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Philo’s Argument from Evil in Hume’s Dialogues X: A Semantic Interpretation

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Abstract

Philo's argument from evil in a much-discussed passage in Part X of Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) has been interpreted in three main ways: as a logical argument from evil, as an evidential argument from evil, and as an argument against natural theology's inference of a benevolent and merciful God from the course of the world. I argue that Philo is not offering an argument of any of these sorts, but is arguing that there is a radical disanalogy between the meanings of terms like ‘merciful’ and ‘benevolent’ when applied to God and human beings respectively. Drawing on the new ‘Irreligious Interpretation’ of Hume's philosophy developed by Paul Russell (2002, 2008), I suggest that the underlying aim of Philo's argument appears to be to show, in opposition to Christian teaching, that these terms, when applied to God, are in effect meaningless.

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Notes

  1. See in particular Russell 2002 and 2008.

  2. Hume 1779, 105–106. Numbered square brackets have been added to facilitate future referencing.

  3. Hume 1779, 106–107.

  4. Hume 1779, 110–111.

  5. Hume 1779, 111.

  6. Hume 1779, 112.

  7. Others who concur with this interpretation include Henry D. Aiken 1958, 79; Robert and Marilyn Adams 1990, 3; D.Z. Phillips 2004, 3–5; and Holden 2010, 149–152.

  8. Nelson Pike 1963, 180–181.

  9. Pike 1963, 182.

  10. Pike 1963, 182.

  11. Pike 1963, 182.

  12. Hume 1779, 182.

  13. It may be worth noting that even if the claims (4) and (5) were argued for by Philo, they are not – contrary to what Pike maintains – formally inconsistent with (1), for they are consistent with the claim that ‘God does not want to prevent suffering,’ which, via (4), entails that God is not able to prevent suffering, which in turn entails, via (5), that God would not prevent suffering, which is consistent with there being suffering in the world.

  14. Pike 1963, 182.

  15. See, e.g., Ralph Cudworth 1743, 78–79; Pierre Bayle 1734, 513; and King 1732, 77–78. For documentation of Hume’s acquaintance with these three books, see Ernest Campbell Mossner 1948, 501–503. Lactantius’ statement occurs in his ‘A Treatise on the Anger of God’ (De ira Dei); see Lactantius 1974, 271.

  16. J.C.A. Gaskin 1978, 54.

  17. Davies 2006, 11.

  18. Gaskin 1978, 54.

  19. Davies 2006, 10.

  20. Gaskin 1978, 54.

  21. Others who concur with this interpretation include Keith Yandell 2005, 125; Beryl Logan 1996, 198; Klaas J. Kraay 2003, 285; and Tony Pitson 2008, 92.

  22. William Capitan 1966, 82.

  23. Stanley Tweyman 1991, 70.

  24. William Lad Sessions 2002, 156.

  25. Capitan 1966, 84.

  26. Sessions 2002, 156.

  27. Tweyman 1991, 71.

  28. Hume 1779, 48.

  29. Hume 1779, 24.

  30. By the ‘underlying aim’ of an argument I mean the objective that the author of the argument had in mind in proposing the argument.

  31. See, e.g., Norman Kemp Smith 1935, 73–96; Ernest Mossner 1977, 1–22; Dorothy Coleman 1989, 179–190; R.H. Hurlbutt III 1956, 486–497; and Charles Echelbarger 1975, 19–35.

  32. Kemp Smith 1935, 87.

  33. Mossner 1977, 4. (The letter is to Gilbert Elliot of Minto and is dated March 10, 1751.)

  34. Coleman 1989, 183.

  35. B.M. Laing 1937, 178.

  36. Shane Andre 1993, 156. (The letter is to William Strahan and is dated June 8, 1776.)

  37. Hume 1779, 154.

  38. James Noxon 1964, 256. For Hume’s aversion to Christianity, see Kemp Smith 1935, 11–31.

  39. See, e.g., Charles Hendel 1963, 271; Anders Jeffner 1966, 208; and Gaskin 1993, 490n10.

  40. Hume 1779, 112.

  41. Hume 1748, 159, 162–163. Hume says that all attempts to circumvent this retraction involve ‘inextricable Difficulties, and even Contradictions.’

  42. See especially Russell’s 2008. The ‘irreligious’ interpretation of Hume was anticipated by Mossner: ‘Hume’s aversion […] to Christianity was deep-rooted and informed his entire career as philosopher, from Treatise to Dialogue’ (1977, 16); and A. J. Ayer: ‘the discrediting […] of any form of religious belief was one of the principal aims Hume’s philosophy’; 1980, 23.

  43. Philip Schaff (ed.) 1877, 606.

  44. See, e.g., Hume 1748, 23–25. For more on Hume’s empiricist view of word meaning, see Yandell 2005, 62–69.

  45. Aquinas 1948, 160. (ST I, q13, a5.)

  46. See Russell 2008, 282–283.

  47. Kemp Smith 1935, 8.

  48. See Russell 2002, 164–165; and 2008, 282–286.

  49. Schaff (ed.) 1877, 608 (my emphasis).

  50. It may be noted that Calvinism’s doctrine that all events are ordained by God is inconsistent with a libertarian view of free will, for on such a view there are events that must be beyond what God can ordain, namely the volitional actions of free agents. Hume concurred with Calvinism in rejecting libertarianism, although, of course, for different reasons; see Hume 1748, 129–163.

  51. Schaff (ed.) 1877, 615.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Professor Paul Russell, of the University of British Columbia, Canada, and to Professor Anders Jeffner, of Uppsala University and the Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, Sweden, for helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Work on this paper was made possible by a generous grant from the Swedish Research Council.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, 1866 Main Mall, E370, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1, Canada

    Anders Kraal

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Kraal, A. Philo’s Argument from Evil in Hume’s Dialogues X: A Semantic Interpretation. SOPHIA 52, 573–592 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-013-0372-2

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