The Politics of Belief in Hume and Enlightenment Scepticism

This thesis addresses two fundamental questions arising out of the study of the history of political thought: what factors facilitate the moderation of beliefs? And what are the conditions of stability in political life? I approach these issues by investigating the crisis in religious and political belief that emerged in the European Enlightenment. Specifically, I explore how thinkers in the period c. 1660–c.1790 understood the relationship between faith, science and philosophy. Their various approaches to this issue generated further debate about the limits of freedom of inquiry in the face of the demands of religious, moral and political authority. For them, the fundamental question was how to tackle scepticism, or establish grounds for certainty. Yet, their various approaches to the management of doubt often led to a further entrenchment of scepticism. In light of this, my thesis reconstructs the role of scepticism in eighteenth-century moral and political thought to show that many leading thinkers embraced doubt as a strategy to respond to controversies around church and state authority. I argue that Humean scepticism in particular strove to contain fanaticism by educating opinion. Hume pursued this objective by criticising dogmatism, spurning factionalism, and promoting the limitation of power through the coordination of the different branches of government. In advancing this perspective, my thesis challenges the dominant scholarly tendency to categorise scepticism in the simplifying and binary terms of Pyrrhonian and Academic Schools. This scheme misses the subtlety of Hume’s philosophy and, more generally, scepticism’s positive contribution to maintaining a free state. A reconstruction of the history of modern scepticism can demonstrate that certain strands of it encouraged a mode of politics that could accommodate disagreement, address people’s credulity, and curtail extreme beliefs. This thesis begins by recovering early modern debates over ‘legitimate doubt’ and the certainty of knowledge and belief. An assortment of European thinkers sought a surer foundation for the Christian faith, often using sceptical arguments to challenge their opponents’ theological convictions and ways of assessing evidence. Meanwhile, the Royal Society’s scientific discoveries raised the problem of whether ideas could truthfully represent the external world. At the same time, in the legal profession, jurists questioned the credibility of witnesses, which demanded new ways to evaluate evidence. These reactions against Aristotelian and Cartesian worldviews are commonly interpreted in the context of debates over the ‘criteria of truth or knowledge’. Leading thinkers, including John Locke, categorised various degrees of certainty into knowledge, opinion, and faith to respond to the sceptical challenge. Under the influence of British ideas and Cartesian philosophy, French thinkers raised further questions about the legitimacy of doubt. Leading sceptics, such as Pierre Bayle and Pierre Daniel-Huet, addressed the problem of certainty through an ‘ethics of doubt’, which laid the ground for Hume’s thought. The central chapters of this thesis investigate the nature and status of belief in Hume’s thoughtand explore how scepticism operates in his religious, moral and political thought to demonstrate how his way of doubt decisively altered the dynamics of modern scepticism. I approach Hume’s critique of religion through his epistemology, suggesting that he advanced an ‘ethics of belief’. He first showed us what we should believe through his treatment of miracles and testimonies. He subsequently illustrated what we can believe in his theory of causation. Finally, his account of the English Civil War attested that superstition and enthusiasm were the consequences of acting upon unjustifiable belief. The ethics of belief enabled Hume to defend the ‘true philosophy’ that guaranteed secure opinions. It also obliged us to follow the evidence based on custom and experience. Hume’s view that custom, rather than religious doctrines, could yield norms of judgement led to debates about whether he was a moral sceptic among generations of scholars. However, my chapter on morality demonstrates that such debates are unproductive for understanding Hume’s moral theory. I argue that Hume was sceptical about the prevailing philosophical reasoning for moral distinctions rather than about morals per se. He defended the scientific nature of moral philosophy through his sceptical approach to the justifiability of belief. By challenging the dominant doctrines advanced by rationalists such as Samuel Clarke, Hume’s scepticism enabled him to develop sound principles for moral deliberation. Hume’s political theory was built upon a sceptical assumption that opinion was the foundation of government. Given the vacillating nature of opinion, which could jeopardise the ground of authority, sound beliefs and well-governed passions were the necessary conditions for political stability. Hume was aware that the public could easily be affected by extreme beliefs and demagoguery. Moreover, the religious and political fanaticism of the English Civil War remained a vivid memory in his time. In light of this, I argue that the core of Hume’s sceptical politics is twofold: first, his approach was meant to prevent fanatical beliefs from dominating public opinion. Second, he advocated the institutional and legislative design that could best maintain the political culture that facilitated the improvement of public opinion. These aspects are Humean scepticism’s positive contributions to political cohesion and constitutional balance. The concluding chapter shows that Hume’s scepticism had a significant impact on European debates over the relationship between faith, science and philosophy. Specifically, F. H. Jacobi advanced Humean sceptical arguments to defend his own conception of faith against the accusation of fanaticism in the Pantheism Controversy. Kant’s intervention urged Jacobi to further develop a critique of transcendental idealism in his David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism. As I argue in this chapter, Jacobi adopted a Humean sceptical procedure to challenge Kant’s system while applying Reid’s idea of common sense to explain the ground of his own realism. For Jacobi, the nihilist consequence of transcendental idealism proved that Kant failed to coordinate faith, science and philosophy and thus only produced more doubt. Jacobi’s use of Humean scepticism aimed to dethrone reason’s supreme status as a legislator, making faith and science compatible. Such philosophy not only intended to overcome intellectual uncertainty, but also pioneered the dialectic of Faith (Glaube) and Enlightenment (Einsicht) before Hegel. Tracing these Enlightenment debates over scepticism enables us to recognise that the history of modern scepticism is a series of competing strategies rather than a coherent tradition. In the shadow of the European wars of religion, scepticism was an argumentative style designed to secure surer grounds for faith. Yet, in the sceptics’ view, legitimate doubt was meant to counteract the dogmatism that could hinder the progress of arts and sciences. Its wider impact, for Bayle and Hume in particular, was to contain religious and political fanaticism through the moderation of belief. German thinkers after Hume shared the concern over fanaticism arising from blind faith and uncoached reason. Scepticism became a means to overcome sceptical doubts. Kant affirmed this by defending the normative, instead of contingent, laws of reason. In turn, Jacobi appealed to Hume’s epistemology as a solution to the radical doubt generated by Kant’s transcendental idealism. Mobilising scepticism in this way reflected the continuous struggle between reason and faith.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Zeng, Yi-Jia

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Bourke, Richard

• scepticism
• David Hume
• belief
• certainty
• doubt
• freedom of inquiry
• Enlightenment political thought
• opinion
• Pierre Bayle
• Pierre-Daniel Huet
• Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
• Enlightenment intellectual history
• European Enlightenment
• Scottish Enlightenment
• faith
• enthusiasm
• reason
• modern European history
• early modern Europe

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/4a440194-7bdf-4f6f-a577-723aaf9294ec/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

Author Identifier

0000-0002-4479-4434

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/375681