it as a fig leaf. On my reading, it seems that the category ‘true religion’ fits neatly into Hume’s philosophical schema and is a requirement of his bifurcated approach to religion. Further, I demonstrate that it was crucially deployed in the discursive tradition of which Hume was a part. If we can support the idea that true religion is a sincere, genuine category of Hume’s thought that signified a nonconventional form of religion, then reconceiving this idea in Hume’s work might support generative work in the contemporary study of religion. In other words, to the question, “Can the rarely interrogated constructive components of Hume’s philosophy of religion, his sense of religion properly conceived, be of any use for contemporary discourse in religious studies?,” this book answers “Yes.”
Since Hume’s lush writing offers little explicit positive content for his notion of ‘true religion,’ the reader must decode his suggestions for insights regarding religion’s ‘proper office.’ To make some provisional claims about what a rare form of religion might look like if it reflected a Humean attitude, we might cobble together disparate aspects of his work. Relieved of its claims for metaphysical legitimacy, released from morality derived from fear of divine authority, and unrestricted by a fixed set of worship practices, religion appears quite bare in Hume’s work. Yet in this very austerity we might find a way to reconceive of religion as a socially beneficial convention thoroughly grounded in history and community with little interest in competing with science in the quest for epistemic truth. Broadly speaking, this approach correlates with contemporary work in religious studies that refuses to treat religion as a system of beliefs or a transhistorical essence. The speculative argument that follows submits that based on the broad contours of his project, this fertile conception of religion might be constituted by a genuine theism, calm passions, and a practical morality. And, thought of this way, it could be of some use to contemporary theories of religion.
Hume’s early philosophical writings and his works on religion are, of course, central for any constructive endeavor based on his work. It behooves us, however, to look beyond these formal writings for a more complete sense of what Hume may have meant when he referred to the “proper office” of religion.2 Hume’s numerous letters provide an important angle into his more private, inner thoughts and give us a key to the Humean attitude; they display his congenial and broad intentions as a thinker. Both his fundamental respect for certain forms and practices of religion as well as his critical disposition toward other forms and elements is evident in the letters.3 Hume’s historical writings reflect this same approach: they attack examples of “modern” religion and its empty rituals yet affirm religion when it facilitates the development of virtuous character and practical morality.4 Hume’s overall account of religion might be summed up in this famous statement from one of his essays: “That the corruption of the best things produces the worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved, among other instances, by the pernicious effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion” (EMPL, 10.73). To some degree, all genres of his work take on this bifurcated attitude regarding religion. They reflect that Hume conceived of religion in two basic ways: as both a destructive force in human society (vulgar religion) and a constructive force for human society (true religion).
Assessing Hume’s dual sense of religion sanctions our keeping track of the extraordinary breadth of his work. To do this in a Humean way we should honor the emblems of Hume’s attitude: the direct challenge to abstruse and philosophical reason, the commitment to historicism and perspectivalism, and the investment in outcomes and utility over rational certainty and analytic clarity. Sifting Hume’s trenchant condemnation of ‘false religion’ through this Humean filter helps us comprehend his criticism and grasp his indirect suggestions for a true religion. Critics might wonder if the Humean approach is too loose to ferret out a consistent dual line of argument such as I have proposed and be worried that the Humean attitude, with its strident critique of reason, is actually a commitment to irrationalism. Neither of these concerns troubles me. Hume’s critique of rationality is not a mere rejection of reason; it is an assault on the furnishing of reason with metaphysical and normative authority. As a ‘true’ philosopher, Hume believed that abstract reason was useful in revealing “relations of ideas” (T, 1.2.5.20), not “matters of fact” (T, 1.3.7.3). He maintained that our behavior was grounded in habits of reflective common life and that these habits were derived from the passions and social conventions mitigated through the psychological concept “sympathy.” The Humean approach, then, undermines the content and temperament of those who dogmatically venerate philosophical reason. At the same time, it exhibits firm loyalty to reasonableness and rational scrutiny. The following argument sustains this commitment: it venerates the reasonable and the reflective as well as the social and the passional over the demands of abstract rational thought and dogmatic metaphysical reasoning. Additionally, it is largely sympathetic to Hume and evades persistent criticisms of his arguments and condemnations of his writings. My aim is to interpret Hume’s thought in a way that makes the best sense of it to see what we might learn anew. Philosophical subtlety and intellectual prestige, as Hume’s approach confirmed, should not be tied to the capacity to debunk arguments and expose gaps in logic. Following Hume’s example, we might consider what it means to operate from the idea that good interpretation is an act of compassion requiring intellectual courage and heroic insight, what he called “greatness of mind” (EPM, 7.4).
So as not to distort the author’s view, sound interpretative work must be based on the full spectrum of available evidence, honest about its intentions, and clear about its limitations. The standard interpretation regarding Hume and religion situates him as the Enlightenment secularist and atheist critic of religion. Although partially true, this is too narrow a view of the existing evidence and it reflects something of a general bias against religion. Most important, this reading of Hume renders his writing barren for generative work in religious studies. An interpretation that attends to the overall arc of his thought project and refuses to take a narrow focus positions us to see that Hume was not simply a detractor of popular religion, a moralist devoid of a sense of the use-value for religion, or a philosopher obsessed with causal logic. Again, Hume was certainly a critic of popular religion: it is undeniable that the experience of evangelical Presbyterianism soured him and that he was concerned that his native Scotland would be further embittered by the Kirk. He made unequivocally horrible and reductive statements about Catholicism, besmirched enthusiastic believers of false religion, and attacked all religious sects that increased factionalism in society. At the same time, however, he contended that religion was a persistent and inescapable fact of human history based on (but not original to) human nature; he showed awareness that, as a social convention, religion could be a potential source of happiness for human beings and a possible benefit to the social order; and he did not challenge that religion provided psycho-emotional support for the vast majority of human beings. These aspects of religion may have formed the basis for his mild suggestion ‘true religion.’
Toward a Humean True Religion attempts to demonstrate that if we take true religion to be constituted by the positive conclusions of Hume’s philosophy of understanding, his thoughts on the passions, and his notion of moral utility, then we might discover its worth for contemporary debates in religious studies. More specifically, the thesis here is that we might construct a true religion based on Hume’s work, particularly his ideas of basic theism, his sense of the calm passions, and his commitment to character development. I offer my argument as one possible, usable interpretation, not as a definitive conviction about Hume’s intentions. I am more strongly committed, however, to the negative claim: we must object to arguments that reduce Hume to simply an atheist or a skeptic. By providing some constituent yet provisional features of a Humean-inspired true religion, it is my hope that we might be able to bring Hume off of the sidelines of philosophical discourse of religion and fruitfully deploy his thought for current debates in theology, religion, and morality.
Hume and True Religion
That Hume sparingly mentions the term “true religion” in his corpus should not derail our attempt to understand his notion, for Charles Taylor reminds us that Hume “was like the radical Aufklärer” in that issues “of significance were
