David Hume: Striding out for father of the Enlightenment

Published on Friday 7 January 2011 15:07

A COLOURFUL parade up Edinburgh's Royal Mile is to be held to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of one of Scotland's greatest thinkers.

Hundreds of people are expected to take part in The March to Enlightenment, from the Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood to the striking statue of David Hume opposite St Giles' Cathedral.

It is the first major public event to be announced in recognition of the tercentenary of Hume's birth and his legacy as a groundbreaking philosopher, famous for questioning everything and seeking to explain the world without a God.

Organisers hoped it will raise awareness of the man reputed to be Edinburgh's "founding father of the Enlightenment" - and a hugely influential thinker in politics, history, religion and literary and aesthetic theory.

The celebration will start with the re-enactment of a notorious trial of an Edinburgh medical student, Thomas Aikenhead, the last person in Britain to be hung for blasphemy.

Costumed characters portraying Hume and other Enlightenment figures such as Adam Smith, James Hutton, Robert Burns and James Watt will lead the parade up the Royal Mile where it is hoped a high-profile figure such as comedian Billy Connolly will lead the tributes.

The event on Saturday, 23 April, three days before Hume's birthday, is being organised by the Humanist Society of Scotland, which led the campaign to have the Hume statue, created by sculptor Sandy Stoddart on the Royal Mile, outside the High Court, in 1997. The university is organising a number of Hume tercentenary events, including lectures, a conference and a party on his actual birthday.

Clare Marsh, spokeswoman for the Humanist Society of Scotland, said: "The Edinburgh into which Hume was born in 1711 was a place where a young medical student, Thomas Aikenhead, had been hanged for blasphemy only a few years before. It was a place of spiritual and intellectual ferment that produced many of the greatest minds of the period who established the Scottish Enlightenment and created the blueprint for modernity.

"Hume may be a key figure in the firmament of modern thought, and widely revered throughout the world, but it is a sad fact that you would struggle to find a child in a Scottish school who has heard his name. We plan to rectify this situation and appeal to our fellow humanists throughout the world to help us."

Edinburgh's Lord Provost, George Grubb, said: "The Enlightenment and its foremost thinkers - David Hume, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart and others - shaped Edinburgh as a great centre of culture, philosophy, learning and theology. This event in April will be an opportunity to recognise this remarkable period of Edinburgh's history."

Last man executed for blasphemy in Britain

THOMAS Aikenhead was an Edinburgh medical student who was hanged for blasphemy in 1697.

While at Edinburgh University he studied the work of philosophers including Ren Descartes and Thomas Hobbes.

In 1696, when the Scottish Privy Council ordered a search for books deemed "atheistical, erroneous or profane", Aikenhead was arrested and sent to Tolbooth Prison.

He was charged for blaspheming against the Holy Trinity and accused of saying that theology was "a rhapsody of feigned and ill-invented nonsense" made up of "poetical fictions and extravagant chimeras".

His execution was the last execution for blasphemy in Britain.

David Hume was a hugely influential thinker in the 1700s. Below are some of his most famous and thought-provoking teachings

"Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them" – Essays Moral, Political, Literary (1758)

"A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: one to fear and sorrow, real poverty" – Essays Moral, Political, Literary

"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence" – An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

"Be a philosopher, but, amid all your philosophy, be still a man" – An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding

"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous" – A Treatise on Human Nature (1739)