In 2020, the University of Edinburgh renamed what was then called Hume Tower, removing the name of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume on the grounds that Hume supported slavery and was a racist. Recently, David Ashton and Peter Hutton have written two pieces (here and here, and see also the post on this at Daily Nous here) in which they argue that neither of those claims are true. For that reason, they say, it was a mistake to rename Hume Tower.
In this piece, it is not my main intention to assess whether Ashton and Hutton are correct either about Hume or about the decision to rename the tower. Whether or not Hume supported slavery or was a racist, there is no question that many important Enlightenment thinkers did and were, and also adopted other immoral views or attitudes, such as sexism and anti-Semitism. For example, George Berkeley enthusiastically supported slavery (which is why Trinity College Dublin removed his name from its main library in 2023). Even if Hume can be vindicated from the particular accusations that led the University of Edinburgh to rename Hume Tower, there remain many Enlightenment and other historical thinkers who cannot be defended in that way. In this piece, I provide a more general defense of continuing to engage with and honor Enlightenment thinkers who adopted immoral views or attitudes. I address two questions. Firstly, should we continue to read and try to learn from the works of Enlightenment thinkers who were racists, sexists, or anti-Semites, or who embraced other immoral views or attitudes? Secondly, should we continue to honor such thinkers, for example, by keeping things that are named after them (or even naming new things after them) or by retaining (or even erecting new) statues of them? I argue that the answer to both questions is yes.
The value of a view or an argument does not depend on the moral rectitude of the person who holds the view or makes the argument. A view can be valuable either by being true or by being false in a way that advances the search for truth. (For example, outdated scientific views—and likely also many current ones—are false, but they are stepping stones in the search for truth which help scientists to formulate better theories.) An argument can be valuable by successfully providing evidence for the truth of its conclusion or by failing to do so in a way that advances the search for truth. Whether a view or argument has value in either of these ways has nothing to do with who holds the view or makes the argument. Imagine the following very improbable scenario: ink is accidentally spilled on paper, and, by sheer coincidence, it forms letters. Astonishingly, those letters form coherent words and sentences, which turn out to give expression to an important new argument that no one has ever come up with before. In that case, there is no person who has made the argument. Therefore, the value of the argument does not depend on any facts about the person who came up with it, since there is no such person. But any argument could originate in this way. Therefore, it is never the case that the value of an argument depends on any facts about the person who came up with it. Of course, the probability that this would ever happen as a result of an ink spill is negligible. But that’s irrelevant to the argument I’m making. A thought experiment doesn’t have to be probable to make its point.
Berkeley was a white supremacist and a proponent of slavery. Kant was a racist and an anti-Semite. John Stuart Mill participated in British imperialism. What relevance do these facts have to the value of their ideas? None whatsoever. Whether their ideas are worthy of our attention depends on one thing only—the quality of their arguments. No one today would claim that any of these thinkers was right in all they said, but it is beyond dispute that they came up with brilliant original insights into the topics they wrote about. Therefore, their writings are worth reading.
This applies even to their writings about moral and political issues. Enlightenment thinkers did and believed horrifically immoral things. But how could doing or believing something immoral prevent one from having important moral insights? If there’s moral knowledge to be had at all (rather than there being no moral truths or those truths being unknowable to us), why can’t immoral people be the ones to arrive at that knowledge? Does some mysterious force intervene and stop immoral people who are engaged in moral reasoning from continuing down lines of thought that would have led to new moral insights?
Perhaps facts about a person’s life are relevant to whether you should read their autobiography, but they are not relevant to whether you should read their philosophy. The philosophers of the Enlightenment had brilliant and profound new insights. Therefore, we should read them. (If you doubt whether they really had brilliant and profound insights, why don’t you read them to find out?)
One might object that although my example of spilled ink shows that the inherent value of an argument does not depend on who came up with the argument, arguments also have another kind of value, contextual value, that does depend on the moral character of their originators. Our society constantly connects Hume’s arguments to Hume. That is the inescapable context of any engagement with Hume in our society. In such a context, to recommend Hume as worthy of study is, intentionally or not, to draw attention to him personally. Inversely, to distance ourselves from Hume’s arguments as a society is to demonstrate a commitment to any moral values that Hume failed to exemplify, such as racial equity.
Ironically, this argument for distancing ourselves from Hume’s arguments can be put in terms drawn from Hume himself. Hume laid out three principles of the association of ideas, which incline the mind to group certain ideas together and to jump from one idea to another. One of those principles was cause and effect. Upon thinking of a cause (or effect), the mind tends to think of its effect (or cause). We are also wont to transfer attitudes, such as a belief, that we hold towards a cause (or effect) to its effect (or cause). Now, Hume was, in a sense, the cause of his arguments. So, upon thinking of his arguments, we are liable to think of him, and upon having attitudes of admiration for his arguments, we are liable to have attitudes of admiration for him, and thus perhaps also for anything morally problematic about him. Likewise, an attitude of distancing applied to his arguments could transfer to him, and thence to his racism (if he was a racist). It would thus seem that one way to distance ourselves from racism would be to distance ourselves from Hume’s arguments.
Hume’s philosophy itself can thus be used to make an argument for distancing ourselves from Hume’s philosophy. However, it also hints at the beginning of a reply to that argument. Hume did not think that the principles of the association of ideas force our mind to associate any ideas. The “bond of union” that the principles of the association of ideas provide, he writes, “is not to be consider’d as an inseparable connexion; … Nor yet are we to conclude, that without it the mind cannot join two ideas; for nothing is more free than that faculty: but we are only to regard it as a gentle force, which commonly prevails” (Treatise 1.1.4.1). That one thing is the cause (or effect) of another does not necessitate us to associate them, but only inclines us to do so. Thus, that Hume was the cause of his arguments does not force us to associate them with him, but only inclines us to do so. We can resist that inclination. So, given the inherent value of Hume’s arguments, why not read and engage Hume and then resist the inclination to associate his texts and arguments with anything morally problematic about him personally?
Indeed, I would go so far as to say that we as a society can break the association between Hume and his arguments to the point that admiring his arguments would no longer incline us to admire anything morally problematic about him, and distancing ourselves from his arguments would no longer constitute a way of distancing ourselves from anything morally problematic about him. Consider a historical analogy. In some ancient legal systems, parents were punishable for the crimes of their children, and vice versa. We can explain this using Hume’s account of causation as a principle of the association of ideas. A parent is the cause of their child (indeed, this is one of the examples Hume uses in Treatise 1.1.4.3). Consequently, upon thinking of a child, the mind is inclined to think of the parent (and vice versa), and upon having a sentiment of disapprobation towards a parent for a crime, the mind is inclined to have a like sentiment towards the child (and vice versa). This is plausibly why some ancient legal systems held children and parents to be punishable for each other’s crimes: by punishing the child, for example, the society could distance itself from the crime of the parent. The Bible rejected this way of doing things, prescribing that “parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents; only for their own crimes may persons be put to death” (Deuteronomy 24:16; cf. II Kings 14:6, Ezekiel 18:20). Today, in our legal system, parents and children are not punishable for each other’s crimes. More than that, for us today, there is no psychological temptation to punish parents and children for each other’s crimes. Evidently, a powerful psychological bond between parents and children which once transferred blame between them has been broken. The biblical verses that I cited likely played a part in the history whereby that bond was broken.
In some ancient societies, punishing a child for their parent’s crime was a way of expressing disapproval of that crime. Today, it is not. The association between parents and children that once made punishing children a way for society to distance itself from the crimes of parents has been broken. This should give us confidence that it is possible likewise to break the association between philosophers and their arguments that today could make it possible to distance ourselves from, e.g., racism by distancing ourselves from the arguments of racist philosophers. If arguments and ideas may be considered as the mental children of philosophers (as Plato considers them in the Theaetetus), then what I’m trying to do in this piece is to insist that just as biological children shall not be put to death for the crimes of their parents, neither shall mental children be put to death for the crimes of their parents.
Thus far, I have been addressing the issue of reading and engaging with morally problematic historical philosophers. What about honoring them? Should we name things after them? Should we erect statues of them? I think we should. Take naming, for example. What a name of a building communicates depends on what message we choose to take from it. One thing we could interpret the naming to mean is “this person exemplified great moral virtues in their life that are worthy of your emulation.” That might be a reasonable interpretation of the naming of a building after a political figure. But when the eponymous person is a philosopher, why not instead interpret the act of naming as meaning “this person had great ideas that are worthy of your attention”? That Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Mill had great ideas that are worthy of our attention is beyond dispute. Instead of removing their names from buildings, why not reinterpret the fact that those buildings bear their names as an assertion of just that—a claim that their ideas are valuable (if that’s not what was meant already—and in Hume’s case, at least, it is pretty implausible that anything else was ever meant by the naming of the tower after him, since Hume is notable only for his writings and ideas)?
Of course, this runs a risk of misinterpretation. Someone might interpret a name on a building as a presentation of the person who bore the name as personally worthy of emulation. An institution could mitigate this risk by, for example, putting a sign near the building that explains that the name is intended only as a recommendation of its bearer’s writings and ideas as worthy of study, or by putting a like statement on a website, but it would be impractical to add an asterisk explaining this to any communication that uses the name. This is a real risk, but a great deal of what we commonly say and write comes with this risk. It is impossible to escape the possibility that our words may be uncharitably misinterpreted. Suppose I write an essay about a moral issue. Even if I take pains to explain what I mean by my terms and to qualify and nuance what I say, someone could pick up the essay, read a single sentence, and misunderstand it due to ignoring the rest. To write in a way that precludes such misunderstanding would be tiresomely cumbersome. Notwithstanding the adage that one ought to write as if one’s reader were lazy, stupid, and mean, we commonly write for people who will put a certain minimal amount of effort and charity into what we write, even though that runs the risk of misunderstanding on the part of those who do not. That we do so indicates that we judge the risk of uncharitable misinterpretation to be acceptable, as long as we have said enough to enable a minimally conscientious reader to understand us. Likewise, the risk of uncharitable misunderstanding in an institution’s naming of things is acceptable, provided that the institution says enough to enable a minimally conscientious interpreter of its naming choices to understand what it means.
Another potential reason for removing the names of morally problematic historical philosophers from things is the importance of honoring a diverse spectrum of people. To achieve this, one might argue, we should remove the names of some historically privileged people from something and replace them with names of disenfranchised people. But the desideratum of honoring a diverse spectrum of people can be achieved by naming new things after a diverse range of people without renaming anything that’s already been named. There are always more and more things for universities to name—not only buildings, but also rooms in buildings, endowered chairs, awards, scholarships, departments, etc. There are also plenty of old things that have not yet been named. By naming them after diverse people, universities can achieve diversity in whom they honor without removing any names that have already been given. The way to diversify is to add, not to remove.
One disadvantage of this approach is that it would result in the goal of honoring diverse people via naming taking longer to achieve than if institutions were instead to replace names of historically privileged people with names of disenfranchised people. In response to this worry, let me note two things. Firstly, I am not advocating against all cases of removing the names of morally problematic people from buildings and the like. My argument is confined to the names of historical philosophers. There are other cases, such as things named after Confederate generals, in which I think we should remove the names of morally problematic historically privileged people from things. Secondly, it seems plausible that the value of recognizing the importance of historical philosophers’ ideas and of cultivating a sense of a shared intellectual history, which value can be achieved by continuing to honor morally problematic historical philosophers, outweighs the added speed in achieving the goal of honoring diverse people that would result from removing the names of historical philosophers from things named after them, particularly since that goal can be achieved anyway by naming new things after diverse people. My proposal of diversifying by adding rather than removing would achieve both the goal of honoring diverse people and the goal of recognizing the importance of historical philosophers’ ideas, though it would achieve the former goal more slowly. The alternative of removing the names of morally problematic historical philosophers from things would achieve the goal of honoring diverse people quickly while sacrificing the goal of recognizing the importance of historical philosophers’ ideas. It seems to me to be preferable to achieve two important goals but one of them slowly than to achieve only one important goal.
To advocate for removing Hume’s name from the tower that used to bear it at the University of Edinburgh on the basis that he supported slavery and was a racist was either to make an ad hominem attack (if the claim was that his racism and support for slavery show that his ideas are not worthwhile) or to interpret the message sent by the name in a needlessly uncharitable way (if the message of the naming was taken to be anything other than “Hume had great ideas that are worthy of your attention”).
I hope that Ashton and Hutton’s historical arguments lead the University of Edinburgh to restore Hume’s name to the tower. But more broadly, I hope the arguments I make in this piece show that the biographies of philosophers are not relevant to decisions about whether to continue to read and honor them.
Avi Sommer
Avi Sommer is a third-year doctoral student in philosophy at Rutgers. He also did his undergraduate study at Rutgers. He specializes in early modern philosophy, with a special interest in the Scottish Enlightenment. He’s also interested in logic, philosophy of language, and philosophy of religion.
Well argued. I agree with everything you said for the most part. I would offer a word of caution however, to name an object with specific reference to an “honorific” meaning should be just that, there are modern day philosophers who have overcome and achieved in philosophy. By maintaining names of prominent philosophical places with people who have immoral views outside philosophy diminishes those places as well as the discipline because of the association with those discredited ideas regardless of philosophical insights we can attribute to the controversial figure and the ability of education efforts at disassociating the person from their intellectual mistakes. Moreover, an important aspect of renaming, I think, is recognition of the limits of tolerance in civil society. For instance, we now have protocols for “human experimentation” because of various experiences arising from the Nazi regime as well as practicing human centered/social sciences. We do not credit the Nazis because we were able to figure out that some of their insights came from horrific methods nor should we. Recognizing the limits of morality or what is good and bad morally as community standards, matters in discussions of social ontology. We condemn slavery and racism for its savagery, exploitation and intellectual illegitimacy. That condemnation is a good social practice and/or bright line moral standard to uphold by renaming regardless of a person’s good initial insights or ideas. Philosophy in particular has a long sordid history of exclusion and should pursue remedial measures with vigor and immediacy that renaming achieves.
I appreciate Avi Sommer’s argument that the name ‘Hume’ is metonymic for a bundle of ideas that we don’t want to forget, despite whatever odious views the man Hume may have held. And I agree with his conclusion that Hume’s name should be restored to the tower at Edinburgh University. However, the issue is not so straightforward because what informal logicians call the ‘genetic fallacy’, which carries much of the weight in Sommer’s argument, simply says that the origins of an idea do not necessarily enhance or diminish the idea’s validity. However, that doesn’t rule out that the idea’s origins may invalidate it contingently, say, if you’re able to argue on empirical or historical grounds that is unlikely that someone would have proposed such an idea, had they not been possessed by odious motives, or that mainly people with such motives are likely to benefit from applying the idea. Of course, these are not easy matters to demonstrate, one way or another. However, they are the grounds on which to shift the debate, once we accept Sommer’s basic point that even if Hume were a racist, his ideas should not be dismissed out of hand.
More than a decade before the current symbolic assault on statues began, I was raising this issue in relation to what Bernard Williams, after Sartre, called the ‘negative responsibility’ of public intellectuals. In the final two chapters of Kuhn vs Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science, I compared Kuhn and Heidegger as two philosophers thrust in the limelight who failed to exercise negative responsibility for their ideas. The argument was intended to place Kuhn in an unfavorable light vis-a-vis Popper, Popper’s followers, and many of Kuhn’s contemporaries with similar ideas. In that context, I suggested that we might think about replacing Kuhn with another philosopher with a similar bundle of ideas who deployed them differently in the same real-world context. I made this proposal mindful of the fact that it’s a bit disingenuous for philosophers to say that ‘Hume’ or ‘Kuhn’ just stands for a bundle of ideas. In fact, that bundle becomes a platform for projecting possible worldviews, which philosophers then explore in their own ways.
In that context, it is not unreasonable – as continental philosophers often do – to try to find some missing glue that holds the bundle of ideas together, which then provides a portal to a heart of light or darkness in the philosopher. This is in keeping with the vision of philosophy as a guide to life. The alternative – as analytic philosophers often do – is to ‘straw man’ the issue and say that ‘Hume’ and ‘Kuhn’ simply refer to a specific bundle of ideas (‘for the purpose of argument’), minus whatever racism or moral cowardice the respective humans behind names may have also exhibited. This is in keeping with the view of philosophy as a tool for thought. For my own part, I would like to see the statues of Hume and all those other moral offenders from the past remain upright in the spirit of Shelley’s ironic poem, ‘Ozymandias’.