Thanks for your thoughtful essay on one of the most profound thinkers of our civilization. I agree with your comment
many concluded that the footnote exposed Hume’s claims to greatness as hollow, and that his whole philosophy was tainted by racist, imperialist assumptions—hence a successful campaign to have the University of Edinburgh’s David Hume Tower renamed. Though this indignation is understandable when the sentiments he expressed are so evidently rebarbative to us today, it can reveal a kind of moral arrogance on the part of the protestors, a complacent assumption that no decent person could ever possibly have expressed such sentiments
Hume's racial observations were poorly-substantiated perhaps even for his time, and reflected a world-view we now find obnoxious, repellent, and dangerous. As you rightly say, contemporary indignation ignores the passage of time and changes in knowledge and values. But you say "it can reveal a kind of moral arrogance," rather than "it reveals..." which to my mind is closer to the truth.
I'm appalled by the successful "cancellation" of Hume Tower by these self-righteous protestors. Perhaps your essay was largely directed at this issue? If so, its circumspect phrasing borders on self-censorship. I don't think things have gotten as crazy in the UK as in US academic circles, but perhaps it's going in that direction.
Perhaps you're basing your opinion on a much larger corpus than the snippet you quoted (one would think so), but the snippet itself offers no basis for your discussion of it. No sentence that begins with “I am apt to suspect..." can be attacked for having insufficient supporting evidence.
It's been forty-five years, but from what I remember of Hume from my high-school Philosophy class he was among the most sensitive to the difference between what he suspected and what he 𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘸.
He may have had racist opinions by our standards, or even by the standards of his own time, but frankly a) you have nothing here to suggest that* and b) why would anyone care?
* Yes, if you consider the acceptance of the idea of race-related traits to be racism, then even his tentative opinion would define him as a racist. That's a plausible definition, too, except that let's be honest -- nobody who throws accusations of racism around nowadays thinks of it that way. They think in terms of oppression.
At Case in the early 60s one of my professors walked into class one day and said "today we are going to exhume Hume" and proceeded to do so. Although we were students of science and engineering, we were expected to also be open to intellectual diversity.
We see in Hume's work the questioning of democracy which no doubt lead the founders of the US to build a Republic not a Democracy. Now we suffer the consequences in the form of Donald Trump, who became president but lost the popular vote. We also see the consequences in the Supreme Court where members are confirmed by an unrepresentative body.
People fuss over the "popular vote" issue, but a difference of 2% (Trump/Clinton) and certainly .5% (Bush/Gore) seems like something that could have gone the other way had the weather been different, especially with turnout levels under 60%. And it's certainly strange to call the Senate "unrepresentative", even if the representation would be marginally different where their elections national rather than state.
And let's say, as people are predicting, that Republicans take both House and Senate this year. Will that mean that most of the country is now Republican and that they should then be able to set whatever policies come to mind? Will the high-minded still inveigh against the filibuster? I wouldn't bet on that.
No, the system is probably not perfect, but it's good enough to give everyone's opinion a chance, and everyone has the same opportunity to game it.
The Senate (and the Electoral College) were a solution to a problem that no longer exists. Big states versus small states were a big thing in 1787. It's not a thing at all in 2022. (Who do we expect Wyoming to side with, Hawaii or Texas?) I suppose we're stuck with it for the foreseeable future, but by modern standards it's certainly undemocratic.
I'm not sure what "modern standards" you refer to (my understanding is that in Switzerland, for instance, has a very similar system) or why those standards are to be preferred.
You may be right about the federal system having outlived its usefulness; I'm not competent to say. Calling it "undemocratic" (which I assume is meant to convey "bad") only works under a very narrow definition of democracy. The Constitution is undemocratic -- aside from its federalism, it grants people rights that can't be abrogated by a simple majority of citizens. Many of us think that's a good thing.
I'm not familiar enough with the Swiss system to say, and while we're agreed it's a good thing that rights "can't be abrogated by a simple majority of citizens, that's irrelevant to my point. By "undemocratic" I didn't mean some vague "bad", but that it's a basic democratic principle that everyone's votes to be equal. If there are circumstances that warrant an exception, it doesn't justify an imbalance as huge as the difference in the electoral clout between an individual Alaskan and an individual Californian.
As long as there are states, even if we get rid of senators and the Electoral College, an Alaskan's vote will count for more than a Californian's, because the former is among the relatively few who can elect the government of Alaska and the latter is among the very many who can elect the government of California.
Which is just a way of saying that America isn't a pure democracy and we don't do everything by plebiscite. Even in federal elections a voter can find himself in a district overwhelmingly of the other party, and what is his vote worth then? Of course we could elect congresspeople in statewide elections, but that'd just make them... Senators, in a sense.
And have the Alaskans really been leading the country around by the nose with their vast federal power?
In short, the system could probably be improved on, but it probably wouldn't make enough difference to justify the upheaval.
If we were still living in a time when the loser of the popular vote winning the election hadn't happened since 1888, maybe changing it wouldn't be worth the upheaval. When it's happened twice in sixteen years, that's another story.
The Senate represents the states not the population. We are the only Western democracy that confirms Supreme Court members by vote of a body that is not representative of the population. And this is done by a simple majority of one whereas other democracies generally require a 60% approval.
States have populations. Together, they make up the same population that can vote for Presidents. That's who send their 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 to the Senate. The worst that can be said about the Senate is that it's similar to gerrymandering, in that it groups voters in ways that may be beneficial to one party or the other, but Senators are as "representative" as Congressmen.
As for the size of the confirming majority, it wasn't long ago that Supreme Court confirmations could be filibustered. The Republicans ditched that after the Democrats ditched the filibuster for many other kinds of confirmations.
Thanks for your thoughtful essay on one of the most profound thinkers of our civilization. I agree with your comment
many concluded that the footnote exposed Hume’s claims to greatness as hollow, and that his whole philosophy was tainted by racist, imperialist assumptions—hence a successful campaign to have the University of Edinburgh’s David Hume Tower renamed. Though this indignation is understandable when the sentiments he expressed are so evidently rebarbative to us today, it can reveal a kind of moral arrogance on the part of the protestors, a complacent assumption that no decent person could ever possibly have expressed such sentiments
Hume's racial observations were poorly-substantiated perhaps even for his time, and reflected a world-view we now find obnoxious, repellent, and dangerous. As you rightly say, contemporary indignation ignores the passage of time and changes in knowledge and values. But you say "it can reveal a kind of moral arrogance," rather than "it reveals..." which to my mind is closer to the truth.
I'm appalled by the successful "cancellation" of Hume Tower by these self-righteous protestors. Perhaps your essay was largely directed at this issue? If so, its circumspect phrasing borders on self-censorship. I don't think things have gotten as crazy in the UK as in US academic circles, but perhaps it's going in that direction.
Perhaps you're basing your opinion on a much larger corpus than the snippet you quoted (one would think so), but the snippet itself offers no basis for your discussion of it. No sentence that begins with “I am apt to suspect..." can be attacked for having insufficient supporting evidence.
It's been forty-five years, but from what I remember of Hume from my high-school Philosophy class he was among the most sensitive to the difference between what he suspected and what he 𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘸.
He may have had racist opinions by our standards, or even by the standards of his own time, but frankly a) you have nothing here to suggest that* and b) why would anyone care?
* Yes, if you consider the acceptance of the idea of race-related traits to be racism, then even his tentative opinion would define him as a racist. That's a plausible definition, too, except that let's be honest -- nobody who throws accusations of racism around nowadays thinks of it that way. They think in terms of oppression.
For some reason the word “deplorables” popped into my head reading this.
At Case in the early 60s one of my professors walked into class one day and said "today we are going to exhume Hume" and proceeded to do so. Although we were students of science and engineering, we were expected to also be open to intellectual diversity.
We see in Hume's work the questioning of democracy which no doubt lead the founders of the US to build a Republic not a Democracy. Now we suffer the consequences in the form of Donald Trump, who became president but lost the popular vote. We also see the consequences in the Supreme Court where members are confirmed by an unrepresentative body.
People fuss over the "popular vote" issue, but a difference of 2% (Trump/Clinton) and certainly .5% (Bush/Gore) seems like something that could have gone the other way had the weather been different, especially with turnout levels under 60%. And it's certainly strange to call the Senate "unrepresentative", even if the representation would be marginally different where their elections national rather than state.
And let's say, as people are predicting, that Republicans take both House and Senate this year. Will that mean that most of the country is now Republican and that they should then be able to set whatever policies come to mind? Will the high-minded still inveigh against the filibuster? I wouldn't bet on that.
No, the system is probably not perfect, but it's good enough to give everyone's opinion a chance, and everyone has the same opportunity to game it.
The Senate (and the Electoral College) were a solution to a problem that no longer exists. Big states versus small states were a big thing in 1787. It's not a thing at all in 2022. (Who do we expect Wyoming to side with, Hawaii or Texas?) I suppose we're stuck with it for the foreseeable future, but by modern standards it's certainly undemocratic.
I'm not sure what "modern standards" you refer to (my understanding is that in Switzerland, for instance, has a very similar system) or why those standards are to be preferred.
You may be right about the federal system having outlived its usefulness; I'm not competent to say. Calling it "undemocratic" (which I assume is meant to convey "bad") only works under a very narrow definition of democracy. The Constitution is undemocratic -- aside from its federalism, it grants people rights that can't be abrogated by a simple majority of citizens. Many of us think that's a good thing.
I'm not familiar enough with the Swiss system to say, and while we're agreed it's a good thing that rights "can't be abrogated by a simple majority of citizens, that's irrelevant to my point. By "undemocratic" I didn't mean some vague "bad", but that it's a basic democratic principle that everyone's votes to be equal. If there are circumstances that warrant an exception, it doesn't justify an imbalance as huge as the difference in the electoral clout between an individual Alaskan and an individual Californian.
As long as there are states, even if we get rid of senators and the Electoral College, an Alaskan's vote will count for more than a Californian's, because the former is among the relatively few who can elect the government of Alaska and the latter is among the very many who can elect the government of California.
Which is just a way of saying that America isn't a pure democracy and we don't do everything by plebiscite. Even in federal elections a voter can find himself in a district overwhelmingly of the other party, and what is his vote worth then? Of course we could elect congresspeople in statewide elections, but that'd just make them... Senators, in a sense.
And have the Alaskans really been leading the country around by the nose with their vast federal power?
In short, the system could probably be improved on, but it probably wouldn't make enough difference to justify the upheaval.
If we were still living in a time when the loser of the popular vote winning the election hadn't happened since 1888, maybe changing it wouldn't be worth the upheaval. When it's happened twice in sixteen years, that's another story.
The Senate represents the states not the population. We are the only Western democracy that confirms Supreme Court members by vote of a body that is not representative of the population. And this is done by a simple majority of one whereas other democracies generally require a 60% approval.
States have populations. Together, they make up the same population that can vote for Presidents. That's who send their 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 to the Senate. The worst that can be said about the Senate is that it's similar to gerrymandering, in that it groups voters in ways that may be beneficial to one party or the other, but Senators are as "representative" as Congressmen.
As for the size of the confirming majority, it wasn't long ago that Supreme Court confirmations could be filibustered. The Republicans ditched that after the Democrats ditched the filibuster for many other kinds of confirmations.
So we differ. I believe in majority rule; each vote should have equal weight.
If citizens didn't differ, there'd be no reason for voting.