personal happiness. Thus the development of virtuous character, happiness, and proper functioning of the state were moral considerations undergirding Cicero’s use of the supple category religio. When read in the direct light of this Ciceronian emphasis, Hume’s ethics seems to reflect more of a classical approach to morality. Perhaps his 1742 essay “The Stoic” (EMPL, 16.146–54), where he reproduced the style of the Ciceronian “rhetorical dialogue” and argued that “the great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness” (16.148), is most obvious in this regard. In it Hume seems to imbue the sense of happiness with something of a religious flavor, in the sense that it is driven by something greater than our personal motivations and natural dispositions.23 In this sense religion may enhance our moral lives, but the quality of our moral lives does not depend on religion.
These features of Cicero’s style and content in his treatment of religion are present in Hume’s philosophical, religious, and historical writings. Secondary scholarship confirms that Cicero influenced Hume more than any other classical writer. His impact on Hume’s moral thought and theory of the passions has been well documented. Religion was an area that was crucial for both men. Given these facts, we may fairly presume a Ciceronian influence on Hume’s thinking about religion. More details from Hume’s work will emerge in the subsequent discussion, but his Ciceronian stylistic foundations are clear: Hume writes about religion across genres and uses the dialogue form; he takes both a critical and affirmative approach to religion (true and false); and he believes the best of religion is historically grounded in the traditions that serve stability.
Content-wise, the three features of Cicero’s position on religion were also evident in Hume’s. Each chapter of this book offers more details to the categories that tentatively endow our Humean true religion: a basic theism, moderation of the passions, and veneration of character development, respectively. None of these claims regarding style or content are very controversial. The assertion, however, that we might take his general theism, moderation of the passions, and practical morality, cumulatively, as constitutive of the proper office of religion is maybe more so. It challenges the pervasive views that Hume was an atheist, that he was only critical of and hostile to religion, and that his religious interests were subsumed in his moral theory. These views have steered philosophers trained in religious studies away from engaging with the more generative components of Hume’s religious thought and concealed his mild affirmations of religion. Consider this clarification from Hume’s own hand in his response to charges of irreligion in the Treatise: “And must not a Man be ridiculous to assert that our Author denies the Principles of Religion, when he looks upon them as equally certain with the Objects of his Senses?” (LG, 21). Commonly explained away as ironic and insincere and as a “smoke screen” for Hume’s real position, the persistent association of Hume with hostility to religion deadens us to his quiet suggestions for religion and their Ciceronian influences.
Cicero’s approach to religio provides a classical starting point for thinking about Hume’s views of religion and sheds light on what may have been present in Hume’s thought that he did not develop. This allows us to construct our Humean true religion on more solid foundations. Of course, Hume did not explicitly define the features of true religion as genuine theism, moderation of the passions, and practical morality. We extend his thought with our speculative construction as a way of preserving its understated fragments.
Cicero’s political interests largely guided his reflections on religion that, in effect, authorized imperial
