Thread by @mccormick_ted, Here is a thread on "bad Enlightenment takes" in the context of [...]

Here is a thread on "bad Enlightenment takes" in the context of the culture war.

This one is a few months old, but because it exemplifies a lot of problems with an increasingly common genre of argument, I want to point a few of them out. https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/when-did-edinburgh-university-become-centre-barbarism-am-celal-sengor-2979328

When did Edinburgh University become a centre of barbarism? – AM Celâl Şengör

Edinburgh University’s decision to remove Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume’s name from its tower block in the city’s George Square overlooks how he saved humanity from dogmatic thinking,...

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/when-did-edinburgh-university-become-centre-barbarism-am-celal-sengor-2979328

I'll start with the first paragraph, which, inevitably, asserts that "history" is under attack.

History can mean "the past." It can mean "the study of the past." The author doesn't explain which he means; but, in any case, renaming a building threatens neither of these things.

I'll come back to what the author means by history, but now I'd like to look at some of the actual history involved. The author notes that the cause of Hume's name being removed is a footnote to one of his essays -- though he doesn't quote it. Let's take a look:

[Note: The above image is from Emmanual Chukwudi Eze (ed.), Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), 33.]

Hume asserts a racial hierarchy with "whites" at the top and Blacks at the bottom. Further: no non-white races have civilizations, or even significantly intelligent *individuals*. By contrast, even the most barbarous whites are noble. (Which makes the title deeply cringeworthy.)

Note that though the author lauds Hume for liberating humanity from dogmatism, Hume's claims here are dogmatic; unsubstantiated assertions about culture justify conclusions about nature. Hume even rejects counterevidence from Jamaica out of hand because it doesn't fit the theory.

The author doesn't examine Hume's footnote; but (again, inevitably for this genre) justifies it with a version of the now familiar confabulation disguised as contextualization, "everyone was racist back then." (Extra points for giving Hume credit for saving us from Hume's views.)

Now, as historians who have actually studied the history of science and race in the Enlightenment have shown, there was no "accepted scientific judgment" of race at the time. There were a variety of competing and interlocking theories: monogenic, polygenic, environmental, etc.

(On the contradictory and complex development of thinking about race in the long eighteenth century, see works by Colin Kidd, Rana Hogarth, David Livingstone, Londa Schiebinger, Andrew Curran, Suman Seth, Cristina Malcolmson, Sankar Muthu, Jennifer Morgan, Brooke Newman et al.)

So it's simply false -- and, I would venture to add, dishonest -- to baldly claim that Hume was simply (dare I say dogmatically?) mouthing the scientific consensus of his age. There *wasn't* one.

It's a bad sign when a putative defence of history depends on making history up.

It's especially egregious in this case because, so far was Hume's footnote from reflecting a consensus view, it was sharply criticized during the Enlightenment by his countryman James Beattie in 1770.

Again, the sources are a good antidote to hollow pontification:

[Note: The above image is from Emmanual Chukwudi Eze (ed.), Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), 35.]

Beattie too makes racist assumptions -- the comparison of non-European cultures to children has a long and ongoing history -- but he is obviously not of Hume's mind on race, and he presents both sharp criticisms of Hume's reasoning and empirical evidence against his conclusions.

Comparing Hume and Beattie gives the lie to the notion that he was simply voicing the accepted views of his context.

But the author's constant invocation of "we", "us", the "humanity" Hume is supposed to have saved is a symptom of another feature of this genre: its parochialism.

This parochialism is twofold. First, in making his philosophical hero not just the spokesman of his age but the saviour of *humanity*, the author ignores the many alternative views not only of Hume's colleagues but also of the "non-white races" he denigrated.

In other words, this pretended saving of "history" is as concerned with keeping some histories quiet as it is with preserving a heroic (salvific!) narrative about Hume. If, as Michel-Rolph Trouillot has suggested, history begins with erasures, saving it here means ratifying them.

There's a second parochialism here, too, for this particular myth of the Enlightenment (where Hume saves us all) turns out to be significant to the author chiefly as a backstory to 20th-century science. In other words, "history" -- supposedly being rescued here -- is incidental.

And this brings us back to the question of how a university renaming a building is an attack on history, while a falsification of historical events is a defence of the Enlightenment.

I think the answer lies in a failure to distinguish past and present, and history from myth.

Renaming a building -- like naming a building the first time -- is a present act, reflecting present views. It may well reflect ideas about the past: in particular, what aspects of it we in the present wish to celebrate, and which not. These change over time. Why shouldn't they?

The historical study of Hume is not going to suffer for loss of a building in his name. It will be shaped and reshaped by research. His historical existence is not under threat.

But his present-day reputation -- as a hero, a saviour, a pure beacon of a pure Enlightenment -- is.

So the debate here is not about "history" but commemoration. Historical research and teaching depend on academic freedom and on money -- both of which are indeed endangered, but are no part of the author's concern. History doesn't depend on what universities name their buildings.

"History under attack" is an obfuscation. What's under attack is a myth: a cherished narrative in which elements of the historical past are reworked into cosmic morality tales. Here, Hume is not a flawed human being who lived in the eighteenth century; he's humanity's saviour.

What myths we should cherish may be worth debating; what the standards for public commemoration of historical figures should be is a legitimate question; how we should think about the Enlightenment is complicated and worth examining. But no honest debate begins by faking history.

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