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No abiding city : Hume, naturalism, & toleration.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>01/2009
<mark>Journal</mark>Philosophy
Issue number1
Volume84
Number of pages20
Pages (from-to)75-94
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This paper rereads David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion as dramatising a distinctive, naturalistic account of toleration. I have two purposes in mind: first, to complete and ground Hume's fragmentary explicit discussion of toleration; second, to unearth a potentially attractive alternative to more recent, Rawlsian approaches to toleration. To make my case, I connect Dialogues and the problem of toleration to the wider themes of naturalism, scepticism and their relation in Hume's thought, before developing a new interpretation of Dialogues part 12 as political drama. Finally, I develop the Humean theory of toleration I have discovered by comparison between Rawls's and Hume's strategies for justification of a tolerant political regime.

Bibliographic note

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=PHI The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Philosophy, 84 (1), pp 75-94 2009, © 2009 Cambridge University Press.