David Hume’s
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 Hume’s 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 Hume’s 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
, relating it to Hume’s 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 Hume’s Philo.
Overall, this volume provides fresh and even groundbreaking perspectives on Hume’s
. 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.