‘Pathetic, spineless, dumb’: Edinburgh University CANCELS dead genius David Hume
13 Sep, 2020 15:57
Edinburgh University has stripped David Hume’s name from one of its buildings, saying that the 18th century philosopher’s views on race caused “distress” to students. The university has been blasted for ‘cancelling’ a “genius.”
Hume was one of the most important figures in the Scottish Enlightenment. An empiricist and student of human nature, he was a skeptic of organized religion, and his rejection of Christian miracles and the idea that the complexity of the world did not prove the existence of God made him a controversial figure in his day.
Hume, however, is now the latest victim of ‘cancel culture.’ In a letter to students this weekend, Edinburgh University announced it would rename David Hume Tower as 40 George Square. The decision was made by a group of anti-racist committees, who concluded that Hume’s comments on race “rightly cause distress today.” The new name is temporary, and may become permanent after a review by the university.
Prior to the renaming, students petitioned the university to name the 14-storey building after Julius Nyerere, the first president of independent Tanzania and a graduate of the university. Though they decried Hume’s “racist epithets,” the effort to rename the tower after Nyerre ran into trouble when the students discovered the Tanzanian leader’s “ties to dictatorship” and “homophobia.”
On race, Hume’s views were typical of his time. “Negroes,” he wrote in a 1753 footnote to his essay ‘Of National Characters’, are “naturally inferior to the whites.” Furthermore, while Hume described slavery in 1739 as a condition that “exposes us to a thousand wants, and mortifications,” he advised his patron, Lord Hertford, in 1766 to buy a plantation in Grenada, and put up £400 of his own money toward the purchase.
The links between Hume and slavery were dug up in 2014 by historian Felix Waldmann, who ironically benefited from a Hume Fellowship at the university two years later. According to Waldmann, Hume was wealthy enough not to need income from the plantation, and should have recognized “the enormity of slavery.”
https://www.rt.com/uk/500598-edinburgh-university-hume-racist/