O ceticismo antifideísta de Hume

Abstract

Hume's skepticism may seem close to skeptical fideism in view of his critique of human faculties involved in the knowledge of truth and his defense of the need for a non-rational mechanism as foundation of our beliefs. The difference between them would lie in the identification of the solution to the suspension of judgment resulting from the discovery of the insufficiency of reason to understand the world and to guide action: one would point to natural determination, another to Revelation. I argue here that this closeness is no more than apparent. Hume's philosophy is constituted as antifideist not only for prudential, practical or pragmatic reasons, but also for its philosophical foundations. To show it, I examine the discussion between Demea and Philo in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, the investigation into the origin of religion in the Natural History of Religion and the reasons for the recommendation of philosophy to superstition in the Treatise of Human Nature.