David Hume – An Apologia

IF 0.5 Q4 POLITICAL SCIENCE Scottish Affairs Pub Date : 2023-08-01 DOI:10.3366/scot.2023.0468

Peter Hutton, D. Ashton

引用次数: 0

Abstract

In September 2020, ‘The David Hume Tower’ in Edinburgh was renamed ‘40 George Square’ because Edinburgh University had concluded that the philosopher, historian and essayist, David Hume, was guilty of holding racist views. There were also public allegations of his support for slavery. The supposed evidence comes from a letter he wrote to Lord Hertford in March 1766; an assumed loan to a slave plantation investor; a letter he received in June 1766 from the Marquis d’Ennery and a footnote added to his essay Of National Characters in 1753. In this essay we review the events in Edinburgh prior to the renaming of the tower and re-examine some of the documentary evidence used to support current attacks on Hume’s moral character. Each of the charges of supporting slavery and being a racist is examined, both in the context of Hume’s writings as a whole and in relation to modern definitions of racism. Our conclusion is that Hume is innocent of both accusations, and that he has been unjustly vilified.

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大卫·休谟——道歉

2020年9月，爱丁堡的“大卫·休谟塔”更名为“乔治广场40号”，因为爱丁堡大学得出结论，哲学家、历史学家和散文家大卫·休谟持有种族主义观点。也有公开指控他支持奴隶制。所谓的证据来自他1766年3月写给赫特福德勋爵的一封信；向奴隶种植园投资者提供的假定贷款；1766年6月，他收到了恩纳里侯爵的一封信，1753年，他在文章《民族性格》中添加了一个脚注。在这篇文章中，我们回顾了在爱丁堡塔更名之前发生的事件，并重新审视了一些用于支持当前对休谟道德品质的攻击的文献证据。支持奴隶制和种族主义的每一项指控都是在休谟著作的背景下以及与种族主义的现代定义相关的背景下进行审查的。我们的结论是，休谟对这两项指控都是无辜的，他受到了不公正的诽谤。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Scottish Affairs POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

1.20

自引率

25.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Scottish Affairs, founded in 1992, is the leading forum for debate on Scottish current affairs. Its predecessor was Scottish Government Yearbooks, published by the University of Edinburgh''s ''Unit for the Study of Government in Scotland'' between 1976 and 1992. The movement towards the setting up the Scottish Parliament in the 1990s, and then the debate in and around the Parliament since 1999, brought the need for a new analysis of Scottish politics, policy and society. Scottish Affairs provides that opportunity. Fully peer-reviewed, it publishes articles on matters of concern to people who are interested in the development of Scotland, often setting current affairs in an international or historical context, and in a context of debates about culture and identity. This includes articles about similarly placed small nations and regions throughout Europe and beyond. The articles are authoritative and rigorous without being technical and pedantic. No subject area is excluded, but all articles pay attention to the social and political context of their topics. Thus Scottish Affairs takes up a position between informed journalism and academic analysis, and provides a forum for dialogue between the two. The readers and contributors include journalists, politicians, civil servants, business people, academics, and people in general who take an informed interest in current affairs.

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