ABSTRACT
This essay attempts to identify the context of David Hume’s infamous footnote concerning race appended to his essay, “Of National Characters.” It is difficult to make sense of idiosyncratic remarks by past thinkers under the best of conditions, but it becomes particularly difficult when issues that are very sensitive for twenty-first-century readers are broached. Over the course of this essay I attempt to provide a coherent explanation of what might have driven Hume to write this remark—although the evidence is meager and my own explanation is of necessity speculative. I argue that the footnote is interconnected with Hume’s concept of a science of man. In brief, in order to make such a science practicable Hume excluded the nonwhite races from the class of objects suitable to scientific investigation. In order to explain why he did this, I briefly discuss the concept of ‘race’ as it was understood by many eighteenth-century philosophers, as well as some associated issues such as the relations between religion and race and gender versus racial difference. In conclusion, I argue that Hume’s footnote helps us understand how the human sciences, even at their inception, were conceived as exclusionary on the basis of an often misguided notion of science.
