"The Paradoxical Principle and Salutary Practice": Hume on Toleration

Hume Studies Volume 31, Number 1, April 2005, pp. 145-164 "The Paradoxical Principle and Salutary Practice": Hume on Toleration RICHARD H. DEES David Hume is an ardent supporter of the practice of religions toleration. For Hume, toleration forms part of the background that makes progress in philosophy possible, and it accounts for the superiority of philosophical thought in England in the eighteenth century. As he puts it in the introduction to the Treatise: "the improvements in reason and philosophy can only be owing to a land of toleration and of liberty" (T Intro. 7; SBN xvii)} Similarly, the narrator of part 11 of the First Enquiry comments: Our conversation began with my admiring the singular good fortune of philosophy, which, as it requires entire liberty above all other privileges, and chiefly flourishes from the free opposition of sentiments and argumentation , received its first birth in an age and country of freedom and toleration. (EHU 11.2; SBN 132) The toleration to which Hume refers is broader than religious toleration, but in the context of the eighteenth century, religious toleration is clearly the paradigm case. Indeed, religious toleration represents one of the key accomplishments of the culminating event of Hume's History of England: the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Yet even though religious toleration forms the background of philosophy in general—or perhaps just because it does so—Hume offers precious few arguments for it, and they are, for the most part, given implicitly rather than as formal arguments . Nevertheless, we can distinguish three different, though interrelated, lines Richard H. Dees is Associate Professor of Philosophy with appointments in Neurology and Medical Humanities at the University of Rochester, P.O. Box 270078, Rochester, NY 146270078 , USA. e-mail: dees@mail.rochester.edu 146 Richard H. Dees of support for toleration in Hume's thought: (i) an argument based on a general skepticism; (ii) an argument based on a contempt for organized religion; and (iii) a pragmatic argument based on the need for peace and orderly government. From our point of view, what is striking about all of these argument is how un-Lockean they are: Hume does not rely on the idea of a fundamental conceptual separation of church and state, nor on a natural right to freedom of conscience that characterizes writers working in the Lockean tradition. However, of the arguments he gives, only the last, I will argue, has any hope to provide a useful case for toleration. I. Skepticism Given Hume's reputation, the most obvious line of argument for toleration is based on a general skepticism about knowledge or a skepticism about religious knowledge in particular. One of the general results of his "mitigated skepticism," Hume argues, is that it combats the general tendency people have "to be affirmative and dogmatical in their opinions" (EHU 12.24; SBN 161): But could such dogmatical reasoners become sensible of the strange infirmities of human understanding, even in its most perfect state, and when most accurate and cautious in its determinations; such a reflection would naturally inspire them with more modest and reserve, and diminish their fond opinion of themselves, and their prejudice against antagonists. (EHU 12.24; SBN 161) Indeed, even in the most learned, "a small tincture of Pyrrhonism" is useful to keep them from taking too much pride in their own meager abilities. "In general ," Hume concludes, "there is a degree of doubt, and caution, and modesty, which, in all kinds of scrutiny and decision, ought for ever to accompany a just reasoner" (EHU 12.24; SBN161-2). A due modesty about our intellectual abilities is always warranted. On these grounds, the general idea of an argument for toleration is that once we accept Hume's brand of skepticism, we will regard our own reasoning and our own conclusion with diffidence and without any presumption that we are really correct. With such an attitude, we will then be less likely to make the kind of harsh pronouncements that are needed to sustain a campaign of persecution against a religious group. We should then regard both politics and religion with a cautious air that promotes toleration for those who draw different conclusions from our own. We should...