A New Theory on Philo’s Reversal

Abstract

Perhaps the most engaging of controversies in Hume studies concerns Philo's reversal in Part XII of H urne's Dialogues Conceming Natural Religion.To one who reads the Dialogues for the first time, nothing comes as more of a surprise to find that, after a long barrage of largely unanswered and seemingly devastating criticisms of the argument from design, Philo, the main interlocutor, for apparently no reason, in the final Part reverses his position in line with his main opponent.One senses, as with Plato's Symposium, that nothing in such a masterpiece of literary architecture happens by chance, but instead must be significant.The difficulty with Philo's reversal is that its significance is not immediately clear.Indeed it seems a deliberate riddle, a dying man's final gift and challenge to (and perhaps joke on) posterity.At any rate, one senses that, whatever its meaning, its significance is such that if one could but uncover the reason for Philo's reversal, one would have in one's possession the key to unlocking the correct interpretation of Hume's philosophy of religion.There have been, of course, quite a variety of theories offered over the years to explain Philo's reversal.Given all of those theories, one has to wonder how it is possible that so many professional scholars could produce such a wide spectrum of interpretations on the twelfth and final part of a fictional dialogue.It seems that Hume scholars, too, have a particularly strong need to eke out their own individual exegetical niche, with the consequence that no possible niche will remain for very long without being taken seriously by some scholar or other.And then perhaps there is something occurring here similar to what Albert Schweitzer, in his classic The Quest ofthe Historicallesus, observed in studying the diverse multitude of lives oflesus based on the Gospels.Each author of a Life, he said, tended to infuse into the teaching of Jesus his own doctrinal beliefs, liberal or otherwise, instead of remaining detached and objective.Perhaps, then, many scholars interpret Hume's philosophy of religion in accordance with their own theological (or atheological) designs.It is also possible that the fault lies more with Hume hirnself than anyone else.It is possible that Hume constructed his Dialogues in such a way as to follow an ancient tradition begun, arguably, by Heraclitus and furthered by Plato.The tradition is one in which theform of a philosophi-

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