Rationalism

Rationalism, by J. M. Robertson, appears under the heading Philosophies Ancient and Modern. The book says that in the earlier part of the eighteenth century a word served to stigmatise, as lacking in evangelical faith, those Christians who sought to make their moral philosophy quadrate with that of natural religion. The book says that rationalism became the recognised name for the critical methods of the liberal German theologians who sought to reduce the supernatural episodes of the Scriptures to the status of natural events misunderstood.

The book says that Hume, in his deistic period, wrote that the belief in Deity is conformable to sound reason. The book quotes Note B on the Inquiry, which says nothing is more usual than for writers, even on moral, political, or physical subjects, to distinguish between reason and experience. The book says that any general moral rule rationally seen to be broadly utilitarian is thereby vindicated qua rule.