Hume’s Mystical Fideism: An Alternative Reading of His view on the Problem of Evil

Document Type : Original Research

Author
Siamak Abdollahi
PhD graduate in Philosophy of Religion, University of Tehran, college of Farabi, Qom, Iran.
10.30497/prr.2018.2117
Abstract
Close examination of the works of David Hume shows that his aim to explain the problem of evil is to attack natural theology and introduce it as a situation that is non-epistemological and unsystematic. So, contrary to what the majority of interpretations which typically express that he makes an argument against the existence of God, Hume wants to show that the statements of natural theology are rationally unprovable, and he does not want to totally decline them. As a matter of fact, they ontologically exist, and are epistemologically out of human cognition. This article shows that the popular interpretation is false, and this would be done in two ways: the first is Hume's statements about the cause of the world (at the end of both Natural History and Dialogues), and the second is Hume’s solutions for the problem of evil, that have mystical streaks. Based on these fact, it will be shown that Hume is not an atheist, but he is a mystical fideist.
Keywords
David Hume
Fideism
Mysticism
Problem of Evil
Natural Theology
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Philosophy of Religion Research
Volume 15, Issue 2 - Serial Number 30
November 2018
Pages 109-121