Spectres of False Divinity: Hume's Moral Atheism (review)

The main thesis developed and defended in this superb book is that Hume implicitly "denies the existence . . . of a morally assessable god" (8), not just the existence of an overall "morally praiseworthy god" (8). Holden characterizes these as "strong" and "weak" moral atheism, respectively (7–9). While the idea of Hume as a moral atheist is not new, Holden's case for that proposition makes two new and important contributions to the discussion of the issue. The first is his detailed piecing-together of points made by Hume in various writings into two arguments for "strong" moral atheism and his attribution of the arguments to Hume. He calls them the "argument from sentimentalism" and the "argument from motivation," respectively. Both arguments are based in Hume's moral psychology, but there is no text in which he either endorses them or even sets them forth as such. In light of this lack of direct textual support, Holden's painstaking reconstruction of the two arguments and his convincing case for seeing both of them as Hume's arguments, thus for seeing Hume as a "strong" moral atheist, are important contributions to Hume studies. The book's second new (albeit with a qualification mentioned below) and important contribution to discussions of moral atheism in Hume is Holden's point that these are Hume's only arguments for moral atheism, "strong" or "weak." This puts him at odds with commentators who maintain that either the author of sin argument in Section 8 of the first Enquiry or the evidential argument from evil (a.k.a. the argument to divine indifference) in Part XI of the Dialogues supports attributing moral atheism to Hume.

Holden begins his case with a detailed description of moral atheism and a convincing rebuttal of an anticipated objection based on the aforementioned lack of direct textual support (chapter 1). But a potentially more damaging objection awaits. It is that moral atheism, being a theory about the essential nature of the deity, is effectively a form of natural theology and, as such, incompatible with Hume's skepticism. The key to Holden's response to this objection is his distinction between two ways of inferring things about the deity, in effect, two kinds of natural theology, "core" and "liminal" natural theology, respectively. The former is traditional natural theology and includes Cleanthes's version in the Dialogues. The latter, by contrast, contains no theorizing or inference-making about the nature of the first cause as such. This is because it is restricted to inferring characteristics that would be attributable to any unknown entity whatsoever (29). Parenthetically, we find liminal natural theology in Cleanthes too, when, in Part IV of the Dialogues, he argues that the deity could not be both a mind and immutable, since nothing could. Such a conclusion, then, although applicable to the first cause, is not about it specifically. Holden's point is that core natural theology, by claiming to achieve insight into the "distinctive or species-specific intrinsic character" (116) of the first cause, is indeed at odds with Hume's skeptical principles but that liminal natural theology is not (chapter 2). Pre-emptive "big-picture objections" (14) met, Holden sets about developing the positive core of his case, the detailed working-out of both the "argument from sentimentalism" (chapters 3 and 4) and the "argument from motivation" (chapter 5) and their attribution to Hume. This done, he turns to examining "two well-known arguments for weak moral atheism that have often been attributed to [Hume]" (210)—the evidential argument from evil and the "author of sin" argument—and rejects them. Discussing the three forms of the argument from evil that we find in Hume, the logical, inference, and evidential forms, Holden maintains that Hume does not endorse the evidential form of the argument, so his discussion of it does not reflect an endorsement of moral atheism (chapter 6). Insofar as the "author of sin" argument...