The Theism of William Drummond

Abstract

There is no doubt that Sir William Drummond, whose boo~ Academical Questions, published in 1805,was highly praised by Shelley,! was a sceptic in the classical tradition. This was shown by C. E. Pulos in his study of Shelley's scepticism, and has been confirmed by Terence Allan Hoagwood in a work which, among other things, corrects a misunderstanding about classical scepticism which prevailed at the time when Pulos and those who followed him wrote about Shelley's indebtedness to Drummond, Hume and their predecessors. The misunderstanding consisted in a confusion of the concept of probability as an approach to truth with probabile, which was Cicero's translation of to pithanon, meaning the persuasive and therefore having to do not with objective truth but only with belief.2 This is confirmed in a recent study by R. J. Hankinson. But a difference between ancient and modern scepticism, which Hankinson points out, is that the former was a scepticism of real properties or essences but not of existences,3 and so was less destructive than the Humean scepticism which Drummond and Shelley inherited. Drummond and Shelley doubted claims to knowledge not only of the natures and properties of external objects but also of their existence, but dogmatic denial of the existence of matter was no more possible on the sceptical basis of their thought than dogmatic affirmation of the existence of God. Yet Drummond, unlike Shelley, believed in God. Hugh Roberts has remarked that Hoagwood ignores Drummond's 'fideist theism' ,jideism being the name usually applied to a religious faith maintained on a sceptical basis.4