Demea
E93767
Demea is a character in David Hume’s *Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion* who represents a traditional, fideistic religious perspective emphasizing human ignorance and the limits of reason in theology.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Demea canonical | 2 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T752149 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Demea Context triple: [Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, hasCharacter, Demea]
-
A.
Aristaeus
Aristaeus is a minor Greek god associated with agriculture, beekeeping, and pastoral pursuits, often revered as a culture hero who taught humans various rural arts.
-
B.
Autolycus
Autolycus is a cunning figure in Greek mythology famed as a master thief and trickster, often associated with exceptional skills in stealth and deception.
-
C.
Philomelus
Philomelus was a Phocian military leader who initiated and led the early phases of the Third Sacred War in ancient Greece.
-
D.
Cebes of Thebes
Cebes of Thebes was an ancient Greek philosopher, a disciple of Socrates, and a prominent interlocutor in Plato’s dialogue "Phaedo."
-
E.
Simmias of Thebes
Simmias of Thebes was an ancient Greek Pythagorean philosopher and close associate of Socrates, best known for his role as a questioning interlocutor in Plato’s dialogues.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Demea Target entity description: Demea is a character in David Hume’s *Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion* who represents a traditional, fideistic religious perspective emphasizing human ignorance and the limits of reason in theology.
-
A.
Aristaeus
Aristaeus is a minor Greek god associated with agriculture, beekeeping, and pastoral pursuits, often revered as a culture hero who taught humans various rural arts.
-
B.
Autolycus
Autolycus is a cunning figure in Greek mythology famed as a master thief and trickster, often associated with exceptional skills in stealth and deception.
-
C.
Philomelus
Philomelus was a Phocian military leader who initiated and led the early phases of the Third Sacred War in ancient Greece.
-
D.
Cebes of Thebes
Cebes of Thebes was an ancient Greek philosopher, a disciple of Socrates, and a prominent interlocutor in Plato’s dialogue "Phaedo."
-
E.
Simmias of Thebes
Simmias of Thebes was an ancient Greek Pythagorean philosopher and close associate of Socrates, best known for his role as a questioning interlocutor in Plato’s dialogues.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (42)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
fictional character
ⓘ
literary character ⓘ philosophical dialogue character ⓘ |
| advocates | faith over reason in religious belief ⓘ |
| appearsIn | Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion ⓘ |
| appearsInSection | various parts of Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion ⓘ |
| arguesThat |
God is incomprehensible to human understanding
ⓘ
human misery and weakness show our dependence on God ⓘ human reason is inadequate to comprehend the divine nature ⓘ the divine nature is infinitely beyond human concepts ⓘ |
| associatedWith |
Augustinian or scholastic traditions in interpretation
ⓘ
classical theism ⓘ religious orthodoxy ⓘ |
| contrastsWith |
Cleanthes of Assos
ⓘ
surface form:
Cleanthes
Philo ⓘ |
| createdBy | David Hume ⓘ |
| criticizes |
anthropomorphic conceptions of God
ⓘ
attempts to infer God’s attributes from the natural world ⓘ |
| dialoguePartnerOf |
Cleanthes of Assos
ⓘ
surface form:
Cleanthes
Philo ⓘ |
| disagreesWith |
Cleanthes’ empirical theism
ⓘ
Philo’s skeptical approach ⓘ |
| emphasizes |
human ignorance in theological matters
ⓘ
limits of reason in theology ⓘ the moral and practical aspects of religion over speculative theology ⓘ the wretchedness of human life without religion ⓘ |
| hasRole | interlocutor in a philosophical dialogue ⓘ |
| holdsView |
metaphysical speculation about God is dangerous or misleading
ⓘ
religious belief should rest on revelation ⓘ religious belief should rest on tradition ⓘ religious doctrines should be accepted on faith ⓘ |
| languageStyle | scholastic and metaphysical ⓘ |
| philosophicalStance |
fideism
ⓘ
theological pessimism about human reason ⓘ |
| represents |
fideistic religious perspective
ⓘ
traditional religious perspective ⓘ |
| supports |
a priori arguments for the existence of God
ⓘ
the cosmological argument in an a priori form ⓘ |
| usedAs |
a foil to Cleanthes’ design argument
ⓘ
a foil to Philo’s skepticism ⓘ |
| usedBy | David Hume to present a fideistic position ⓘ |
| workPublicationYear | 1779 (posthumous publication of Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Demea Description of subject: Demea is a character in David Hume’s *Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion* who represents a traditional, fideistic religious perspective emphasizing human ignorance and the limits of reason in theology.
Referenced by (2)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.