ABSTRACT
Hume surely took pleasure in the use of irony, which is abundantly on display in the Dialogues. Not infrequently, Hume's irony serves as a thin smoke screen, behind which to sequester his true views. Occasionally, this leads readers into perplexity over what those views are—whether, in the Dialogues, for example, Philo is “his man,” or whether he has closer sympathies with Demea or Cleanthes. I begin here with the premise (which I consider clearly correct) that Hume's protagonist is Philo, while he deftly uses arguments he puts in the mouths of Demea, the anti-evidentialist theist, and Cleanthes, the evidentialist, to play their positions off each against the other, to Philo's advantage. But does Philo himself accept an evidentialist view of how properly to approach the questions of God's being and nature, or not? Here I exonerate Hume of the charge that his own skepticism can be used to undermine his attack on theism in the Dialogues.
