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On May 1, 1970, after finishing my Master’s Program and upon being admitted into the Ph.D. Program, I immediately started working on what I intended to be my Ph.D. Dissertation: Hume’s Critique of Religion. It was. I finished the Ph.D. two years, three months and eight days after that, on August 8, 1972.

I never published the Dissertation as such – but published small pieces of it, mostly in Portuguese (in Brazil, my home country and where I went back to work in July 1974.

Today, May 1, 2019, 49 years, on the day, since I started working on my Dissertation, I decided to go back to work on it, totally revising, recasting and updating it, and expanding its scope.

I hope to have the work finished by May 1, 2020, when I should be celebrating (Deo volente) the Golden Jubilee of my Master’s Program Conclusion and 50 Years of the start of my work on my 1970-1972 Dissertation.

This is the plan I presently intend to impose on my work:

Introduction: A Systematic Critique, Involving Two Types of Criticism

Part I: Hume’s Destructive Critique

The Background: Faith & Reason Theism, Deism and Atheism Cognitivism, Fideism, Agnosticism, and Skepticism Theism I: The Syntheses – Thomas Aquinas & John Locke Theism II: The Sola Fide – Martin Luther & John Calvin Deism: Sola Ratione – John Toland & Martin Tindal Fideism: An Alternative Form of Sola Fide – Pierre Bayle Skepticism: Nec Fides, Nec Ratio – The Radical Pyrrhonists Atheism: Thomas Hobbes’ Materialism Hume’s Empiricism vs Materialism, or Epistemology vs Ontology Hume’s Empiricism & Hume’s Skepticism Hume’s Skepticism with Respect to Sensory Perception Hume’s Skepticism with Respect to Reason or Logical Ratiocinations Hume’s Quasi Atheism in the Argument from Evil Hume’s Critical (“Mitigated”, Moderate) Skepticism

Part II: Hume’s Constructive Critique

Hume’s Naturalism and the Natural Explanation of Religion Hume’s Naturalism and the Grounding of a Secular Ethics Hume’s Ideal of Wisdom and Reasonableness – not Truth and Certainty The Testimony of a Coherent Reasonable, Moral, and Thoroughly Secular life

Part III: Hume’s Contributions

To the History of Modernity To the History of Christian Thought

Conclusion: The Enlightenment, not the Reformation, as Decisive Break in the History of Christian Thought

I will do this “revising, recasting, updating and expanding” of my 1972 work in English. The original Dissertation had 616 pages and at this time in my life it is too much work to translate significant portions of that work into Portuguese. Also, I intend to be in the United States when I finish the work.

That is my intention, such is my hope. I know that God sometimes laughs when he takes cognizance of our plans… but so be it: I will seek to do what is in my power.

São Paulo, May 1st, 2019.

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Categories: 18th Century, Critique of Religion, Hume, Illuminism, Philosophy