Religion and Faction in Hume's Moral Philosophy

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Cambridge University Press, Oct 23, 1997 - Philosophy - 300 pages
This book explores Hume's concern with the destructiveness of religious factions and his efforts to develop, in his moral philosophy, a solution to factional conflict. Sympathy and the related capacity to enter into foreign points of view are crucial to the neutralization of religious zeal and the naturalization of ethics. Jennifer Herdt suggests that Hume's preoccupation with religious faction is the key which reveals the unity of his varied philosophical, aesthetic, political, and historical works.

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Contents

Setting sympathys stage
19
Interestedness and intelligibility
26
The solution of sympathy
31
Sympathy and the experimental method
37
Displacing Providence
41
The Hutcheson connection
52
Accounting for approbation
62
The problem of contradiction
67
The problem of vicious manners
135
Divergent sympathies
145
Beyond poetry history speculation and religion
159
Religion and irrationality in history
170
Varieties of religious belief
173
Hume vs Pascal
183
Irony and sentimentality in the History of England
190
Zeal and faction
199

Sympathy and the Enquiry
73
Poetical systems and the pleasures of tragedy
84
The Douglas controversy
89
Of tragedy
100
Fiction reality and belief
107
the dangers of detachment
115
Sympathetic understanding and the threat of difference
119
The limits of sympathetic understanding
208
Conclusion
221
Notes
236
Select bibliography
285
Index
295
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