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Beyond Hume: Demea a rehabilitation with systematic intent

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Abstract

Traditionally, Demea is considered to be the weakest character in Hume’s famous Dialogues concerning Natural Religion; the stage is completely dominated by Cleanthes’ optimistic theism and by Philo’s skeptical critical manoeuvres against that. Contrary to this traditional approach, however, the ‘orthodox’ Demea will be defended here by maintaining that Demea contributes—though neither consciously intended nor recognized by Hume—the most interesting observations concerning religious belief. He points to a position lying beyond the metaphysical fantasies of theism (in league with its successors, the “friends of Cleanthes”) on the one hand and Philo’s destructiveness, which seems to amount to a moralized minimal version of faith on the other. It will be clear that this defense is not exegetically orientated, but rather reacts to a constellation personalized in Hume’s ‘casting’ that lets us see on which topics we shall continue to work theologically as well as philosophically today. Accordingly, a conceptual critique of Cleanthes and Philo will be elaborated, using three concrete examples to show what religious belief lying beyond metaphysical hopes that explain God as a (quasi)person, as well as reductionist concessions that regard ‘God’ merely as an expression of a moral attitude, could look like. Thus Demea represents a ‘postmetaphysical’ image of religious belief—and, eventually, we are invited to belong to the “friends of Demea”.

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Notes

  1. David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. And Other Writings, ed. by Dorothy Coleman, Cambridge 2007, 88; page numbers in brackets refer to this text.

  2. In the opinion of Thomas Olshewsky it is comparatively more difficult to give Demea an appropriate label than to do so for the sceptical, religion-critical thinking of Philo and Cleanthes’ affirmative-theistic approach (so Thomas M. Olshewsky, “Demea’s Dilemmas,” in BSHP 11:3 [2003], 473–492, here 475).

  3. Again Pamphilus points to the advantages that the dialogue form offers for topics that, to be sure, are “obvious and important,” but at the same time “obscure and uncertain” (cf. 4). It scarcely is surprising that this sketch fits Hume’s proper topic, the prospects for a natural religion, when this short description is after all formulated on the basis of this interest. According to Michael Prince, Hume’s work marks the highpoint, but also “the end of religious dialogue” (Michael B. Prince, “Hume and the End of Religious Dialogue,” in ASECS 25:3 [1992], 283–308, here 308).

  4. So, for example, Norbert Hoerster, “Nachwort” to the German edition: Dialoge über natürliche Religion (Stuttgart 2004), 147–158, here 151.

  5. The supposition that the sceptic Hume was ‘not sceptical enough’ is found already (though with a different accentuation) in Norman Kemp Smith, “Introduction” to the Dialogues (Indianapolis/New York, no year, 11).

  6. Olshewsky (n. 2), 473.

  7. Jüngel, ‘with such great similarity between God and the world, an always still greater dissimilarity’ (see Eberhard Jüngel, “‘Meine Theologie’—kurz gefaßt,” in idem, Wertlose Wahrheit. Theologische Erörterungen III, Tübingen 22003 (1990), 1–15, here 9), expresses it precisely the other way around.

  8. The name Philos is also an allusion, likely to one of Cicero’s teachers, particularly as there is a consensus that Cicero’s De Natura Deorum served Hume as a model for his Dialogues. Rudolf Lüthe, on the other hand, presents another origin for the name, and refers it to a sceptic of the ‘new academy’, namely, Philon of Larissa; see Rudolf Lüthe,David Hume. Historiker und Philosoph, Freiburg/München 1991, 93.

  9. However, that Philo is indeed the radical sceptic whom Cleanthes appears to hold him to be, and whether the former could not agree with the reference to a scepticism in practical life, could be questioned. Yet it is interesting that it is the theist who argues a position which comes eminently close to Hume’s own. For this refer to Hume’s distinction between academic and sceptical philosophy (David Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and Other Writings [1748], ed. by Steven Buckle, Cambridge 2007, part 12). Hume himself advocated academic thinking, in allusion to the school of Plato, for whom the Scot pays his respect in multiple ways in that he expresses himself on religious-philosophical questions in conclusion in dialogue form. Thus this is a moderate form of sceptical thought, that is the “Anwalt des praktischen Lebens” (‘the advocate of practical life’) (Jens Kulenkampff, Hume. Einführung, München 22003, 22), to the extent that “philosophical decisions are nothing but the reflections of common life, methodized and corrected” (Hume, Enquiry, 142); the “sceptical” philosophy, on the other hand, resembles the position of a (hyper)Cartesianism rejected here by Cleanthes; to the philosophical-historical background see Markus Gabriel, Antike und moderne Skepsis, Hamburg 2008, esp. 77–86.

  10. It is necessary to distinguish between two basic forms of the analogy. The analogia attributionis expresses the similarity of different objects or persons with reference to one or more qualities. A quality x is attributed to different things (a, b, c,…) that in all further qualities can (not must) differ [x: a, b, c,…]. The analogia proportionalitatis has the structure of a relation of relations. Two things (a, b) relate to each other as do two other things (c,d) [a:b ≈ c:d]; see Eberhard Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, Tübingen 61999, § 17: “Das Problem analoger Rede von Gott,” 357–383. Cleanthes’ analogy is obviously one of the second type, which is important for the structure of Philo’s critique. Cf. generally to analogical thinking: Karen Gloy, “Versuch einer Logik des Analogiedenkens,” in Idem./M. Bachmann (eds.), Das Analogiedenken. Vorstöße in ein neues Gebiet der Rationalitätstheorie, Freiburg i.Br. 2000, 298–323.

  11. See to this example already Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Vorlesungen über den religiösen Glauben,” in Vorlesungen und Gespräche über Ästhetik, Psychoanalyse und religiösen Glauben, ed. by Cyril Barrett. Deutsch von Ralf Funke, Düsseldorf/Bonn 1994, 77–101, here 100.

  12. See, for example, John C.A. Gaskin, Hume’s Philosophy of Religion, London/Basingstoke 1978, 9–40, who differentiates five levels.

  13. A good overview of the three levels is to be found in: Dewi Z. Phillips, Religion without Explanation, Oxford 1976, 10–12, 22; idem, “Is Hume’s True Religion a Religious Belief,” in idem and Timothy Tessin (eds.), Religion and Hume’s Legacy, London/Basingstoke 1999, 81–98, here 83; idem,Recovering Religious Concepts. Closing Epistemic Divides, Houndmills/Basingstoke/London 2000, 65.

  14. Cf. Phillips, Religion without Explanation (s. above n. 13), 13, whereby he here already points out that the hoped-for pro/contra evidence (could) remain(s) insufficient, as John Wisdom with his famous parable of the invisible gardener explains: John Wisdom, “Gods,” in idem, Philosophy and Psycho-analysis, Oxford 1969, 149–168, here 154–156. Phillips refers to the parable, ibid., 13–15; further idem, Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation, Cambridge 2001, 59.

  15. Cf. Phillips, Religion without Explanation (s. above n. 13), 14–16, whose deliberations I have taken somewhat further here. Phillips himself states:

    “Not only is Hume saying that the evidence of design is inconclusive, he is saying that it is misleading to speak of evidence of design in these contexts at all. He is telling us to treat nature naturally. If we do so, we shall find that we arrive at our explanations by relating item to item within nature, without having to appeal to any external intelligence.” (ibid., 16; my italics).

  16. I do not go further into (i) and (ii); see Peter F. Bloemendaal, Grammars of Faith. A Critical Evaluation of D.Z. Phillips’s Philosophy of Religion, Leuven/Paris/Dudley, MA 2006, ch. 5.1.; see also M. Jamie Ferreira, “Phillips: An Inheritance Reconsidered,” in Mark Addis and Robert L. Arrington (eds.), Wittgenstein and Philosophy of Religion, London 2001, 154–166, esp. 159–160.

  17. Phillips, Religion without Explanation (s. above n. 13), 18–19 (my italics); cf. ibid., 22.

  18. Both quotes: ibid, 17 & 18.

  19. Phillips, “Is Hume’s True Religion a Religious Belief” (s. above n. 13), 85; cf. ibid., 84; also idem, Hermeneutics of Contemplation (s. above n. 14), 70.

  20. Hans Julius Schneider also sees it so, expressing these thoughts as follows:

    “Keinen der von ihm fingierten Gesprächspartner lässt Hume aber den Gedanken äußern, aus dem damit angesprochenen Unterschied zwischen Dichtung und Wissenschaft ließe sich folgern, das Projekt einer im Geiste der Wissenschaft verfahrenden natürlichen Religion könnte vielleicht schon als Vorhaben zweifelhaft sein, nicht erst in seiner Durchführung. Auch der Skeptiker Philo, der sich gerade offen gezeigt hatte für die antike Vorstellung einer auf die Lebenspraxis gerichteten Philosophie, stellt bei Hume nicht die von Cleanthes vorgeschlagene Richtung in Frage […].” (Hans J. Schneider, Religion, Berlin/New York 2008, 38).

  21. Phillips, “Is Hume’s True Religion a Religious Belief” (s. above n. 13), 89.

  22. To the (quite positivistic) difference between ‘mistake’ and ‘confusion’ by Phillips see above all: Wittgenstein and Religion, Houndmills/Basingstoke/London 1993, 108; idem, “On Giving Practice its Due – A Reply,” in Religious Studies 31 (1995), 121–127, here 122.

  23. Unfortunately, also D.Z. Phillips can scarcely find anything positive in the thesis that Hume created in Demea a character who was richer than Hume himself recognized, although the religious-philosophical constellation of his effort to find a way between theistic-metaphysical approaches and moralizing-reductive ones resembles that that should be opened with Demea. To the relationship Demea/Phillips see Walter van Herck, “A Friend of Demea? The Meaning and Importance of Piety,” in Andy F. Sanders (ed.), D.Z. Phillips’ Contemplative Philosophy of Religion. Questions and Responses, Aldershot 2007, 125–138, here 125 and 138. However, Phillips does acknowledge several (to be precise: four) similarities that he shares with Demea; see his “Philosophy, Piety and Petitionary Prayer – A Reply to Walter van Herck”, in ibid., 139–152, 140–141.

  24. So Van A. Harvey, “Is There Anything Religious about Philo’s ‘True Religion’?,” in Dewi Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin (eds.), Religion and Hume’s Legacy (s. above n. 13), 68–80, here 69 (in line with J. Gaskin).

  25. See on this William B. Carnochan, “The Comic Plot of Hume’s ‘Dialogues’,” in MPh 85:4 (1988), 514–522, esp. 515.

  26. See on Philo’s minimal concept of religion M. Jamie Ferreira, “Hume’s ‘Mitigated Scepticism’: Some Implications for Religious Belief,” in Phillips and Tessin (eds.), Religion and Hume’s Legacy (s. above n. 13), 47–67, 53. An attempt (in the end unsatisfactory, invoking Schleiermacher) to come to the defense of Philo’s minimal version is offered by Harvey (s. above n. 24), 71, 76–78. That Philo’s view is entirely opposed to the usual characterisation of the difference between belief and unbelief (here—abbreviated—equated with atheism) can hardly be overlooked, for the one coming to belief should after all become a “new creature” (II Cor 5:17), so that between him and his old self (and all other ‘old’ non-believers) lies “a great rift” (“eine enorme Kluft”—so again Wittgenstein, “Vorlesungen über den religiösen Glauben” [s. above n. 11], 77).

  27. See David Hume, The Natural History of Religion, ed. by A. Wayne Colver, Oxford 1976, esp. sections IX & XIV.

  28. In this characterisation I follow Ferreira, “Hume’s ‘Mitigated Scepticism’” (s. above n. 26), 61. On the line of tradition that is clearly emerging, running from British deism through Philo’s vera religio to Immanuel Kant’s writing on religion, I can not and must not elaborate.

  29. So Phillips, Religion without Explanation (s. above n. 13), 25.

  30. I use “modern philosophical theism” instead of “classical theism” because if the latter includes Augustine and Aquinas, then classical theism does not defend a personalistic God, that is, a God who is chiefly understood as a person, as a core feature of its position. As Brian Davies, among others, has shown, the emphasis upon an anthropomorphic God is a much more recent phenomenon (see Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas, Oxford 1992, esp. chapters 3 and 4). With regard to a “personalistic” God, Cleanthes’ position is thus rather modern, but not classical. Demea’s position is in fact more consistent with classical theism (see 20 – we will come back to that passage in more detail in “Rehabilitating Demea” section.). The early classical theists would applaud the fact that Demea teaches his children piety before teaching them natural theology. This is precisely the problem in modern philosophical theism: natural theology is expected to ground piety rather than the other way round. As a result, a pietistic and personal relationship with God is turned into a metaphysical picture of a personal God who is transcendent in an ontological-spatial sense.

  31. The fitting phrase “friends of Cleanthes” again comes from Phillips (Recovering Religious Concepts [s. above n. 13], ch. 5). It refers to newer theistic concepts, especially to the work of Richard Swinburne and John Hick, which is affected by the criticism of Philo; s. esp. Richard Swinburne, “The Justification of Theism” [2002], at: www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth09.html, esp. 5 (to the definition of God); very similarly already: idem, The Existence of God, Oxford 1979, esp. 8; s. also idem, Is There a God?, Oxford 21998; to Swinburne’s theodicy cf. idem, “The Problem of Evil,” in Stuart C. Brown (ed.), Reason and Religion, Ithaca/London 1977, 81–102; further (and directly reacting to Phillips) John Hick, “D.Z. Phillips on God and evil,” in Religious Studies 43 (2007), 433–441, here esp. 439–440.

    To a concept of Trinitarian and crucifixion theology that understands itself as decidedly non-metaphysical, which, however, to my way of thinking does indeed contain the theistic core: Eberhard Jüngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden. Verantwortliche Rede vom Sein Gottes bei Karl Barth. Eine Paraphrase, Tübingen 21967 [1966]; Jüngel’s statements to the self-correspondence of God (ibid., 30, 35–36, 76), to the immanent Trinity (ibid., 62: “innertrinitarischer Rückschluß”) or to the pre-existence of Christ (ibid., 94) make sense only in the presence of this personalistic approach, albeit there is an opposite movement by Jüngel (and Barth) in the preference for the idea of the ‘mode of being’ (Seinsweise) prior to that of the ‘person’ (ibid., 37, 101). Latent theism is inherent also in Jürgen Moltmann’s ‘Crucified God’, because this God is thought of in the figure of self-limitation, but limitation of power always depends still upon the old background of theistic omnipotentia which this God now voluntarily-compassionately renounces. Here the incomprehensibility of that which is allegedly renounced is not encompassed, cf. Jürgen Moltmann,Der gekreuzigte Gott. Das Kreuz Christi als Grund und Kritik christlicher Theologie, München 1972, esp. ch. VI.

  32. In the field of the philosophy of religion the moralization of belief is influentially represented by Richard Braithwaite, whereby the narrative network of belief—its “stories”—work as an amplifier of moral maxims; see Richard B. Braithwaite, An Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Religious Belief, Cambridge 1955, esp. 25–26, 31.

    Reductionism need not always take the form of moralization, as George Lindbeck has made clear: The Nature of Doctrine. Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, Philadelphia 1984. As is well known, Lindbeck distinguishes three basic types of religion, the second of which he calls the ‘expressive’ (cf. ibid., 37–40) and matches the tradition of the later Schleiermacher, or more precisely, a certain way of reading the ‘church father of the nineteenth century’.’ Even with all the needed differentiation, it is not difficult to find corresponding successors in the German-speaking subjectivity-theoretically characterised discussion. As Braithwaite adheres to a two-stage thinking process, whereby the narrative resources of faith are secondary forms of expressions for a way to live one’s life, so—according to Lindbeck (ibid., 22)—the theological variant of this two-step approach is that the primary religious feeling is brought to an only secondary symbolisation of that feeling. If one takes leave of thinking in two steps, it is possible to think of the irreducibility of religious language, images and practices and thereby, with all necessary reductionism, to defend an always still ‘more than necessary’ non-reductionism. A critique of Lindbeck’s account by D.Z. Phillips is to be found in his “Lindbeck’s Audience”, in: Modern Theology 4:2 (1988), 133–154.

  33. To the positions personified by Cleanthes and Philo and the assumptions they share beyond their affirmation and contradiction, see again Phillips, Recovering Religious Concepts (s. above n. 13), 8; idem, Religion and Friendly Fire. Examining Assumptions in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, Aldershot 2004, 50.

  34. Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher, Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern [1799]. Mit einem Nachwort von Carl H. Ratschow, Stuttgart 1997, 26; cf. ibid., 36.

  35. So above all James Dye, “Demea’s Departure,” in HumeSt XVIII:2 (1992), 467–482, here 467, 475; also to be taken into account is that the ‘first cause’ defended by Demea did not yet lead to the ‘redeemer’ of a living belief in God (cf. ibid., 477).

  36. Cf. James Dye, “A Word on Behalf of Demea,” in HumeSt XV:1 (1989), 120–140, 121 (whereby Dye also criticises that Demea, in spite of the alleged self-evidence of God’s existence, then after all uses the reference to tradition as an authoritative argument).

  37. See Olshewsky (s. above n. 2), 482–483.

  38. See esp. Carnochan (s. above n. 25), 519–520.

  39. Ibid., 516.

  40. It is thanks to this (in detail then polemic) approach that the exegesis of Hume was also open for the important stylistic elements of the Dialogues—which is actually a quite obvious move when one looks at the correlative projects on the works of Plato or Berkeley. This freeing of the discussion from purely argumentative considerations is also due to the interest in Hume in newer literary studies, for example, the contributions of W.B. Carnochan and D. Rohatyn (s. below n. 42).

  41. For example, Olshewsky (s. above n. 2), 490.

  42. See on this Dennis Rohatyn, “Hume’s Dialectical Conceits: The Case of Dialogue XII,” in PPR 43:4 (1983), 519–532, esp. 524.

  43. So Prince (s. above n. 3), 305.

  44. Vgl. Dye, “A Word on Behalf of Demea” (s. above n. 36), esp. 127.

  45. At least it is so seen by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, Tübingen 61990 (1960), 361.

  46. Schneider (s. above n. 21), 40, whom I follow here. Schneider is one of the very few who are interested in Demea without denying him true esteem. The German original reads: «Demeas These [lautet] also nicht, dass uns die einschlägigen Dinge so ferne stünden, dass die Worte nicht bis zu ihnen reichten, vielmehr meint er, die für einen ›mittleren Abstand‹ gemachten Worte für alltägliche Gegenstände seien für etwas, das uns so nahe stehe, unangemessen.». Another attempt to read Demea positively is offered by Ira Singer: http://www.concentric.net/~isinger/research/demea.html.

  47. ‘Im Leben liegen’—a phrase from Ludwig Wittgenstein: Zettel, in Werkausgabe Band 8, Frankfurt a.M. 61994, 259–443, here § 533.

  48. Swinburne appears to have lost sight of this in his reformulation of the teleological argument, so that he according to his own standards merely achieves a higher probability of God’s existence than the opposite. See Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (s. above n. 31), 142–150. This can be disputed with internal criticism (as in John L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism. Arguments for and against the Existence of God [Oxford 1982], esp. ch. 8 [c]), but external objections also obtrude, that reject the God of probability won from an inductive process as a project passing over the essence of faith. (The bus driving through several large European cities emblazoned with “Probably God does not exist” is the welcome caricature of this confusion).

  49. On the background by Samuel Clarke of the arguments presented by Demea, as well as an evaluation of how far it is in fact ‘conventional’ see: Dye, “A Word on Behalf of Demea” (s. above n. 36), 122, 127; idem, “Demea’s Departure” (s. above n. 35), 469; against this: Olshewsky (s. above n. 2), 482.

  50. See Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Nach der ersten und zweiten Originalausgabe [A: 1781/B: 1787], ed. Jens Timmermann, Hamburg 1998, 670–671 (A 594–595/B 622–623).

  51. Norman Malcolm, “Anselm’s Ontological Arguments,” in PhRev 69:1 (1960), 41–62, here 62. (On the other hand, Malcolm’s original aspiration of producing a version of the ontological argument that stays immune to Kant failed, precisely as did his thesis that Anselm would have supported two ontological arguments; cf. ibid., 41 & 45).

  52. On the involvement of Anselm’s argument in practical belief see Ingolf U. Dalferth, Gott. Philosophisch-theologische Denkversuche, Tübingen 1992, 51–94, esp. 59.62.66.

  53. Rudolf Bultmann, Theologische Enzyklopädie, ed. Eberhard Jüngel and Klaus W. Müller, Tübingen 1984, 51.

  54. Phillips, “Is Hume’s True Religion a Religious Belief” (s. above n. 13), 89.

  55. This characterisation must be protected against functionalist misinterpretations. This suspicion is based on the view that belief would be an option with principally equal alternatives. Yet faith is not selectively optional, but for the believer a gift.

  56. This even appears to be admitted by some of his critics; see for example Olshewsky (s. above n. 2), 474, who sees marked in Demea’s departure the turn to “concerns with sentiment and character”—which show parallels to Hume’s moral philosophy.

  57. In this description of the location of religion that concentrates on the negative, Hume’s own view shimmers through, which he will develop in his work The Natural History of Religion, in which fear is considered the basic principal of religion.

  58. So Carnochan (s. above n. 25), 522; Mackie (s. above n. 48), 226.

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von Sass, H. Beyond Hume: Demea a rehabilitation with systematic intent. Int J Philos Relig 86, 61–84 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-019-09711-4

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