Hume and Racism
David Hume is a philosopher highly respected for his clarity of thought and constructive use of scepticism. His scepticism, however, did not extend to all the prejudices of his time:
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 Negro slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered the 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 Negro 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.1
The above quote comes from a footnote in Hume’s essay ‘Of National Character’. The footnote was not in the original 1748 version of the essay, but was added in 1753. The first two sentences were revised in 1777 by Hume in response to criticisms he received (this is the version above). The opening sentences of the original 1753 footnote read:
I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all the 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. On the other hand, …
Note that in this earlier version, Hume refers to other species, not other races. Non-whites were, it appears, not even human (or at least not the same kind of human). Although he was swayed to remove this claim, the passage of twenty-four years obviously did not changed his opinion of blacks.
To give some idea of context of the footnote(s), both versions come as a note attached to the end of this passage in the main text:
And indeed there is some reason to think, that all the nations which live beyond the polar circles or between the tropics, are inferior to the rest of the species, and are incapable of all the higher attainments of the human mind. The poverty and misery of the northern inhabitants of the globe, and the indolence of the southern, from their few necessities, may, perhaps, account for this remarkable difference, without having recourse to physical causes. This, however, is certain, that the characters of nations are very promiscuous in the temperate climates, and that almost all the general observations which have been formed of the more souther or more northern people in these climates, are found to be uncertain and fallacious.2
The discounting of ‘physical causes’ was part of Hume’s refutation of climate-based theories such as Montesquieu’s, which claimed that environmental factors had a large influence in determining intellectual abilities, with ‘temperate’ zones producing the optimal conditions for the development of superior peoples. Hume argued instead that sociological factors such as the form of government and character of the political body were more important. Note that although Hume didn’t accept Montesquieu’s reasoning, he did share the prejudice (that the inhabitants of temperate zones—such as Europeans—were in general more highly developed). Towards the end of the essay, the Scot speculates that the increased presence of strong liquors in southern lands contributes to their moral inferiority:
You may obtain anything of the Negroes by offering them strong drink, and may easily prevail with them to sell, not only their children, but their wives and mistresses, for a cask of brandy.3
Hume’s views were clearly a stark contrast to his empiricist philosophy, for 
there was plenty of empirical data contradict his ideas. There were, for instance, two black professors of philosophy in Europe at the time. And the Jamaican to whom Hume referred was Francis Williams, a well-educated schoolmaster who composed poetry in Latin. To Hume, however, he was merely a ‘parrot’—capable of mimicking the comments of others, but not of creating anything himself. An article on Francis Williams and contextualisation of Hume’s views [p.4] can be found here.
What relationship does Hume’s obvious racism have to his philosophy? For a worst-case scenario, consult Eric Morton’s article ‘Race and Racism in the works of David Hume’: “We may not dismiss Hume’s comments on black people as an aberrant instance of his shortsightedness that has nothing to do with his overall philosophy.” But surely Hume’s racism in a essay on national characteristics has very little to do with the theorising he is most remembered for—empiricism—and his enormous contribution to issues of pure philosophy, such as induction and causation? “Hume’s theory of knowledge is driven by Hume’s racism and the built-in racism in his philosophical and conceptual worldview.” Motion may show that Hume’s racism taints his own conceptual worldview (hardly a difficult task, given the evidence) but fails to justify philosophically how “the conceptual framework of empiricism itself may be racist.” Is it not possible to simply apply the abstract principles of Humes’s philosophy without the empirical prejudices the philosopher himself held?
CITATIONS:
1. David Hume, footnote to ‘Of National Character’ (1748), in The Philosophical Works of David Hume, Volume III, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996, p228.
2. ibid. p.228.
3. ibid. p.235.
Comments
22 Comments so far
It sickens me to read that Hume is considered a “racist” simply because he believed that there are FACTUAL differences between races.
Only an idiot or a hypocrite would deny that there are factual differences between races. For example, black people tend to have darker skin than white people. Oriental people tend to have straighter hair than black people, and so on. It is vanishingly unlikely that there are not similar differences between the BRAINS of people of different races, just as there are differences between almost all of the other organs of the human body.
A racist is not someone who merely BELIEVES that there are FACTUAL differences between races, but someone who ACTS without due consideration to the interests of members of other races.
Are we all supposed to PRETEND that racial differences could not possibly exist? That is a dangerous road of self-deception.
On the contrary:
1. That there are superficial phenotypic differences amongst the human population is clearly undeniable. That these group discretely into something that came to be called ‘races’ is entirely problematic and contrary to most if not all empirical analysis of the distribution of relevant markers.
2. The idea that there is a correlation between surface features of the phenotype such as melanocyte distribution or degree of disulphide linkage in the hair and heritable hard-wired structure or features of the human brain is pretty much the definition of racism. Whether in fact there is a distinction between racialism (the belief that humans are objectively grouped into classes called races) and racism is itself debatable. But in the case of the views that you have expressed this is not even an issue. Your views are both clearly and canonically racialist and racist by any measure.
Prof. Lenny Moss
Associate Professor of Philosophy & Senior Fellow ESRC Center for Genomics in Society, Department of Philosophy and Sociology
Jeremy,
Who are these ‘black’ people to whom you refer? If you can identify them, please do tell me who they are, for I should very much like to know. I wonder whether there are indeed factual differences between races. I, a British Caribbean man, have darker skin than many people in Britain, but lighter skin than most people in the Caribbean or on the continent of Africa. My sister has what I guess you would decribe as a “white” complexion, freckles and red hair. What is the fact about the races to which we belong, my sister and I?
That remark should be enough to lodge doubt in your mind as to the existence of racial facts such as you imagine. To test further the claim you made in your email, you may wish to consult APPIAH, K. A., ‘How to decide if races exist’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 2006: 106: 3. I look forward to hearing your reasoned argument for your claim about racial facts once you have considered the position of my sister and I, and the arguments of Prof. Appiah.
Cordially, Nat Coleman
post scriptum: You seem to think that racism is the coupling of a belief about factual differences between races with an act lacking in due consideration to the interests of members of other races. Surely racism does not require an act to qualify as racism? Surely racism is rather the belief about factual differences between races coupled with a belief in the natural inferiority of some particular race?
Lenny wrote:
Comments on both Lenny and Nat’s comments:
> The idea that
[...]
> is pretty much the definition of
[...]
This is exactly the sort of thing philosophers are expected to question, especially if the word in question is a term of opprobrium.
A “phenotype” covers much more than superficial appearance such as hair and skin — it applies to behavior, etc. as well.
I wonder if Professor Appiah recognizes different breeds of dog? There are clear — and clearly innate — differences between pit bull terriers and cocker spaniels. Cruelty to either is morally unjustified.
All the best — Jeremy Bowman (J.B.)
Hey guys : from a scientific point of view, races – or “factual differences between races” – do exist. According to Darwin, they’re the consequence of the geographical isolation of population. Actualy, it’s a fact that has been clearly demonstrated. See for example :
- A. W. F. Edwards. Human genetic diversity: Lewontin’s fallacy. BioEssays 25 2003), 798-801.
- Noah A Rosenberg et coll., Genetic structure of human populations. Science 298 (2002): 2981-2985.
- C. Darwin, The descent of man
Ian Hacking summerized it perfectly in his course at the college de france (in french) :
http://www.college-de-france.fr/media/phi_his/UPL5941_cours_6.pdf
Sorry, I dont speak english well enough to summarise the famous arguments of AWF Edwards about the validity of the concept of race as a taxonomic principle…. But there is an article on “Lewontin’s fallacy” on wikipedia, you can read it, its a good summary :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin’s_Fallacy
Edwards famous article is available online too :
http://www.goodrumj.com/Edwards.pdf
This text is a precise answer to the question asked by Nat Coleman about race and color. It shows that races do exist (from a biological point of view) even if they can’t be defined by a single fact (like skin color).
PS : Edwards is not racist, Neither am I…..
..And I don’t read French well enough to follow Ian Hacking’s article without quite a lot of pain. Is an English version available? I’d be very interested as I’m a big fan of Hacking.
I’m also interested in the question whether racial differences are primarily the result of natural selection or sexual selection. Any references?
Actually racial differences are “primarily” a geographical fact : isolation of populations by geographical barriers during a long time produced some superficials but systematics genetic differences among human beings. It’s a process which is quite similar to the speciation of the Darwin’s finches in the galapagos islands.
Factual differences between “races” tend to disappear when those geographicals barriers disappear. For example, people from portugal are very different from people from africa, but this genetic difference does not exist between white and black people from brazil. (see F. Parra, R. Amadoâ, J. Lambertucci, J.Rocha, C. Antunesâ , S. Pena, Color and genomic ancestry in Brazilians –
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/100/1/177.pdf)
While I believe it is plain as day that Hume held racist views, it seems to me that two black professors in Europe do not constitute significant empirical evidence against the revised version of Hume’s footnote. Two people are certainly “scarce” in comparison to the number of white professors in Europe. As for Francis Williams, how much did Hume know of him? While he had obviously heard of the man, Hume had a tendency to refer by name to those who he believed were well-known enough either by him or the public. Still, the dismissive hand-wave to his accomplishments is telling.
And how does Hume’s 1758 denunciation of slavery in “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” play into this? This looks like it would be an interesting matter to have some actual Hume scholars look into.
-James
I have come to this heated debate at a time when it looks to have distinctly cooled off.
It may seem strange to say, but with little doubt Hume was ignorant about people from other races or cultures. He may have been an esteemed philosopher in his age but, any person -empiricist or not, in any walk of life, can be short of the facts. I don’t want to make any excuses for his beliefs about inferiority as they speak to us in this age but, maybe from another area of Hume’s philosophy, we can gain some insight into how we are all products of our own ages.
Hume writes of moral and aesthetic judgment (specifically imagining an orator) and says,
“An orator addresses himself to a particular audience, and must have regard to their particular genius, interests, opinions, passions, and prejudices; otherwise he hopes in vain to govern their resolutions, and inflame their affections…..A critic of a different age or nation, who should pursue this discourse, must have all the circumstances in his eye, and must place himself in the same situation as the audience, in order to form a true judgment of the oration”
(Of the Standard of Taste -Hume)
Clearly, Hume did not have all the facts about other races (and possibly many from his own race) in his age or, the circumstances of liberal enlightened opinion that we feel we enjoy in this age ‘in his eye’.
At the risk of sounding flippant in such a weighty debate, I am reminded of the Woody Allen film, The Sleeper. There is one scene where, having recently woken at a time in the future, Allen’s character is informed that contrary to late 20th Century medical opinion, coffee, cigarettes and chocolate cake are now medically proven to be the staples of a healthy lifestyle.
No doubt we hold opinions and beliefs in this age that will be derided and overturned by future generations.
I don’t think it’s too late to be joining in here – this entry has garnered the most attention of any here by quite a long stretch. (I think the simple reason is that Hume is the most respected English-language philosopher and it disturbs people to find him expressing views of this nature, or even that it bothers some that someone is making negative comments about a philosopher as respected as Hume.)
I’m of the opinion that Hume’s racism doesn’t pose any problem for his philosophical views whatsoever. To say that we should jettison empiricism because of these comments appears to me a form of the fallacy of relevance—using an argument that doesn’t truly pertain to the matter at hand. There is nothing about empiricism or even the vast majority of Hume’s philosophy that is necessarily racist or supported by racist premises. There is just the simple fact that Hume held racist ideas (largely in line with others of his time, but nonetheless unsupported by fact), and thought (presumably) that empiricism was only valid for Europeans because of the lesser intellectual abilities of blacks and other races.
The answer seems, to me at least, straightforward: simply declare that Hume was wrong (in regard to his assumptions of drastic differences in racial cognitive ability) and that his philosophical views don’t rest on those assumptions in any way.
For Hume, the fact that repeated viewings of pool balls colliding and careening off in predictable directions should not lead to the conclusion that the event will repeat itself in the next instance. Thus one should not assume that a talented black (or white?) is an instance that will repeat itself given the same set of circumstances which produced the original observation. However, it appears that Hume separated one race from another by counterposing the idea of “original thought” a property of the white billard ball with the “parrot paradigm” a… property
Racism is about consequences. Hume knew this and by justifying the unsubstantiated view that black people were indeed inferior to white people he made the legal enslavement of black people acceptable to slavers. Hume and his European Enlightenment Gang knew the economic value of New World Chattel Slavery and felt he had to justify the evil actions of his “race”.Regarding consequences,the negative images embodied in Hume’s racist prejudgement are still with us today. Sinner or Saint, black or white, we all know the negative images of black people. Most of these images have their orgins in the New World enslavement of black people. Without this slavery these images would not have arisen. Like most racists, Hume’s science was very poor.He knew nothing about control-based experimentation. This is essential when objects are being compared.
Somehow, the albatross of the 300 year old evil of Chattel slavery still weighs heavily on the minds of some white people.Therefore, reputations can be made if it can be proved that black people are indeed inferior to white people…this would justify the terrible deed of New World Chattel Slavery and clear consciences. Watson of DNA fame and others, without fame, have tried to be the great saviour of the troubled consciences of many white people. However,like Hume, they also had no appropriate controls and now look even more rediculous than Hume who now sits, half-dressed in Greek robes, on a plinth on the chilly High Street of Edinburgh…such is the consequence of racial prejudice…
To an uneducated person like myself, the assessemnt of the validity of Hume’s racial views is simple…would you put a love-one to fly in a plane made from prejudice? If not, then accept Hume and those who prospered from New World Slavery for what they were…greedy,wicked and cynical human beings.
Black people should take great pride for having survived Hume’s opportunistic-racism and the cruel chattel slavery it tried to justify and sustain. If we can survive the racism of Hume’s reasoning and Watson’s genetics we can survive anything…
Yes, Hume was racist. For me the reply is “So what?”. Holding racist views is logical and moral. Slavery is immoral, racism is not. They are separate things. Just because a view may “lead to” slavery does not say anything about whether or not that view is legitimate. There is also the issue of the fear of the word “inferior”. Oh how it’s feared. Yet, factually, if one race has a tendency to be worst at something then another…they are indeed inferior in that respect. And the other is “superior”. Let’s not play linguistic games.
As far as evidence for distributive differences in races in terms of abilities, intelligence, and character the evidence continues to be overwhelming into the 21st century. To date, the Negro has yet to achieve industrial capability on his own. The Negro has yet to go through even an agricultural revolution. Hence the massive support needed to continually provide food to majority Negro countries. Look at what happened in Zimbabwe after white farmers where either murdered or the farms confiscated. Zimbabwe used to be a breadbasket, now it can’t even feed it’s own.
Human intelligences are distributed in bell curve form. The distribution accounts for “intelligent” blacks. There are “upper echelons” of intelligence in all races. The problem is in the ratio of distribution of the higher to the lower. And also the ceiling of the distribution.
How long will your analysis be tainted by fear of being racist, fear of calling a race superior or calling another inferior? How long will you avoid cold hard logic?
I dont like to call Hume, Kant or any other great philosopher a racist. I think all these philosophers knowledge is just limited by time. Blacks had developed civilizaitons, mathematics, sciences even philosophical thoughts. Pythagoras, one of the greatest mathematical minds, learned mathematics in Africa. And concerned with the argument related to difference between the races; there is no such things as race…the differences come from different climate regions. The only race there is the “Human Race.” People don’t want to believe it, but that’s just because they are being ignorant. There is a plethora of documents explaining this claim (the only reason why I state it). I don’t consider Hume a racist, just educated to his time. I’m sure if he was alive today his claims would be radically different.
@James: Your whole post ignores social and economic context and external factors. Zimbabwe gained it’s independence in 1980, making it a very young nation. Gaining it’s independence did not mean it was ripe for growth nor did it mean it was free from hegemony. When the large majority of the black population were not given access to education by the ruling white elite, it’s quite demanding of you to expect them to immediately revolutionise their society in less than three decades when it took centuries for most. It’s also a remarkable generalisation to say that the problems with modern Zimbabwe are a “Negro” problem. It ignores the class problems, which exist in all countries and exist — and have existed — at this level in most countries where the majority are oppressed.
I find it humorous that you say Zimbabwe used to be a breadbasket. A breadbasket for whom? Certainly not that black population who were treated as second class citizens.
You say there is overwhelming evidence superiority in intelligence, ability, etc. between races. I would like to see evidence of this in the form of people from different races with equal social and economic conditions. Simply looking at Africa for evidence of inferiority among African races does you no good because you ignore the centuries of colonial rule that set the African people at a large disadvantage, not due to innate qualities, but due to external and internal political factors. It’s a power structure that developed for centuries and was initially built on racism.
Thus far, you have shown no evidence for your racist conclusions.
As we approach the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s _On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection_, it’s a good time to remind ourselves of the rest of its title: _or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life_.
Darwin’s theory is that species emerge when races diverge. People who deny the very existence of race are scientifically illiterate. Like Creationists, their “scientific” ideas are guided by their own understanding of morality. But morality is a poor indicator of truth, and anyway the idea that morality is a matter of blinkering ourselves is deeply suspect.
I would add the charge of philosophical illiteracy to scientific illiteracy, because the denial of the very existence of races is really a form of essentialism. It assumes that legitimate concepts have a single criterion of application, and that any concept for which there is no such criterion must therefore be illegitimate.
Therapy for essentialism is available free from Wittgenstein’s _Philosophical Investigations_, which introduces the idea of “family resemblance”.
I don’t know who exactly is denying that race exists. The question is whether or not the physical differences between what we call races are meaningful or not. The wealth of scientific literature is against that believe innate differences are indicative of much. I also wonder why people treat Darwin as the savior of modern science, he wasn’t a very good scientist, was definitely a misogynist and racist, and by most accounts wasn’t all that revolutionary in relation to his contemporaries. Is Darwin not important? Certainly one cannot make that claim – but you can’t just assert he was right then make racialized claims from that, that’s called Social Darwinism and was the basis for regimes of exploitation and scientific abuse during the 20th century.
It really amazes me that people can spout this drivel and still have the gall to say they aren’t racist – you are just playing semantic word games. And, even if these differences are significant, why is that so? No one is asking how these observable phenomena are constructed or interpreted – it is really no wonder to me that philosophy and science has been dominated by White Men since its inception. Which, by the way, why is Aristotle more of a foundational figure than Ibn Sina or Confucious? Probably because those that write history are those that have the power.
Anyhow, Hume was racist – most philosophers were. Hell, I think one would be safe in saying that practically everyone (read: white europeans) in Hume’s time was racist – that doesn’t seem very controversial to me. It is as always a question of whether or not racism bleeds into the thought itself, sometimes it does – sometimes it doesn’t.
If Hume spouted his theories at a time when nobody else recognized the fallacy of race and the barbarity of human bondage, he might be excused from knowing better, but he didn’t. There were many voices in England, the continent and America who had already moved beyond such views. Not the majority, for certain, but enough for Hume to have already taken in and assessed different views. His racism was of choice not ignorance or zeitgeist. These people could have and should have known better. Said had it straight on Europe’s construction of race through the colonial lens of power.
Darwin’s theory doesn’t require that there be different races, or differences amonst races of organisms in a species. In fact, that would make his theory quite non-explanatory, since that kind of thing (i.e., differences between groups of organisms) is what he wanted to try to explain in the first place. And it doesn’t help that races are “within” a species. Differences of races within a species are in just as much of need for explanation as differences between species. But Darwin only needs that there be differences between individuals (which I take it is uncontroversial) for his theory to remain explanatory.
However, there clearly are different races of people. Anyone who denies that must not be very observant. There are, e.g., black people, white people, asian people etc… Race, however, is not a robust natural kind. For instance, what do we call Obama? There are borderline cases. But there are also borderline cases of “vehicle”, and we don’t go around saying that there aren’t any vehicles. (Or sorites, whatever.) Moreover, just because race is pretty superficial–races are really only ethnic groups of people similar genetically in the way that members of a family are similar to eachother–doesn’t mean it’s not legitimate to talk, in an every day sense, about “black” people or “white” people etc…
Last point: the deeper philosophical point here is that one cannot get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. In our scientific descrition of the world, we may or may not need to posit the existence of races. And we may or may not need to posit that there are mental differences between these races. However, this should not concern philosophers. (If these questions really concern you, become a professor or biology, not philosophy.) The philosophical concern is whether we can treat and/or judge individuals differently based on their race. To answer in the affirmative to THIS question, not the former, makes you a racist.
This article is a travesty. Hume was merely speculating on a general trend based on the emperical evidence availible to him (the state of the entire continent). You, on the other hand, are countering with specific cherry picked examples (a professor of philosophy here, a schoolmaster there). The value of empericism is in detecting the general trend, not finding anomalies and generalising from them. Today’s emperical evidence on IQ for instance backs Hume’s speculations. If you are familiar with this literature (such as the Bell Curve etc)(which you show no sign of being), you should mention and attempt to refute it (either with your own reason or the work of others such as James Flynn). Instead, you commit the sin (arguing the biased viewpoint of your time) philosophy is supposed to overcome, based on a few examples (the mistake empericim overcomes). Hume was philosophizing, you are merely in bondage to your prejudices, not vice versa.
In my eyes therefore this postis like a parody of your entire website, you are a laughing stock, and you should forsake your MD.