Woke Progressivism Comes for David Hume

T he University of Edinburgh has canceled David Hume. In response to an online petition portraying Hume as “a man who championed white supremacy,” the university has stated that the 18th-century Scotsman’s name will be erased from the tallest building on campus.

“The interim decision [pending further review] has been taken,” university officials declared, “because of the sensitivities around asking students to use a building named after the 18th-century philosopher whose comments on matters of race, though not uncommon at the time, rightly cause distress today.”

This is not the first time Hume has distressed his audience. In fact, he has often been the center of controversy, and was almost canceled in his own day.

In 1755, during the session of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, members of the Orthodox, or “Popular” party, sought to censure Hume for espousing “impious” principles, deserving of excommunication. Ministers in the “Moderate” party defended Hume. As a result, the General Assembly passed a watered-down statement announcing their “abhorrence” of “principles which are subversive of all religion natural and revealed and have such pernicious influence on life and morals.”

Where 18th-century orthodox Christianity failed, however, 21st-century progressivism seems to have succeeded. This recent episode at the University of Edinburgh teaches us less about Hume than it does about ourselves and the religious nature of woke progressivism.

I have no interest in defending Hume’s views on race. I do not know a single person who does. Every Hume scholar I know condemns his statements on the matter, which are false, repugnant, and regrettable. Hume’s most egregious statement on race can be found in an infamous footnote in his essay, “Of National Characters.” Here, Hume explains why he is “apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites.” The ensuing paragraph is cringeworthy. It is a shame a first-rate philosopher mindlessly mimicked the prejudices of the day.

Elsewhere in his essays, however, Hume condemns the institution of slavery, which he describes as an inhumane practice. Hume refers to the master, who exercises “unbounded dominion” over his slaves, as a “petty tyrant.” The master tramples on human nature and debases himself in the process. According to Hume, the institution of slavery, in both its ancient and modern guises, violates “the inviolable and eternal laws of reason and equity” that require “reciprocal duties of gentleness and humanity.”

Though Hume held to an outmoded view of racial difference, he advocated principles that would later be used by abolitionists in America and Great Britain. He detested the inhumanity of feudal arrangements as well as domestic slavery. Moreover, Hume was an egalitarian who argued that government should further the interest of society and each and every individual.

Hume judged social and political institutions according to how well they promoted the sentiment of humanity. For this reason, Hume defended modern commercial society, which he construed as a great equalizer. Hume was a cosmopolitan who thought that trade and polite conversation among men and women might promote a respect for other people on the basis of their humanity — not their race — and a corresponding desire for the public interest.

Jacqueline Taylor, professor of philosophy at the University of San Francisco, has argued that the Humean principle of humanity can be applied in opposition to unequal and oppressive social arrangements. According to Taylor, this awareness of our shared humanity can promote social progress, leading to the recognition by our legal systems of “greater inclusion, in terms of extending rights and privileges, such as voting rights, birth control, or gay marriage.”

Hume’s philosophical principles, then, are not incompatible with progressive ends. It is therefore hardly surprising that conservative Christians wanted to cancel Hume in 1755. Hume denied the immortality of the soul, and sought to craft an entirely secular moral system without reference to divine providence or the afterlife. Even Edinburgh fishwives knew Hume was a “wicked unbeliever.” In a story often repeated by Hume himself, one group of fishwives refused to help him out of a bog in which he had fallen until he repeated the Lord’s Prayer.

In spite of Hume’s irreverence, he counted many Moderate ministers as his friends. Hugh Blair, for example, like many other Moderate ministers, praised Hume for his philosophical acumen, his good cheer, and his learned conversation. The Moderate ministers recognized Hume’s merits and appreciated his philosophical prowess and his love of virtue. Hume’s close friend Adam Smith declared that Hume approached “as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.”

Hume, of course, was not perfect. Though he fought against zealotry his entire life, Hume sometimes betrayed a dogmatic form of zealotry himself. He suggested, for example, that volumes of scholastic metaphysics should be committed to the flames on account of their “sophistry and illusion.” He thought only the “blind and bigoted” could endorse the tenets of rational Christian theism. He assumed that “the morality of every religion was bad.” And on his deathbed, he envisioned the end of superstition, a time when all “the churches [are] shut up, and the clergy sent about their business.”

Hume is representative of a brand of Enlightenment thought that lauded civilizational progress and sought to crush all remnants of barbarism, including superstition and orthodox religion. But Hume did not actually burn the books of medieval theologians. He tried to convert the public to sound philosophy through polite discourse, instead. The Orthodox ministers tried to cancel Hume, but they failed. They were prevented by Moderates ministers who extended charity toward those with whom they disagreed.

These Moderates found something to appreciate in Hume’s expansive writings on morals, politics, economics, aesthetics, history, metaphysics, and epistemology. Indeed, Hume was wildly influential and highly touted in England and on the continent. His skeptical philosophy famously awoke Immanuel Kant from his “dogmatic slumber.” Scholars still look to Hume for his penetrating anatomical account of human nature and human society — which has been interpreted as “realist,” “conservative,” or “liberal” — and try to claim him for their own. But none of these scholars looks to Hume, or lauds him, for his insights on race.

Today’s woke progressives rightly condemn racist remarks. Yet their strategies are reminiscent of the worst features of their philosophical forebear. Hume harbored a zealous desire to rid society of bigotry. Now Hume, on the side of the benighted, a “bigot” according to this petition, is being canceled by his own progeny. If Hume is ultimately canceled, it won’t be because of Christianity, the religion of old, but because of woke progressivism, the new establishment, which is utterly lacking in either charity or moderation.