Annotation
David Hume: Dialogues and/on Naturalism
Petr Dvořák, Tomáš Marvan
The course is an introduction to Hume's thought on religion. Being a sharp critic of both revealed religion and the accompanying metaphysical outlook, the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) based his challenge to the traditional philosophy of the schools on empiricist epistemology. Hence the course focuses on Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion (1779) and other materials in order to examine Hume’s naturalistic stand and its underlying epistemological suppositions. What is at stake is the nature, assumptions, validity and coherence of naturalism in Hume and in general.
The course is a kind of a working seminar, a dialogue of a couple of researchers from two departments of the
Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (an expert on scholasticism and an expert on early modern philosophy and naturalism); however, it is open to non-specialists as it provides a good introduction to the transition from ancient and medieval outlook to the modern mind.