Julian Baginni, Times Literary Supplement - I’ve suggested three questions that we need to ask of the people standing on our public plinths. Is the achievement for which they are being celebrated intimately or causally tied to their sins? Were they significantly worse than others of their time? How recent was the offense? These questions do not add up to a complete and rigorous set of tests. Issues are too complicated to be settled by any moral algorithm. It could be, for example, that there is a statue to someone who is being remembered for the good things they did, not the bad, who erred not more than anyone of their age did, and all in the distant past, yet which should still come down. Perhaps the legacy of the wrongdoing they are implicated in is such that the monument is a living offense. This is what makes slavery such a powerful vector in this debate. Nelson’s crimes may be more than two hundred years in the past but the consequences of the slave trade he fought to preserve are still being played out.
By any reasonable test, David Hume should be safe. (He’s not yet listed on toppletheracists.org.) Hume’s racism was no more than was sadly normal at the time and it had nothing to do with what made his philosophy great... There are countless other cases where it is not so clear cut and there is a need for considered judgements. There is a kind of slope, in that there are gradations of guilt in the heroes of the past, and very few are entirely blameless. But it is not a slippery one unless we make it so by insisting there is nothing between the moral high ground and the abyss of iniquity.
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