Demea's Departure

Demea's Departure James Dye Although Demea's departure atthe end ofpart 11 is one ofthe dramatic highlights ofthe Dialogues,1 it has prompted little comment. That is a pity, since it is a striking departure from Hume's Ciceronian model in De natura deorum, and the motivation for the change is far from clear. What is clear is that to this point Philo and Demea have been informal allies. The conclusions ofPhilo's sceptical arguments have dovetailed nicely with Demea's negative theology—an alliance, as it were, between reason aware of its own failure and faith which accepts the invincible mysteriousness of the divine. Both distrust reason's competence to attain knowledge of God. After Demea's departure, Cleanthes and Philo seem to embark on a more conciliatory relationship for which the preceding parts have so ill-prepared the reader that Philo's "reversal" or "confession" in part 12 has become a standard exegetical problem in the literature. If Demea must go to facilitate the reconciliation ofPhilo and Cleanthes, what motivates his exit now? The usual view takes the departure to be motivated by Demea's unhappiness with Philo's disquisition on evil. This is so vague as to be useless, especially since through most of part 10 Demea eagerly co-operates with Philoin describinglife in terms which make thereaUty of evil all the more compelling. If the dialogue is psychologically coherent, the subsequent conversation must introduce something else tomotivate Demea's departure. Whatis ofsuch significance that Hume chooses to punctuate it with the dramatic flourish of Demea's exit? It does have much to do, I think, with something Philo says, but not about "the problem ofevil" as that is usually construed. It has something to do with the problem of evil, but more with the implications of what Philo says than with his explicit claims. It will be necessary, however, to setthese factorsin theircontext; andfor that purpose,let's startwith part 9. Part 9 Many have located the beginnings ofa Demea-Philo rupture in part 9, not in Demea's perception ofPhilo, but in Philo's willingness to attack Demea. Specifically, Philo has commonly been taken to approve Cleanthes'criticisms ofDemea's argument and to add his own to them. The temptation to interpret Philo as endorsing Cleanthes' criticisms is particularly strong because those criticisms seem to echo Volume XVIII Number 2 467 JAMESDYE characteristically Humean positions. However, in this context, as criticisms ofDemea's argument, they are question-begging and, in fact, backfire on Cleanthes.2 Moreover, Philo does not say that he accepts Cleanthes'arguments. (Heisperhaps astonished that Cleanthes, inhis eagerness to attack any view which smacks of "old-fashioned" a priorism, can forcefully espouse views which undercut his own position.)3 His first remarks after Cleanthes' exceptionally spirited attack on Demea strongly resemble his remarks in part 2 following Demea's equally spirited initial objection (appealing to tradition and authority) to Cleanthes' argument.4 Both responses are playfully ironic, and we should no more presume that Philo endorses Cleanthes' argumentation in part 9 than we should assume him to endorse Demea's in part 2. Nor are Philo's own contributions to part 9 such as to give affront to Demea. He pointedly classifies the first ofthe two points he makes as "upon another topic" (D 191). Then he invokes as an example the fact that adding the digits ofany product of9 always yields either 9 or some lesser product of 9. The point of the example is that this fact, which initially seems marvellous and inexplicable, ceases to astonish one who understands mathematics sufficiently well to see that it is arithmetically necessary that the products of 9 have this property. Philo claims that it is probable that the similarly astonishing order of the universe may in like manner be determined by some intrinsic necessity in matter, which would seem equally unremarkable to us had we far more thorough knowledge of the nature of matter than we currently possess. The crux ofPhilo's argument is that ifa remarkable regularity or orderfound in certain numbers is numerically necessary, itrequires no further explanation; similarly, ifa remarkable regularity or order in nature is necessary, it does...