ONE of Europe’s leading contemporary philosophers has criticised the decision by Edinburgh University to rename its David Hume Tower after students raised concerns about remarks the giant of the Scottish Enlightenment made on race.

Professor Anthony Grayling told The National he supports the Black Lives Matters movement and is strongly opposed racism but that nevertheless he rejected the university’s decision to drop the eighteenth century Scottish thinker’s name from the building.

Grayling described Hume as one of the great figures in the history of philosophy who should rightfully be remembered.

He suggested that the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, the founder of modern Western inquiry, and Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the American declaration of independence, would not pass the standard set by the Edinburgh students.

“I strongly support the Black Lives Matter movement and strongly oppose racism and all forms of discrimination and at the same time I deprecate Edinburgh University’s decision to cease to recognise one of the great figures in the history of philosophy,” he said.

“These are not inconsistent positions ... Slavers deserve historical challenge. They deserve to have their statues torn down.

“Everyone else – all who lived through the thousands of years of slavery, a norm in almost all societies – could be regarded as complicit if they did not actively oppose it. So shall we wipe history clean and start over with a blank memory of the past, expunging even the memory of slavery itself so that we do not know what to fight against now and how to prevent it in future?

“From Aristotle to Thomas Jefferson we would need to blank them all. Let us deprecate the bad things people did but keep some sense of the alloy that is human history, its tragedy and horror as well as the better things we can take from it.”

It emerged over the weekend that the David Hume Tower will now be called 40 George Square, after a petition by students. Hume, a globally renowned thinker, studied at the university and was one of the key figures in the Scottish Enlightenment.

The move came after Dr Felix Waldmann of Cambridge University found a letter Hume wrote in 1766 urging his patron, Lord Hertford, to buy a plantation in Grenada.

Grayling’s intervention follows criticism from leading historian Sir Tom Devine, a Professor Emeritus at Edinburgh University. Devine said: “The current Principal of Edinburgh University [Peter Mathieson] should hang his head in absolute shame.”

The university has said on Hume’s comments on race, “though not uncommon at the time, rightly cause distress today”.