Richard Baker

In my dissertation, I try to solve the many philosophical and historical riddles that have swirled around Hume's Dialogues. ;The philosophical riddles concern the Argument from Design, and its general adequacy as an argument; the historical riddles concern Hume's own position on that Argument, as well as his position on religious belief in general. The latter have heretofore evaded solution because the Dialogues is a dramatic fiction in which Hume nowhere appears or announces his own beliefs. The former have proved elusive because Philo closes the work by dismissing all of his previous objections, and thereupon confesses his long-standing reverence for the Agrument. ;To bring order to this chaos, I first interpret the Dialogues for what it is--namely, a work of fiction--giving due consideration to its plot, characters, setting and thought. In particular, I argue that Demea personifies "vulgar superstition," and that Philo's apparent attack on the Argument is actually part of a ruse by which he pushes that vulgar superstition into absurdity and impiety. I thus argue that Philo's final confession, which occurs after Demea's departure, is sincere. ;Having thus identified the motive behind Philo's attack, I also show that the attack itself does little damage to the Argument. In particular, I show that the Argument survives Philo's attack as a legitimate, probable a posteriori inference. I do acknowledge, however, that the scope of the Argument--i.e., whether it proves merely the existence of an Intelligent Creator or proves something more about the nature of that Creator--remains an open question. ;Having thus defused Philo's attack, I argue that Hume himself probably accepted the Argument, since he does so straightforwardly in many of his other works. As for Hume's general position on religion, however, I argue that his works more reveal the hearts of their readers than the heart of their author. Recalling Johannes Climacus' treatment of Lessing, I argue that Hume, without ever revealing his own religious beliefs, nonetheless leads us to a precipice from which a leap of faith might yet be made.