Humes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

David Humes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical and literary classic of the highest order. It is also an extremely relevant work because of its engagement with issues as alive today as in Humes time: the Design Argument for a deity, the Problem of Evil, the dangers of superstition and fanaticism, the psychological roots and social consequences of religion. In this outstanding and unorthodox collection, an international team of scholars engage with Humes classic work. The chapters include state-of-the-art contributions on the central interpretive questions posed by the Dialogues as well as major contributions relating the work to contemporary issues in Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Moral Psychology, and Social Philosophy. Additional contributions tackle the historical and philosophical background of the Dialogues, relating it to Humes own systematic philosophy, to the work of other key seventeenth and eighteenth-century figures Locke, Clarke, Bayle, Cudworth, Malebranche, Spinoza, Lord Bolingbroke, and Voltaire, among others to early modern neo-Epicureanism in the life sciences, and, notably, to what Darwin missed by thinking too much like William Paley and not enough like Humes Philo. Overall, this volume provides fresh and even groundbreaking perspectives on Humes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. It is essential reading for students and scholars of Hume, the History of Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion and the History and Philosophy of Science.