ABSTRACT
Hume’s infrequently expressed thoughts about how observable differences between humans mapped on to the racial categories of his day have been explored in detail in the secondary materials. As a complement to those informative and insightful studies, the following chapter contends that Hume’s legacy regarding race rests in the tension between two common interpretations of his views on race: his philosophical aspiration to demonstrate the universal sources of our habits and beliefs, which generally downplay race in his thought; and the larger intellectual and political contexts regarding race that shaped and were shaped by Hume’s writings, which often overemphasize race in his thought.
