"David Hume - The Natural History of Religion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGION





David Hume



1757



5/1/95




Copyright 1995, James Fieser ([email protected]). See end note for
details on copyright and editing conventions. This is a working
draft; please report errors.[1]

Editor's Note: Hume's first appeared
in 1757 in a collection of essays titled . The

work may be topically divided into three parts. The first part
(sections 1 and 4) argues that polytheism, and not monotheism, was
the original religion of primitive humans. Monotheism was only a
later development. The second part (sections 2-3, 5-8) establishes
the psychological principles which give rise to religious belief.
His thesis is that natural instincts such as fear are the true cause
of popular religious belief, and not rational argument. The third
part of this work (sections 9-15) compares various aspects of
polytheism with monotheism showing that one is no more superior than
the other. Both contain points of absurdity. From this he concludes
that we should suspend belief on the entire subject. The History of Religion> was published seven additional times during
Hume's life, each edition incorporating minor variations. The
posthumous 1777 edition is followed here, which includes Hume's
final alterations. Hume's bibliographical references to Greek and
Latin classics have been expanded and clarified without brackets.
Bibliographical references have not been expanded for those
seventeenth and eighteenth-century works which have no modern
editions. For more detailed introductory comments and annotations to
this text, see , (New York:
MacMillan, 1992).

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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGION

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