Hume’s notorious footnote may not have been widely known about until now. For my part, I have a fairly distinct memory of encountering it in the library of the University of Bristol when I was an undergraduate. I also remember being struck by the passage from Kant’s The Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (see Tommy Curry’s post) at around the same time. My memories of the precise effect that these readings had on me are less firm. I will try to reconstruct something. The inculcation of a passion to study philosophy seems to go along with an aspiration to join in with the conversation of these “mighty dead”, to be a symposiast at Plato’s table, and so forth. Hence I had a sense of disappointment, even betrayal, that these two philosophers, Hume and Kant, who I had been encouraged to admire in the course of my philosophical education, would have marked me out as ineligible to participate in their virtual salons. This moment of realisation was more troubling for being a private one. The discovery of these philosophers’ denigration of people like me was one I made independently, since none of my teachers had ever mentioned these texts, nor given me reason to think that my personal sense of disappointment could have much legitimacy or relevance to my education. At minimum, we do our current students a service by giving them an unfiltered picture of these figures.
What happened next is that I decided in my own mind that the racist statements of Hume and Kant were tangential to my initial reasons for reading their works, and I got on with my life (but not without a residual feeling of alienation, on which I will say more at the end of this post). Now, over twenty years later, I am far less convinced about the detachability of the racism from the “good ideas”. This is not the place to try to make the case in full. I offer a brief indication. Hume’s influence is not more greatly felt than by the fact that naturalism is the most widespread and orthodox approach in contemporary anglophone philosophy. About eighteen months ago I wished to get clearer in my own mind about what I am committing myself to when I subscribe to the naturalistic methodology. The long and short of it is that naturalism is difficult to pin down, except that it abjures reference to the “supernatural”. What then is the supernatural? It is at this point that the collective unconscious of philosophers dredges up examples of “superstitious” beliefs and some, like Wilfrid Sellars, even tell stories about the emergence of a modern, secular, scientific worldview out of a primal state in which “primitive man” believed in a world populated by spirits and demons. Hume is important because he tells this story to great effect (see “On Miracles”). In that text he writes that, “it forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations.” One need not be the most paranoid kind of hermeneuticist of suspicion to think that something is up here. Africans, we must remember, are one of the “barbarous” kinds of people in Hume’s world, and they are inferior by constitution, moreover. They, believe in silly things, we do not — Hume invites us to think. The question we contemporary philosophers need to ask ourselves is whether there is a legitimate notion of the “naturalistic worldview” that does not require, for its own self-definition, a contrast with the “superstitious worldview” of the “primitive” other. We need also to ask seriously whether the unreflected notion of what is a naturalistic, and hence intellectually respectable explanation, is still being used to de-legitimise explanations offered by various indigenous peoples concerning events in the natural world, events which include the symptoms of an ever more crushing ecological crisis. Such accounts are still regularly categorised as “spiritualistic”, and with that certain voices are still summarily dismissed, as expressed by the Māori individuals interviewed in this news report of a mass whale beaching.
I conclude with a remark on my lingering feeling of alienation. Francis Williams was the black man Hume referred to as being “admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly.”** Hume, mocker of the credulous, directs his scepticism against those who might have thought Francis Williams capable of having an original thought. I think that it is under-appreciated how often black students who are educated in majority white societies find themselves in the position of Francis Williams vis a vis David Hume. Which is to say, confronted with the implacable scepticism characteristic of racial prejudice, the voice inside the head of the educator that whispers, doubtfully, ‘accomplished, really?’, ‘has potential, really?’. Philosophy, as a profession, is absurdly reliant on performative smartness but takes no account of how the negating experiences of black students during their educational careers might affect their willingness to engage in such performances, at least for white audiences. One of my biggest disappointments, since becoming a professional philosopher, has been finding that decisions affecting career prospects still in some quarters turn on whether a committee deems a student or candidate “smart”, aside from their tangible achievements. To the detriment of some, and benefit of others.--Mazviita Chirimuuta, 1st October 2020, @EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHY – VOICES ON HUME
I noticed a steady trickle visitors visiting my digression, "The Case Against Hume," originating at the Edinburg.edu blog. That very Humean emotion, vanity, got the better of me and I decided to investigate. I rediscovered five sophisticated, moving essays by admired colleagues at University of Edinburgh engaging with the circumstances of the renaming of David Hume Tower.
I often (recall here; here) find it useful to have my thoughts be guided by Chirimuuta. Her idea of 'performative smartness' resonated (recall 'boy wonders') because I have long recognized that one non-trivial reason I wanted to become a professional philosopher was to be part of the club of such smart folk, who somehow could put even the knottiest issues in precise words with crystal clarity. A lot has been written on the (sometimes gendered) nature of this desire to participate in and allow for performative smartness, and its costs (see also these two recent pieces by Agnes Callard here; here).
I have at times alluded to (recall here; here) the emotional deformations that are an effect of participating in such performative smartness. But while it is pretty clear that clarity is often thought to be a democratic element in the society of philosophers, I rarely see any description of the emotional need that may make clarity and precision in our expressions so attractive.* Clarity is often conjoined with surgical images (we make precise and careful distinctions; offer razor-sharp arguments, etc.) Surgeons, as we know, work in sterile environments. And I suspect part of the implied contrast is that our clarity keeps the turmoil and turbidness of our emotional life at bay. At least, for me our joint commitment to clarity also represents a possible escape route from my most painful imperfections.
A further reason why her post resonated was because she put her finger on what one might call a conspiracy of silence in our teachers, or a looking away from material and patterns of exclusion that were hidden in plain sight accompanied by many self-serving myths ("since none of my teachers had ever mentioned these texts, nor given me reason to think that my personal sense of disappointment could have much legitimacy or relevance to my education.") It is strange to realize one wants to be part of, even be recognized as a contributing member, of a club and then recognize that this desire reflects, in part, one's own imperfections of looking away and lack of courage.
But as I was circling around these familiar, narcissistic thoughts, I re-read her essay, and I want to close by registering an important historical-conceptual point she makes. Naturalism as a metaphysical doctrine is not ethically or politically neutral in virtue of the fact that the supernatural is indeed coupled with myth, superstition, and, thus, civilizational backwardness. And, so in Hume, we find a rearticulation of philosophy's endemic (recall here; here) suspicion of rusticity (now called 'savage'/'barbaric'). And part of Hume's Enlightenment project is indeed to offer a model of civilization worth having that isn't just committed to the possibly violent expansion of civilization abroad, but also to combat barbarism (of feudalism, of superstition, etc.) at home. And again this shows up in quite a few places. For example, in Hume's History (recall) in discussing Agricola's conquest of Britain, he relies on a distinction between enjoyable chains (civilization) and fierce (animal-like) un-tamedness (barbarism), and he comes close to asserting that the 'uncivilized' or barbarous are interpreted as willingly choosing death and thereby marking themselves as worth killing. This chillingly echoes tropes of how terrorists are often described today.
It is in virtue of the fact that Hume's embrace of naturalism and civilization also underwrite some of the best parts of his philosophy that the serious challenge, thus, Chirimuuta rightly poses for would be naturalists (and skeptics like me), is how to construe and construct naturalism (and skepticism) that does not simultaneously reactivate narratives and thought experiments that reinforce and promote forms of social and political/cultural hierarchy. That's of course no easy matter in the context of oligarchic society and academic practices that may leave our students little space to spend time, and free thoughts, in libraries at all.
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