Doubt is cast on Hume – by Hume scholar
UNIVERSITY chiefs are under pressure to remove the name of Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume from one of its buildings.
Dr Felix Waldmann, a former David Hume fellow at the University of Edinburgh, urged the institution to ‘consider carefully’ its links with Hume. The academic claims the venerated thinker ‘endorsed and justified slavery’.
The lecturer and fellow in history at Christ’s College, Cambridge, discovered a previously unknown letter Hume wrote in 1766, encouraging his patron, Lord Hertford, to buy a plantation in Grenada. The academic said it was inevitable the focus on the involvement of prominent Scots in slavery would eventually fall on Hume.
A petition to rename the university’s David Hume Tower has attracted more than 1,750 signatures and the backing of the Edinburgh University Students’ Association.
Dr Waldmann said he would expect the university to ‘ask whether Hume’s views and conduct – considered comprehensively – are consistent with their values’.
He added: ‘There can be no doubt that Hume was a genius, a luminary among the university’s alumni. But there is a difference between venerating Hume and remembering him.
‘His views served without doubt to fortify the institution of racialised slavery in the later 18th and early 19th century.’
The University of Edinburgh said that it ‘takes issues around acknowledging its past very seriously’.
A university spokesman said: ‘We are working with our students, staff and members of the community to thoughtfully explore how we address these matters.’