Per my
presentism blog post and my post about James' Harris' 2015 bio of David Hume, he was a racist. But, how bad of a racist was he? After all, he reportedly opposed slavery, did he not?Well, we're going to take more of a look at that.
First, in "Of National Characters," where Hume's now-infamous footnote about "The Negros" occurs, he engages in extensive ethnic and nation-state stereotypes of many people. (It includes some at least mildly anti-semitic items among those.)
Second, in reaction to a 1770 book by James Beattie, he changes the original footnote, which also slurred American Indians, to focus just on blacks.
Third, given the footnote, and the essay, were originally written in the early 1750s, I venture Hume had never seen an African in person. He'd briefly been in Paris, then to Vienna and Turin; neither the Hapsburgs nor the House of Savoy were major slaving countries. And, he'd surely never seen an American Indian, either.
AND? Hume undercuts any alleged scientific support for his own racism with this from that essay:
“The manners of a people change very considerably from one age to another.”
The whole essay is not long, but given how known the footnote is, treating it in two pages is insufficient. Worse yet, Harris treats the footnote — only in a footnote!
And, it gets yet worse from there.
First, in that footnote, Harris never actually addresses Hume’s racism.
Second, he claims that Hume’s posthumous sharpening of the footnote was NOT in response to Beattie.
I simply find this untenable. I know WHY he claims that. To admit otherwise would be to question Hume’s own claim to not respond to his critics.
I can’t find a full version of Aaron Garrett’s piece cited, for free, online. But, Harris himself doesn’t give a summary of WHY he thinks Garrett has refuted Immerwahr’s claim that Hume WAS responding to Beattie. I do have this link to a free page, which gives an intro to Garrett's thought, here. He raises the anti-slavery claim to try to defend Hume, as well as Hume's comment that climate does NOT seem to affect national characteristics. But, see below.
While correlation does not necessarily imply causation, Beattie’s attack on Hume’s racism was the only attack we know of in Hume’s lifetime that was publicly maed. In addition, the fact that Beattie offered empirical evidence of culture, civilization etc on behalf of several specific American Indian groups, but not on behalf of Blacks, further sharpens the idea that Hume WAS responding to Beattie.
Also, on Hume allegedly being anti-slavery, which makes his racism more a head-scratcher? First, Harris DOES note that, per a letter to Francis Seymour Conway, 1766, he appeared to be acting as a broker for the sale of plantations in Grenada. Shades of Locke! And, if Garrett didn't know that, it undercuts him. If Garrett did know that, and ignored it, it undercuts him.
Counter this, some may cite “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations (1752, 1777) “ I would grant this as a partial though not total defense. He talks about the “American colonies” still having slavery … while ignoring the British Caribbean islands.
And, his revision of that original footnote made it worse, by making it into specifically anti-Black racism.
Second, some of Hume’s alleged “anti-slavery” comments actually come off as stuff similar to what Stephen Douglas said about slavery’s potential in the High Plains and the West — simply utilitarian claims about where (or in Hume’s case, for how much longer as well as where) slavery would prosper. Douglas otherwise had no moral problems with slavery and Hume, to me, at best shows moral diffidence.
But, his doing so undercuts the whole legend of le bon David, which is a key thesis of Harris.
AND, it gets worse YET.
Per the New York Review of Books’ review:
“As he acknowledges, readers who are primarily interested in Hume’s life should start with the biography by a late American scholar, Ernest Campbell Mossner, which was first published in 1954. Mossner’s life of Hume is suffused with an affection for its subject that, according to Harris, sometimes obstructs a “properly dispassionate” examination of the facts.”
Rather, in this instance, it is Harris who appears to have exactly such an affection for Hume that obstructs examination of the facts.
The reality is, as noted above, that “Of National Characters” is nothing more than a slapdash assembly of stereotypes of prejudice and bigotry. And, Hume, the supposed grand supporter of the science of experiment, palmed this all off. In reality, seeing something like this, written at the tail end of the first set of essays, and not revised later, should rather lead us to question many other claims of Hume’s about human nature. They may turn out to be right. Or they may not.
In other words, we should refer to a Herbert Spencer phrase, beloved in preaching but rarely in practice, by Alcoholics Anonymous:
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
That's exactly what Hume did.
Besides, re that footnote itself? In the body of the essay, he talks about how easy it is to get Negros drunk and take advantage of them.
Now, the footnote, post-Beattie version:
I
Am apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negroe slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.
There you go.
And, here's the broader pro-white background of the original version of the footnote, pre-Beattie:
I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites.
There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences.
This makes things worse, in some ways.
First, it shows how Hume sharpened his racism to be anti-Black.
Second, per Immerwahr, quoted in the piece, it shows the deliberateness of Hume's racism, contra Harris, who claimed it was only something minor.
Third, contra some of his defenders, it would at least leave Hume open to the charge of polygenesis. See Spencer's quote, above. And, yes, I've heard the claim that Hume didn't believe in that.
These people claim that Hume rejects polygenetics in the revised version. Does he? Remember, this comment: "Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many
countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction
between these breeds of men," is in both versions. At a minimum, it undermines the claim that Hume thought Black inferiority was primarily a matter of cultural environment.
Third, did Hume make the Chinese into "Yellow Aryans"? Or reject them entirely? And, India? Answer: He ignores them.
Fourth, "Populousness of Ancient Nations," in claiming modern economies, unlike ancient Rome, weren't dependent on slavery, ignores American tobacco (cotton not yet a big deal) and Caribbean sugar in British island colonies — including at plantations whose sale Hume helped broker.
Finally, from that same piece, there's this bit, with Hume either doubling down on anti-Spencerian willful ignorance, or else entering the realm of public relations agent for Grenadine planters:
What else is there to say?
This.
It is computed in the West Indies, that a stock of slaves grow worse five per cent. every year, unless new slaves be bought to recruit them. They are not able to keep up their number, even in those warm countries, where cloaths and provisions are so easily got. How much more must this happen in European countries, and in or near great cities? I shall add, that, from the experience of our planters, slavery is as little advantageous to the master as to the slave, wherever hired servants can be procured. A man is obliged to cloath and feed his slave; and he does no more for his servant: The price of the first purchase is, therefore, so much loss to him: not to mention, that the fear of punishment will never draw so much labour from a slave, as the dread of being turned off and not getting another service, will from a freeman.
First, Hume the economist knows that when a "manufacturer" has an inexhaustible supply of "feedstock" for the "manufacturing process," it will be abused. Just.Like.This. So, they accept a 5 percent loss and await the next slave ship. They're not TRYING to keep them up more.
Second, hired servants can leave abusive jobs. (Theoretically; in economic downturns, maybe they can't.)
Third, slaveowners aren't obliged to ADEQUATELY feed and cloathe slaves.
Fourth, from the background of the whole piece, which talks about slavery in antiquity? It was more barbarous in some ways. But, manumission was easier, and it wasn't based on racism.
I'll add that this paper by Glen Doris has — in some ways — a broadly similar critique of "Populousness of Ancient Nations" and is very worth a read. Doris also says that defenders of Hume try to make this essay do work it just wasn't designed to do.
At this point — since Hume understood economics almost as well as friend Adam Smith — we're in the territory of rank hypocrisy.
I'll end there, noting that Harris is lucky, between deliberate overlooking by bracketing, and related items, that I didn't two-star him, rather than three-star.
And, per that "broader" link, I'm sure we could find rank hypocrisy along with racism in Locke, Kant, Voltaire, etc.
That said, Hume — and his footnote — still have defenders, like this piece here, from a person who is a Black Yale philosophy grad student. Johnson claims that Hume was writing "before racism existed as a concept."
Tosh.
Per Emmanuel Eze, the real question is: If Hume was not a racist, why did he feel compelled to keep in the footnote, and even sharpen it? (Eze also notes that Beattie criticized other parts and aspects of "Of National Characters." Indeed:
The fact that it survived Hume's multiple revisions and remained part of the Essays and was publicly defended from criticisms invites one not to dismiss this lengthy addition as marginal to Hume's thought but rather to determine why he might have felt it needed to be added in the first place, revised, and critically defended in what is now its definitive version. Relevant specific questions would be: why, of all other possible places (I have in mind, for example, a comparable essay "Of the populousness of ancient nations"), was the footnote added here?
Unfortunately, the free look truncates there. But given that I have also referenced "Populousness," these are all good questions.
Related? Immerwahr, mentioned above, talked about Hume's "philosophical racism," and Eze and other respondents said, why say "philosophical"? Indeed, to me, this comes off as "casual racism," including placing it in a footnote. Hume comes off as unconsciously asserting that surely no intellectual could disagree with this. (See famous names above.) Then, along comes this pipsqueak Beattie ...
Hume's "Populousness" must be faulted in another way which further illustrates his rank hypocrisy.
Hume claims in it that modern (for him) Europe was superior to ancient Rome and Greece because they had chattel slavery and Europe did not. This of course ignores the British (and French) Caribbean sugar island slave plantations, which, as Harris reminded us, Hume knew about personally from trying to broker the sale of some of them! Or, from his time in London, seeing plantation owners sit in Parliament! The French and British economies were very dependent on this. Remember, Napoleon tried to reconquer Haiti, and he did reimpose slavery elsewhere in the French Caribbean. Before that, after the Seven Years War, France let Britain have Canada as long as it could keep all of its sugar islands.
Again, this is not just hypocrisy. This is RANK hypocrisy.
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Update: Julian Baggini goes in the tank for Hume. Undercutting him?
And? Undercutting even more Sir Tom Devine, the present-day Scottish historian he cites, claiming there was no push for abolition in Scotland in 1762, the time of his sugar plantation intervention, which he claims is in a "purported" letter?
In history we teach our students not to indulge in the intellectual sin of anachronistic judgement, i.e. never to impose the values of today on those of the past. In 1762, the year of David Hume’s reported letter on the plantations, there is no evidence that any groups in Scotland opposed chattel slavery in the colonies. The surge of abolitionism and widespread horror at man’s inhumanity to his fellow man only came later. In that sense, Hume was a man of his time, no better and no worse than any other Scot at the time.
Scotland was part of the UK, and was so for Hume's entire live. In addition, by this time, Hume had lived in London, and on the continent. (Amazing how the "world" of Enlightenment letters & ideas can be so selective.) Abolition was a happening thing in England; James Oglethorpe founded Georgia to be slavery-free, and for humanitarian reasons, before the original version of Hume's footnote.
And, Beattie and his mentor Thomas Reid? SCOT!
AND? He's arguably wrong about "no evidence that any groups ..." Per that "happening thing" link from Wiki (which has a footnote, so shut up):
Some of the first freedom suits, court cases in Britain to challenge the legality of slavery, took place in Scotland in 1755 and 1769. The cases were Montgomery v. Sheddan (1755) and Spens v. Dalrymple (1769). Each of the slaves had been baptised in Scotland and challenged the legality of slavery. They set the precedent of legal procedure in British courts that would later lead to success for the plaintiffs. In these cases, deaths of the plaintiff and defendant, respectively, brought an end to the action before a court decision could be rendered.[8]
Also, per the same link, John Wesley, who created this organized group called "Methodism," started writing against slavery on moral grounds two years before Hume died.
I am tired of this. I've already told Baggini on Twitter that I'm going to do a new post. Basically, I see things like this as a version of Platonic noble lies, based on ideas that cancel culture or whatever is so evil all tools in opposition to it are fair game.
As for the British involved with the tower's de-naming not calling out China more? Two wrongs don't make a right.
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Update, March 3, 2022: Via Massimo, Baggini continues this by, to put it politely, offering an overly charitable interpretation of Hume's socio-political bigotry.
In light of that, I should note that
this time, Baggini has responded when poked with the Twitter stick.
And,
yes, he may in this piece call Hume a "thorough" racist, but, given
that in the Medium piece above, he also claims that this was "casual"
racism and essentially a "one off,) and and that it's "presentism" to
judge him by today's standards (and wrongly makes those claims, as
shown)?
"What the right hand giveth, the left taketh away."
Or, to go Shakespearean in another way?
"Methinks you doth undercut yourself too much."
Seriously, how can one be a "thorough" racist and yet a "casual" or "one-off" racist???
Baggini claims:
And, I quoted back to him his own comment from Medium, and Devine's comments that he appears to quote favorably. It may be too harsh to say that he's giving Hume a pass. But, I didn't actually do that. In my first Tweet reply to Baggini and the podcast touting him, I said:
And, there you go. And, nothing in the last 24 hours since this conversation has started has made me change my mind. If I did say Baggini gives Hume "a total pass" anywhere, I apologize. Per informal logic and Bayesian probabilities, I do think he gives at least a 51 percent pass, and my believe in that has only increased.
Beyond that, re the "Populousness of Ancient Nations" discussion I note that Hume engages in
deck-stacking on the issue of ancient vs modern slavery. There's nothing
casual or one-off about that.
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Finally, more and more, as I look again at his Prospect piece and other writing? I think Baggini, like Harris, like Dan Kaufman, and others, gets Hume of the Treatise vs. Hume of the post-Treatise, or the Pyrrhonic Skeptic Hume vs. the Academic Skeptic Hume, wrong, by not noting there is indeed a difference.
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And, per a discussion on MeWe, sorry, but this DOES, if not detract from Hume's (or Kant's, Locke's or Voltaire's) work in general, at a minimum, it brings it under heightened scrutiny. I'm sorry that it doesn't for you.
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More here on Hume's racism, which also notes that Hume believed in polygenesis.
