Respect

You don't throw a whole life away just because it's banged up a little... 

That's one of the punch lines from the movie Seabiscuit

Why respect some great thinker, politician or celebrity if somewhere in his or her speeches or texts he or she has a very "biased" opinion about a certain group of people?  Why respect Kant and Hume, if they strongly felt that the whites were superior to the coloured skin? Why read and appreciate Aristotle if he felt men were superior to women?  Source: Aeon

• Disrespecting the whole person and all his or her writings betrays a profound lack of understanding of how socially we are influenced, even the greatest of minds of any time. 
• Never take one of their personal convictions to be the bedrock of all their thought and philosophy.  
• We are judging them by today's standards and cultural openness - something that they did not have the privilege to in their times.  
• While an individual is ultimately responsible for his own thoughts and actions, one cannot be held solely responsible, if the whole ambiance of his lifetime is flawed or biased.  (Jesus saying, "You don't give the dogs food meant for the children")
• Accepting and admiring the deep thoughts of such men and women, is not affirming their 'racist or sexist' thoughts.  Racism and sexism were never okay, people simply wrongly believed that they were.
• See if their fundamental way of thinking would be negatively prejudiced if applied today. 

Given Aristotle’s openness to evidence and experience, there is no question that today he would need no persuading that women are men’s equals. Hume likewise always deferred to experience, and so would not today be apt to suspect anything derogatory about dark-skinned peoples. In short, we don’t need to look beyond the fundamentals of their philosophy to see what was wrong in how they applied them.

• Excusing them is not the same as excusing someone who's living today with some of those distorted values. We, the living, have the opportunity to weigh the pros and cons; we have history to learn from; we have the possibility of making amends; we may not be the ones who created such notions but are very much in a position to challenge them; we certainly are 'better equipped'... the dead have no such possibility!