Böcker av Peter Hartl

In this book, Péter Hartl offers a novel and comprehensive interpretation of David Hume's philosophy of religion focusing on various notions of 'true religion' in Hume's overall philosophy and how these ideas relate to various early modern positions on religion, society and philosophy. The account consists of both critical and positive parts of Hume's overall, nuanced position on theoretical, social and political aspects of religion and the philosophical criticism of religion. Hartl criticises the atheist and completely negative readings of Hume's philosophy of religion. Instead of presenting Hume's position as either a radical secularist or closet atheist, Hartl's interpretation builds on the underdeveloped, positive and constructive parts of Hume's account of (true) religion. For Hume, on the one hand, true religion is compatible with or even vindicates minimal theism, and it forms part of philosophy exemplifying intellectual virtues. On the other hand, Hume has a pragmatic stance on the role of religion in society, according to which the government should control religious institutions to reduce the power of church authorities but to retain some positive social effects of religion.

This book addresses the complex relationship between the values of liberal democracy and the values associated with scientific research. The chapters explore how these values mutually reinforce or conflict with one another, in both historical and contemporary contexts.The contributors utilize various approaches to address this timely subject, including historical studies, philosophical analysis, and sociological case studies. The chapters cover a range of topics including academic freedom and autonomy, public control of science, the relationship between scientific pluralism and deliberative democracy, lay-expert relations in a democracy, and the threat of populism and autocracy to scientific inquiry. Taken together the essays demonstrate how democratic values and the epistemic and non-epistemic values associated with science are interconnected.Science, Freedom, Democracy will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in philosophy of science, history of philosophy, sociology of science, political philosophy, and epistemology.