Hume’s Dialogues contains one of the most efficient and rhetorically effective – and consequently influential statements of the problem (or problems) of evil in literature. In the last three parts of the Dialogues, we can see much of the shape of the contemporary debate on the problem, in its various aspects. But, familiar though the main lines of that debate might be, Hume’s presentation of the issues in dramatic form throws up some less familiar angles, as well as posing a question concerning his own views on religion. This chapter will follow the course of the discussion as it unfolds, taking points more or less in the order in which they arise, but organised around the various problems of evil. It ends with a brief consideration of the wider consequences of the discussion.

This chapter considers Doris Lessing’s engagement with utopia, from the Children of Violence series which is set in 1950s–60s London to her near-future ecocatastrophic Mara and Dann novels (1999, 2005). The necessity of utopian hope in Lessing’s novels is set against a seeming disavowal of the possibility of positive systemic change. Utopian possibility in Lessing’s Canopus in Argos series (1979–83), for instance, is driven by cosmic patterns rather than human action. Similarly, her excoriating descriptions of colonial and capitalist life in the Children of Violence series (1952–69) possess an energy that can be considered utopian. However, the apocalyptic strain in many of Lessing’s works renders this utopianism highly ambivalent. In their critique of societal progress or political change at scale, Lessing’s novels often sit at odds with the literary utopian tradition. In Lessing’s works, read alongside American contemporaries such as Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler, the prefigurative mode is less concretely utopian. Enclaves of survivors persist, but the texts indicate that political struggle will return with each generation and the same problems recur across history. The chapter concludes that Lessing’s late ecocatastrophic fictions exhibit a stronger utopian impulse, which resonates with twenty-first-century discussions of the climate emergency in the United Kingdom.

Darwin read the Dialogues while still formulating his theory of evolution by natural selection. And one might suspect that he would have found there much to please and put to use. But he had already encountered Humean critiques of the argument from design, together with quite effective responses in the work of William Paley. Moreover, in the wake of his reading of Dialogues, Darwin placed greater and greater weight on the on the very sort of analogy that Hume had targeted in Dialogues, that is, drawing similarities between the natural world and products of human design, in service of the inference that the natural world was also designed. Darwin came to reject the conclusion of the argument from design, but his alternative, evolution by natural selection, also relied, heavily, on an analogy between nature and human artifice, the breeder’s art. But an important passage in the conclusion to the Origin suggests an important influence of the Dialogues, especially when taken together with Darwin’s quite wide-ranging reading of Hume.

At points in the Dialogues Philo appears to favor the Stratonian theory that matter is endued with an inherent principle of self-organization—the hypothesis that order is endogenous to matter, and need not be imposed by any external organizing principle such as thought, design, cosmological pollination or insemination. Moreover, on two occasions Philo seems to say that it is “plausible” or even “probable” that the self-organization of matter proceeds by absolute necessity, such that if we could “penetrate into the intimate nature of bodies”, we would be able to see that it “was absolutely impossible, they could ever admit of any other disposition.” (DNR 6.12, 9.10) I first consider Philo’s purposes in advancing the Stratonian hypothesis, and in framing this theory in the language of absolute necessity. I show that Philo’s reasoning here is ad hominem, and proceeds upon a number of methodological assumptions that Philo himself does not share. I also consider Hume’s own purposes in having Philo feint in this way, and suggest that Hume intends to deliver a message about the pointlessness of hankering after ultimate explanations in natural theology and philosophy.

This chapter argues that Scottish author Naomi Mitchison’s 1962 novel Memoirs of a Spacewoman is an exemplary critical feminist utopia. Touching on many of the literary utopian genre’s foundational tensions and ambiguities, Mitchison’s novel offers readers a world of freely accessible abortions, inter-racial and multi-gendered parenting, queer and alien sexual practices, and universal child-led education. Despite the obviously utopian contours of this speculative narrative world, however, Mitchison’s narrative uses the utopian society for its backdrop of spacefaring alien adventure. By creating a utopian society, only to leave it behind as her protagonists visits stranger alien worlds, the chapter argues that Mitchison manages to maintain a focus on the utopian missing ‘something’, even whilst depicting a feminist utopia. Rather than arriving at a static utopian locus, Mitchison’s eponymous spacewoman journeys in an ongoing process of utopian searching, in which many of the literary genre’s pleasures and dangers are laid bare. With its focus on a female scientist attempting to avoid the harm historically perpetuated on alien flora and fauna by British colonial scientific institutions, Mitchison’s text reveals the utopian prospect of an anti-colonial feminist science.

This chapter explores Scotland’s relationship with utopia, arguing that this relationship is complicated by Scotland’s perceived peripheral, and potentially oppositional, identity within the United Kingdom. Twentieth-century Scottish fiction has often been reticent to engage with fully developed utopian paradigms, instead focusing on quotidian experience. However, utopian communities are also positioned as an opportunity to look beyond the nation to examine questions of individual and collective desire. The chapter focuses on three main strands of Scottish utopian fiction from the post-war to the present: the unusual emphasis on death and cyclical return in key utopian texts; utopian novels that explore communal life and homosociality; and queer works that employ storytelling as a utopian act. The texts discussed in this chapter reveal that in Scottish literature utopia is not located in some far-off future but, rather, operates within the continuity created by shared narratives of identity, community, and desire. Examining these themes, the chapter concludes that Scottish utopian fiction is more varied than previous accounts have noted.

This paper aims to assess the cogency of Hume’s famous argument against testimony for miracles. Hume starts by arguing in favour of a “general Maxim” which involves balancing the strength of the testimony “considered apart and in itself” against the inductive unlikelihood of the reported event. But although this reasoning shows real insight – anticipating what is now known as the “base rate fallacy” – it turns out that such a separation cannot work, and an adequate maxim must inevitably take into account the specific nature of the reported event when evaluating the epistemic strength of the testimony. There is also a deeper problem with Hume’s argument, which arises from his treating a miracle as an extreme example of an inductively unlikely event. For the believer can agree that miracles are inductively unlikely – or even physically impossible – whenever the world is proceeding normally. Where she will differ from Hume is in claiming that divine activity can interfere with the natural order, and can sometimes be identified through its purposive nature. Naturalist philosophers – like Hume – are likely to reject this, but their best argument for doing so comes not from theoretical probabilistic maxims, but from the hopelessly unconvincing track record of miracle reports, combined with the lack of evidence for divine purpose in the world (as revealed so artfully by Hume’s Dialogues).

This chapter explores works by two contemporary London-based Black British playwrights who also direct, produce, and perform: debbie tucker green and Mojisola Adebayo. Examining plays produced and performed between 2005 and 2019, the chapter suggests that both women create distinctive work that combines singular dramaturgy with transformative politics, shifting the framing of spectatorial perspective. They are also known for making innovative, experimental, and poetical work at the intersection of aesthetics and politics. The chapter traces the Blochian utopian possibility of ‘something’s missing’ (etwas fehlt) in tucker green’s dramaturgy of refusal. In her plays, the chapter suggests, we can identify what Herbert Marcuse’s called ‘the Great Refusal’, which develops a utopian sensibility via negation. Frequently working class, Black, and female, tucker green’s belligerent characters reveal to audiences what is missing in their difficult lives, how everything should be different in Britain. In Adebayo’s work, forged in the community-led Black Mime Theatre in the 1990s, utopian possibility forms part of the affective spectatorial encounter with her theatre. Whilst Adebayo’s plays are less abrasive, they similarly highlight what is missing. The transformative energy of her dramaturgy can be seen in utopian foretastes of alternative lives, in which Black, queer, and de-colonial modes of intersubjectivity become possible.

This essay examines the relationship between sceptical attitudes and religious belief in David Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. Understanding Hume’s thoughts on scepticism is one of the most important – if not the most important – keys to unlocking his thoughts on the legitimacy of reasoning in mathematics, science and philosophy. Intense controversies swirl around his explicit arguments and analyses of sceptical themes in his A Treatise of Human Nature and Enquiry concerning Human Understanding along with various essays. While some argue that Hume’s approach to scepticism changes in these various works, especially between the Treatise and Enquiry, this essay shows how examining Hume’s discussion in his Dialogues sheds light on his overall stance toward scepticism. And this understanding of his approach in turn opens up new ways of looking at how the various characters in the Dialogues can be read as advocating or illustrating Hume’s epistemological stance. Exploring these issues will also allow us to see how Hume anticipates certain aspects of contemporary debates about reasoning about the nature of logic in general and counterpossible reasoning more specifically.

This Introduction offers a brief review of the central arguments and issues that arise in Hume’s Dialogues. It considers why Hume used the dialogue format to present his views and it also considers how the content of the Dialogues relates to Hume’s other philosophical works and his historical context. It concludes with a brief summary of the various contributions and an account of the way that the collection is structured and organized.

This chapter explores anti-utopian satire in bestselling British author Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Like the anti-chivalric satire of Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Voltaire, the Discworld books celebrate pragmatism and local knowledge rather than political ideals. The Discworld is alive with vivid utopian impulses, however, the chapter argues that they frequently lack concrete detail. Pratchett is more concerned with constructing a colourful world of humour, heroism, and villainy. The Ankh-Morpork books reflect on the processes of historical change, accelerating a medieval city-state into liberal industrial modernity via an array of fantastically estranged forms. The city itself, however, fails to actualise into a utopian vision of the future. Rather, Pratchett’s fantasy series articulates a deep suspicion of the kind of political radicalism often associated with utopian thinking. Through a close reading of two books in the series, Night Watch (2002) and Making Money (2007), the chapter considers how Pratchett’s fantasy world laments structural violence whilst lampooning utopian remedies to such violence, such as democratic elections, trade unions, industrial action, or new kinds of post-capitalist value.