Hume’s Palimpsest: the Four Endings of the “Dialogues”

Written for the most part in 1750-51, the original manuscript of the Dialogues underwent two major revisions, one in 1757 and one in 1776. At each stage Hume proposed a different conclusion to his reasoning. Four different philosophical endings are still to be found in the text published in 1779, which correspond to four different approaches to the subject of “Natural [or Rational] Religion”: a rationalist-atheist approach, largely indebted to Bayle, an experimental-theist approach, mostly founded on reasons of convenience; a radical-deist approach influenced by Bolingbroke’s Philosophical Works, and a skeptical-atheist approach, which is possibly the consequence of the French debates occasioned by d’Holbach’s Système de la Nature. All these approaches are, however, attended by an “abhorrence” of religion as it is actually practiced.