David Hume has standardly been read as one of the eighteenth century's most trenchant critics of theism and religion, in both doctrine and practice. Andre C. Willis's objective in the present study is to demonstrate that, although not wholly wrong, this traditional interpretation has been too one-sided, and does not do justice to the finer nuances of Hume's actual position, one that Willis is inclined to commend as ‘a generative resource for religious thought’ (178). Willis's contention is that Hume's criticisms of religion, although real and not to be ignored, were directed solely against popular, traditional, institutionalized religions; but that Hume also sought to retain a ‘true religion’, unencumbered by the spurious baggage of its vulgar cousins, and capable of providing genuine benefits for humanity.

Hume himself did indeed refer at times to a ‘true’ or ‘genuine’ religion, usually in order to contrast this with the superstition, enthusiasm, folly, and delusion he found in traditional religions. As Willis observes (126), even the character of Philo in Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion was moved to declare at one point:

Hume's criticisms of religion, and especially of the argument from design, were never more vigorous than when expressed through this character: so the fact that even Philo could say something like that must surely suggest that perhaps there is something deeper going on here.

As Willis himself acknowledges, these positive passages are few and far between in Hume's works. But he does find some others, and his own particular favourite (to which he returns several times across the course of his own book: 6–7, 41–42, 53, 113, 135, 176, 177) is this: ‘The proper Office of Religion is to reform Men's Lives, to purify their Hearts, to inforce all moral Duties, & to secure Obedience to the Laws & civil Magistrate.’ The weight that Willis places on this passage is somewhat undermined by the fact that Hume never actually saw fit to publish it. It was prepared for a preface to the second volume of his History of England, but was left unused: preserved in draft, it only finally saw the light of print when Mossner included it in his Life of David Hume (306). Still, even if – for whatever reason – Hume did not publish this passage, they are still his words; and a couple of broadly comparable remarks did appear elsewhere (e.g. Dialogues, 12.12).

These two passages, from the Dialogues and the History, respectively illustrate the first and third of the three components of Humean true religion as Willis characterizes it, which Willis calls ‘basic theism’, ‘moderate hope’, and ‘practical morality’. At the heart of Willis's book is a detailed discussion of these three elements in turn.

The work is presented in five chapters plus an introduction. The latter gives a general overview of the contrast around which the book revolves, between Hume's critical attitude towards vulgar theism and religion – which some readers have taken as exhausting his position on the matter – and the more positive proposals Willis finds for a ‘true religion’ that can properly be characterized as Humean. Willis concedes that ‘Hume did not detail what he meant by true religion’ (3), and his ‘lush writing offers very little explicit positive content for his notion of “true religion”’ (4). Nevertheless, he feels that there is enough there to support a reconstruction out of the various hints that Hume did give.

Following that introduction, chapter 1 (‘Religion and the true’) is largely devoted to a comparison between Hume and some of his predecessors, chiefly Cicero, but also Grotius, Herbert, Tindal, and Morgan. For the most part, Willis's characterization of these various pre-Humean positions, and their relations to Hume's own, seems pretty sound. Indeed, Willis's work is refreshingly well informed by the literature throughout, making use of the full range of Hume's writings – not only the philosophy, but also the letters and the history – alongside that of these other primary authors, and considering a wide range of competing interpretations from the secondary literature too.

In chapter 2 (‘Genuine theism’), Willis lays out the so-called ‘basic’ or ‘genuine’ theism that is supposed to constitute the first of the three elements of Humean true religion. He begins by acknowledging Hume's ‘devastating critique of popular theism’ (44): but his principal contention is that Hume's occasional more positive claims about order and design – such as Philo's remark quoted above – really must be taken seriously. Perhaps Hume is correct to argue that we would be unwarranted in judging the author of nature to be immutable, or simple, or incorporeal, or morally good. But, more fundamentally than any of those particular attributes, we might yet want to insist that the ‘whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion’ (Natural History of Religion, Introduction). This, for Willis, is the primary principle of genuine theism, and thereby one of the primary principles of genuine religion.

He does recognize that Hume was always more concerned with the question of how our own intrinsic human nature leads us to arrive at certain beliefs, rather than with the question of whether such beliefs are true in any absolute sense. But, for Willis, it is enough that our ‘reflective disposition to order, succession, and regularity naturally sanctions the mind to assume something behind sense experience, an Orderer’ (65). He argues: ‘It is unnecessary to take a stand on Hume's realism, because my concern is simply with belief in basic theism, not whether this belief points to anything metaphysically real’ (74–75). Human nature is such that, on being presented with an orderly universe of experience, we find ourselves led towards the belief that there is some hidden, ultimate cause that explains that order in a fundamentally purposive way.

In chapter 3 (‘Moderate hope’), Willis turns his attention to the passions, and highlights two Humean distinctions. The first distinction is between ‘direct’ passions, directed towards some definite object, and ‘indirect’ passions which are more loose and open-ended. The second distinction is between ‘calm’ and ‘violent’ passions, the calm ones (according to Willis's Hume) leading to coordination between human beings and more effective social conventions, and thereby promoting happiness, while the violent ones stand as the roots not only of social disharmony and personal unhappiness, but also of religious superstition and enthusiasm. Hume himself made it clear (above all in the Natural History, which, alongside the Dialogues, is examined here in some detail) that he regarded the passions, and hope and fear in particular, as the roots of religion. But Willis suggests that, although some passions might indeed lead to false religion, others could yet lead to the true. As far as Willis is concerned, the key passion in that latter regard is not so much fear, but rather hope, and a special kind of hope at that. To generate true religion, and perhaps even partially to constitute it, such hope must be calm and indirect. Willis characterizes this moderate, fundamental hope as a kind of settled equanimity in the face of the future, not so much a hope for anything in particular, but just a quiet acceptance that whatever will be will be.

Chapter 4 (‘Practical morality’) turns to the ethical dimension of Willis's Humean true religion. Willis lays out the rudiments of Hume's moral theory, considering his position in relation to that of his forebears: Hobbes, Clarke, and Shaftesbury; but, perhaps more crucially, Aristotle and Aquinas. Willis is keen to portray Hume as a virtue ethicist, giving the development of character a central place in his theory. Willis further illustrates this theory by examining its application to three real-life case studies – Wolsey, Buckingham, Charles I – via Hume's own descriptions of their respective moral characters in The History of England. And it is this notion of character-building that is supposed to give this moral theory its religious significance. Vulgar religion will distort the development of virtuous character in common life, by promoting ‘monkish virtues’ that are not ‘useful or agreeable to ourselves or others’ (Willis, 160, drawing on An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, 9.1.3). True religion, by contrast, will work ‘to reform Men's Lives, to purify their Hearts, to inforce all moral Duties, & to secure Obedience to the Laws & civil Magistrate’.

The book then closes with a shorter chapter 5 (‘A Humean true religion’), which gathers everything together, characterizing Hume as offering a middle way between atheists and evangelicals, and expressing Willis's ultimate wish that ‘the genuine theism engendered by our feelings of basic theism; the equanimity brought by collective, calm hopes and fears; and the development of virtuous character inspired by practical morality can . . . impact how we might reformulate the category “religion”’ (181).

Willis's book is undeniably well informed, and it should indeed give pause for thought to all those who read Hume as unequivocally opposed to every form of religion. Sadly, though, it is a little thin when it comes to building a positive religion properly worthy of that name. One can willingly accept that Willis has correctly latched onto genuine elements of Hume's world-view, but he himself acknowledges the challenge he faces: ‘with no symbolic rituals, no deity with attributes, and no sacred text, what makes our Humean true religion religious?’ (175).

Let us first consider the basic theism of chapter 2. The idea is that, regardless of whether we are intellectually justified in doing so, human beings will naturally arrive at a belief that there must be some kind of explanation behind the order we see in the universe. That is certainly Hume's opinion, and it does indeed seem to be true. But what does this have to do with theism? This putative cause has been so denuded of all of its peculiarly divine attributes that all that seems to remain is the point that John Toland made in 1696: ‘Could that Person justly value himself upon being wiser than his Neighbours, who having infallible Assurance that something call'd Blictri had a Being in Nature, in the mean time know not what this Blictri was?’ (Christianity not Mysterious, sect. 3.4; cf. P. J. E. Kail's “important rejoinder” as quoted by Willis, 74).

Now, perhaps some genuinely theistic element could still be preserved, just as long as it can be shown that this explanatory principle does at least have something like intelligence, something that Hume himself – indeed, even Philo himself – occasionally seems willing to ascribe to it. But the trouble is that Hume also had arguments to undermine even that most basic point. Willis is not unaware of this: he touches, for instance, on Hume's suggestion that the universe might be more like a plant or animal than a human artefact, arising out of an unintelligent and unpurposive process of vegetation or generation rather than from design (121–122). But it is a pity that Willis does not deal with such discussions more fully, given that – if even the intelligence of this putative principle is now coming under fire – they do seem to strike directly against the theism of his so-called basic or genuine theism.

As for the ‘moderate hope’ of chapter 3, one similarly wonders what this has to do with hope (see 103). If it is not hope for anything, then the name does not seem to fit. But never mind what we call it: the bigger problem is that Willis never actually articulates how these three elements – basic theism, calm hope, practical morality – are supposed to come together to establish anything of an even vaguely religious nature. Is the idea that basic theism will be operative in generating calm hope within the subject? Is calm hope supposed to inform the subject's character in a morally relevant way? It is clear enough what the ultimate goal of Willis's Humean true religion is supposed to be: obedience to the laws and civil magistrate, etc. But what is it? How does it work, how might its various components interact, and why should we regard it as a form of religion? This is never adequately explained. Perhaps the quiet equanimity of Willis's calm hope might be regarded as desirable in itself: but he never really builds on that thought.

And the same concern pertains to the practical morality discussed in chapter 4, but perhaps even more so. No matter how careful and accurate Willis's treatment of Hume might be, it is here that the relevance to religion is at its most obscure. The topic barely even gets a mention in this chapter. One isolated remark in the closing chapter perhaps explains that lacuna: ‘Hume's philosophical theism impacts our daily life for the better; thus it has religious value’ (185). But this simply will not wash. The mere fact that something might help us in our lives does not automatically make us good people, and it certainly does not automatically make us religious people.

So is Willis's ‘Humean true religion’ Humean? Is it true? Is it religion? Willis is an extremely astute and capable commentator on Hume, and his work does challenge lazy preconceptions about Hume's position on these delicately nuanced matters. And yet, on each of those three questions, and especially on the third – when even Willis himself ends up paradoxically calling this a ‘postreligious religion’ (190) – the present reviewer is not yet convinced.