I am proud of my shame

David Hume and his university

I was at uni in Edinburgh. We attended lectures, where we were taught what to learn. Then we learned it. At the end of the day, we knew it: we had knowledge.

This is the process of acquiring learning: the three stages of learning. Scotland has now gone through these three stages of learning, about David Hume.

At the University of Edinburgh there is a more modern building, a tower, which today is called 40 George Square. In my days it was called “the David Hume Tower” or “the DHT”. But the uni recently changed its name because David Hume, while being a great philosopher, was also a racist. For my part, I don’t understand how a great philosopher can be racist at the same time. I can’t understand this, but his age was not mine.

The tower is ugly, but useful. Like David Hume.

Here is what he said about his trip to Germany (which didn’t exist as a fully-fledged nation at the time of his journey):

“Thus we have finished a very agreeable journey of 500 miles (for so far is Vienna from The Hague). I have passed through many a prince’s territories, and have had in more masters than many of these princes have subjects.

Germany is undoubtedly a very fine country, full of industrious, honest people: and were it united, it would be the greatest power that ever was in the world. The common people are here, almost everywhere, much better treated, and more at their ease, than in France: and are not very much inferior to the English, notwithstanding all the airs the latter give themselves. 

There are great advantages in travelling, and nothing serves more to remove prejudices; for I confess I had entertained no such advantageous idea of Germany; and it gives a man of humanity pleasure to see that so considerable a part of mankind as the Germans are in so tolerable a condition.”

From a Letter to John Hume of Ninewells, 15th April 1748.

A view of Germany from the year 1748. In the meantime, Germany has changed, even several times. As have we all. And our view of Hume has also changed. The prejudices that his travels banished from his mind did not include those that had led him to be a slave-owner halfway around the world.

I bow my head in shame at one of my own countrymen. But a spark of pride allows me to do that. To say and proclaim: David Hume was wrong. Very wrong.