Race and the Enlightenment 0631201378, 9780631201373

Citation preview

305.8009 ) R33 1997 ^

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READER

Edited

by

Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze

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^0V£ Co^ LIBRARY

305.8009 R33 1997

Race and the Enlightenment

B

Race and the Enlightenment A Reader Edited by

Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze

BLACKWELL Publishers

Copyright © Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1997 Introduction, notes, selection and arrangement © Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, 1997 First published 1997 Reprinted 1998 Blackwell Publishers Inc 350 Main Street Malden, Massachusetts 02148, USA Blackwell Publishers Ltd 108 Cowley Road Oxford 0X4 1JF, UK All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Race and the Enlightenment: a reader/edited by EmmanuelChukwudi Eze p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-631-20136-X (hbk: alk. paper) ISBN 0-631-20137-8 ^bk: alk. paper) 1. Race—Racism—History—18th century. 2. Enlightenment. I. Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi. HT1507.R33 1997 96-19640 305.8’009’033—dc20 CIP

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset in 10.5 on 12.5ptMeridien by Best-set Typesetter Ltd, Hong Kong Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall This book is printed on acid-free paper

AP07’i

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction 1

2

The God-given Order of Nature

4

10 10

The Geographical and Cultural Distribution of Mankind

15

15

"Negroes . . . naturally inferior to the whites"

29

David Hume, "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations" "Of National Characters" James Beattie, A Response to Hume

29 30 34

"This fellow was quite black ... a clear proof that what he said was stupid" Immanuel Kant, "On the Different Races of Man" "On National Characteristics" Physical Geography

5

1

Carl von Linne, Homo in The System of Nature

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, A Natural History, General and Particular

3

vii

The Kant-Herder Controversy Immanuel Kant, Review of Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind Johann Gottfried Herder, "Organization of the Peoples of Africa"

38 38 49 58

65 66 71

vi 6

Contents The Degeneration of Races Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, "Degeneration of the Species"

79

Entries in the Encyclopedic and the Encyclopaedia

91

Britannica "Negre," from the Encyclopedic "Negro," from Encyclopaedia Britannica

91 93

8

"The difference is fixed in nature" Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

95 95

9

"The race from which we are descended has been called Caucasian . .. the handsomest on earth" Georges Leopold Cuvier, "Varieties of the Human Species"

104

Race, History, and Imperialism Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, "Geographical Basis of World History" "Colonialism in the Internal Logic of Capitalist Modernity"

109

Index

154

7

10

79

104

110 150

Acknowledgments

It is a pleasure for me to acknowledge publicly the help I received - advice, encouragement, and constructive criticisms - from sev¬ eral friends and colleagues: Katherine Eze, Associate Professor and Director of the German Program at Bucknell University; Professor Richard Popkin, the distinguished intellectual historian currently at UCLA and editor of the Columbia History of Western Philosophy; Professor Robert Bernasconi, Moss Chair of Excel¬ lence in Philosophy, University of Memphis; Robert Young, Fellow and Tutor in English at Wadham College, Oxford; Isaac Kramnick, Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government, Cor¬ nell University; and Andrew McNeillie, at Blackwell Publishers. If this book has "gaps" and "soft spots" in it, it is probably because I did not always accept every piece of good advice about addi¬ tions, subtractions, and other editorial changes offered by these distinguished colleagues; nor was it always possible for me to incorporate in full those suggestions that I did accept. For these reasons, then, it goes without saying that whatever weaknesses it may contain must remain my responsibility, and mine alone. At Bucknell I would like to thank Professors Doug Candland and Jim Rice, the 1995 directors of the Knight Fellowship Pro¬ gram, who awarded a grant that enabled me to retain the re¬ search assistance of my student, Chris Walvood, for six weeks during the Christmas holiday of the same year. In addition to our mutual scholarly interests in exploring the "other sides" of the Enlightenment, Chris's administrative and editorial assistance greatly facilitated the timely completion of this book. The librar¬ ians at BucknelTs Bertrand Library were kind and generous with their time in assisting me to locate and obtain both rare and

viii

Acknowledgments

restricted materials from other libraries and archives. I would like to mention by name Doris Dysinger of the Archives and Special Collections Division; and Martha Holland, Tom Mattern, Bud Hiller II, Amy Golder-Cooper, and Bonnie Bair at the Refer¬ ence and Circulation Desks. To Chris Reynolds at the Library's Media Services, and Jennifer Celia and Kay Knapp at the InterLibrary Loans Division - for their diligence and patience with my often complicated work requests - I am very grateful. My friend of many years, the art historian Bobbye Burke, of Philadelphia, also assisted me in tracking down hard-to-find eighteenthcentury writings in anthropology. Finally, I would like to thank Michael Payne, the Crozer Professor of English at Bucknell, along with my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy, in particular Professors Richard Fleming, Jeffrey Turner, and Frank Wilson; and Nancy Johnson. Their support for this and my numerous research projects has been strong and enduring.

The original works drawn on for this collection The author and publishers wish to thank the following for per¬ mission to use copyright material. Cambridge University Press for material from Georg Wilhelm Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H. B. Nisbet, 1975; and Immanuel Kant, Kant's Political Writing, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet, 1970; Oxford University Press for material from Georg Wilhelm Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox, 1942; University of California Press for material from Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. and ed. John Goldthwait. Copyright © 1960 The Regents of the University of California; The University of North Carolina Press for material from Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. William Peden. Published for the Institute of Early American History and Cul¬ ture. Copyright © 1955 by The University of North Carolina Press. Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

Acknowledgments

ix

Below is a complete list of the works used in this collection, giving the editions from which extracts were taken. Beattie, J., An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Skepticism [1770], Philadelphia, Pa.: Solomon Wieatt, 1809. Blumenbach, J. F., On the Natural Varieties of Mankind, New York: Bergman Publishers, 1969. Buffon, G.-L. Leclerc, Comte de, A Natural History, General and Particular, vol. 1, trans. W. Smellie, 1860. Cuvier, G. L., Animal Kingdom [Le Regne animal, 1817], trans. H. McMurtie, New York, 1831. Diderot, D. and D'Alembert, J. le R. (eds). Encyclopedic [175172], "Negre" entry trans. for this volume by E. C. Eze, 1997. Encyclopaedia Britannica, American edition of 1798. Hegel, G. W. F., Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H. B. Nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Hegel, G. W. F., Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox, Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1942] 1967. Herder, J. G., Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, trans. T. Churchill, New York: Bergman Publishers, 1800. Hume, D., "Of the populousness of ancient nations," in Essays Moral and Political, rev. edn 1748 (revised and reprinted in several later editions). Hume, D„ "Of national characters," in Essays Moral and Political, 1748, as above. Jefferson, T., Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. W. Peden, Univer¬ sity of North Carolina Press, 1955. Kant, I., Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. J. T. Goldthwait, Berkeley, Calif.: University of Califor¬ nia Press, 1960. Kant, I., "On the different races of man," [1775], in This is Race, ed. E. W. Count, New York: Henry Schuman, 1950. Kant, I., "On countries that are known and unknown to Europe¬ ans," in Physical Geography [Physische Geographic, in Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin: Reimer, 1900-60], trans. for this volume by I