Hume’s Dialogues: Part IV

Abstract

With the completion of Cleanthes’ two illustrative analogies, Hume makes it fall to Demea to reply to Cleanthes. His reply loses sight of whatever philosophical objections may be brought to bear on these analogies, and he concentrates on his own objections to anthropomorphism which amount to showing that anthropomorphism misrepresents the deity, since (for Demea) the deity is incomprehensible.¹ In other words, Demea only succeeds in showing that anthropomorphism is incompatible with mysticism! — a position which no one will deny. But Demea’s reply has an important role to play in that it opens the way in Part IV of the Dialogues for the exchange between Cleanthes and Philo.