Hume, Bolingbroke, and Voltaire: Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Part XII

Part XII of the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion offers to the reader a wide range of philosophical positions, depending also on the stratification of the text, which underwent various revisions by the author. Some of Hume’s manuscript interventions can be dated, as M.A. Stewart has shown, but their context has not been investigated yet. In particular, the revision of 1757 has a secret source (Bolingbroke) that allows Hume to discuss the possibility of a deistic alternative to atheism and Christian theism. But deism (or philosophical theism) could not represent a real solution for Hume: while defending himself under that cloak in Part XII, he actually arrives at far more radical conclusions. As for the revision of 1776, it bears the mark of the recent debates following the publication of Baron d’Holbach’s Système de la nature. Hume is here close to Voltaire in arguing that the division between atheism and deism (or philosophical theism) can be recomposed, but only if the concept of God is resolved into that of the mere existence of an eternal order of things – a point that most atheists would have admitted without any scruple