Abstract

In light of the phenomenon of the “coexistence of the non-contemporaneous” [Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen] every periodic division is problematic, for usually the old exists simultaneously with the new, that which looks to the past exists beside that which points to the future. This is also true for the beginning of “modern times”: Beside the first modern attempts to define the fundamentals of moral conduct without recourse to metaphysical assumptions, the “old dictates” remained in effect for whose truth divine revelation was claimed. Some theoreticians of modernity held a conciliatory position in which they clung to God’s existence, but they no longer looked to infer His attributes from the Book of Books but, rather, out of creation — from the book of nature. Nevertheless the project of the Enlightenment, to find a secular foundation for morality, was worked on more and more self-consciously, and the greatest radicals even went a step further: They held the traditional form of religion, under which in the following is always meant: the Christian-theistic form of religion, to be morally threatening. David Hume was one of them. His provocative reflections on this subject are the object of the following comments