An Enquiry Concerning Hume’s Religion Thought

Hume is a very important philosopher, historian and economist in the Scottish enlightenment moving, whose thought has profound influence in history. He was regarded as one of the greatest philosophers, as famous analytic philosopher Ayer has said. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and the Natural History of Religion are Hume’s most important works about religion. In these two works, Hume’s religious position is difficult to confirm so that researchers have quite different opinions on this issue. This paper starts from this issue and focuses on the question that in which place Hume put religion in society.Through the comprehensive analysis of Hume’s related works, we find that Hume’s irreligious position is relatively clear. From the angle of epistemology. Hume’s entity concept was a major blow to concept of god. In his work A Treatise of Human Nature, he provides a "weapon" for his irreligion. With these new ideas and methods, he harshly criticized the certification of the existence of god and miracles; In a secular ethics level, Hume discussed the disadvantage of religious superstition and fever, and he thought that religion was not beneficial to the morality causing serious negative effects on the society. In his opinion, morality is self-sufficient,and independent from the religion.However, Hume’s reason for the irreligious was neither that there is a so-called "true religion" in his mind, nor that he wanted to expell the religion completely from the society. As a mild sceptics, Hume showed much respect in history and tradition. He did not claim adopting extreme actions to religion, and he just asked to restrict religious influence in society,putting it on a subsidiary position.Hume puts himself into the religious debate of the era, and his religious thought has a great influence on later age, for example, Kant’s religious discourses have many similarities with Hume.