project throughout the Treatise,” and it is “a mistake to assume that Hume’s various discussions in the Treatise . . . are irrelevant to the question concerning our idea of God.” Russell concedes “the fact that Hume rarely mentions the term ‘God,’ and says little directly about the nature and origin of this idea.” He stresses that this “should not obscure the importance of all that he has to say as it relates to the divine attributes.” In short, Hume did not successfully “castrate” all the religious or “nobler” parts of his Treatise. His early philosophical work offered useful insights for and criticisms of theism and discourse on religion.3
It is not surprising that the Treatise took up the topic of religion to expose the fragile sources of traditional arguments for God.4 Hume repeatedly stated that the vulgar theism of false religion was dangerous in part because it stood on unstable foundations. At the same time, he adamantly denied the charges of atheism and rejected the label of “deist.” Hume’s letters (especially the Letter to Mure, 1743), the first Enquiry (1748), Natural History of Religion (1757), and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) demonstrated the obvious: that Hume seriously and strategically considered both more and less useful forms of theism. Given his abiding interest in religion and the textual evidence for it, it is fair to presume that he began thinking about theism very early in his literary career. That Hume seriously considered theism does not mean he believed religion to be an automatic remedy for social ills (he did not) or that popular versions of theism were intelligible on his theory of mind (they were not). It is merely a Humean acknowledgment that what he called the “whimsical condition of mankind” (E, 12.2.7) was a state in which the mind seemed to naturally go beyond experience to “the assent of the understanding to the proposition that God exists” (LET, 1.50.21). This basic theism in Hume’s philosophy highlighted the mind’s assumption of a (hidden) source for what was given to us in experience, our natural presupposition of a (unseen) cause of perceptions, our sense that the principles of human nature had an (invisible) author, the feeling that there was an ultimate cause behind the (secret) powers of nature, and a disposition to teleology (the feeling that an unknowable purpose probably lightly guided nature).
An interesting debate exists in the secondary scholarship as to whether Hume’s discussion of necessary connection and causation resulted in him holding the position that causal power was real.5 This debate bears heavily on discussions of theism in Hume. I try to circumvent its worries and take advantage of its insights by separating ontological concerns from epistemological ones. I restrict my interest in basic theism and my speculation that the proper office of religion might include a genuine theism to the realm of our thoughts and beliefs. I accept Hume’s fundamental caveat that “as long as we confine our speculations to the appearances of objects to our senses, without entering into disquisitions concerning their real nature and operations, we are safe from all difficulties” (T, app., 35). I do not take this to mean that Hume sought to limit reality simply to our ideas. His nondogmatic skepticism left him open to the possibility of mind-independent reality. Still, I have no pretensions to chime in on this debate; I simply take the path of least resistance in describing basic, vulgar, and genuine theism by situating them entirely within the parameters of the mind and the bounds of the imagination. My interest is in the mind’s supposition of order and causal power and how it invites a mental disposition toward basic theism. This predilection of mind, that “a purpose, an intention, a design, is evident in everything” (NHR, 15.1), can inspire either a vulgar theism—the miracle performing, anthropomorphic God of popular Christianity—or genuine theism, the moderate belief in an unobtrusive Author of Nature. I shall return to the debate surrounding Hume’s causal realism. What is important here is that Hume’s philosophy is built around the idea that the mind assumes regularity and accepts that “the future resembles the past” (T, 1.3.12.9). This assumption makes the idea of the Author of Nature irresistible to the mind (this is why I call it “basic theism”). Whether causal power is real or the Author of Nature actually exists is a different matter indeed.
Of course, Hume challenged the very notion that we could have a “feeling” without an impression, and he thought any causal chain that linked the future to the past was unintelligible on the existing standards of reason. This suggests that naming Hume’s sense of order as a “basic theism” does not quite comport with his scathing denunciations of popular forms of Christianity, his exasperation with both false religion and traditional metaphysics, or his approach to philosophical truth. But Hume’s personal animus for traditional theism and his critical disposition toward vulgar religion do not automatically preclude a basic theism either. In fact, one can reconcile the theistic openness of his work with the elements that seem to oppose it: for example, his self-styled skepticism, his moral critique of popular Christianity, and his idea that to “conceive of something adds nothing to our idea of it” remain viable, crucial features of his thought even as we consider the modest sense of theism at its foundations. What I identify as Hume’s basic theism leaves room for expressions of doubt, invites moral criticism of anthropomorphic conceptions of God, and is consistent with the idea that the existence of something adds very little to our idea of it. It also supports his unique form of skepticism, an obstacle to which we will later attend. Whether I am pushing him further than he wanted to go remains an interesting question.
HUME’S EARLY SCIENCE OF SELF-UNDERSTANDING
Hume, raised Presbyterian by a single mother, claimed to have “never had entertained any belief in religion since he had begun to read Locke and Clarke” (around his twentieth birthday).6 These thinkers were seminal for his first philosophical work, now canonical, which was published when he was twenty-eight years old. John Rawls, in his Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, reminds us that its general content was “projected” when the author was fourteen, “planned” before he turned twenty-one, and largely “composed” before he was twenty-five. Thus it is safe, albeit somewhat cheeky, to note that this text, described as the greatest work of philosophy written in the English language, was conceived by a Scottish “tween” and written on his first major trip beyond his homeland. It is likely, given both the deep religious sentiments of his day and his break from the religious tradition of his family, that the young man’s first major effort would attend—even if only in an iconoclastic fashion—to issues pertinent for religion, especially belief in God. Perhaps the “new scene of thought” he referenced in his famous “Letter to a Physician” (LET, 1.17.3) would even recast religion and reconceive theism in ways that Locke and Clarke would appreciate.
As he matured, Hume distanced himself from the 1739 Treatise. In an autobiographical essay written just months before his death, he claimed, “Never a literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise. . . . It fell deadborn from the press” (L, 4). The description of the Treatise as “deadborn” was, in part, literary performance; by then he had breathed life back into it, corrected its errors, and rendered many of its most important arguments clearer in an Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748).7 Revisions notwithstanding, Hume did not distance himself from philosophical discourse on religion. The first Enquiry, in fact, consisted of twelve sections, two of which were explicitly and harshly critical of popular religion: “Of Miracles” and “Of Providence and Any Future State.” These sections, “castrated” from the early Treatise, challenged important beliefs of Christian believers. Their analysis rested, however, on the foundations of the critique of religion contained in the first philosophical work.
Despite Hume’s expressed disavowal of the Treatise and his rebranding of its most important interventions under a new banner, it still holds a unique place in Western thought and is usually given priority when it comes to the study of his philosophy. It is also elemental for his philosophy of religion. What is it about Hume’s philosophical first let serve that has allowed it to survive as the cornerstone of his thought in spite of his repudiations of it? What did the young Hume, suffering through his own “disease of the mind” during the planning and composing of the text, articulate here that survived redaction, landed in the first Enquiry, and served
