14 Immateriality, Immortality, and the Human Soul

Abstract

Abstract Even commentators who have explicitly argued that the Treatise has little to say on issues of religion generally accept that Hume's discussion of the immateriality of the soul contains an obvious irreligious message. This chapter's aim, therefore, is not to labor this point (i.e. that Hume's views about the soul, immaterial substance, and personal identity are of irreligious significance), but rather to indicate the specific way in which Hume's arguments on this subject are related to the main debate between theists and atheists during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These observations show the way in which Hume's arguments on this subject are intimately connected with his wider irreligious aims and objectives throughout the Treatise.