Course syllabus

This course will focus on a close reading and critical discussion of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, in relation to contemporary debate on the relevant questions in the Philosophy of Religion (including debate about the aptness of understanding the God of the classical theist tradition as the ‘personal omniGod’, i.e. a supernatural personal agent who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, or morally perfect). Amongst commentators on Hume, we will pay special attention to David M. Holley, ‘The role of anthropomorphism in Hume’s critique of theism’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 51 (2002), 83-99. We will also consider Hume’s Natural History of Religion, comparing it with contemporary explanations of religious belief in evolutionary psychology (Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (Basic Books, 2001); Scott Atran, In Gods We Trust: the Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2002); Ara Norenzayan, Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Co-operation and Conflict (Princeton University Press, 2013)). We will also aim to have a session on Hume’s essay ‘Of Miracles’, in order to get an overall view of Hume’s philosophy of religion.

Assessment in this course will be based on an essay of 6,000 words. The due date for the submission of essays is Monday 6 November at 4 p.m. Please submit essays electronically to me at jc.bishop@auckland.ac.nz. [Note: any students enrolled for a Special Studies course in tandem with this course may either do one 12,000 word essay or two 6,000 word essays.]