Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy

by Justin Smith-Ruiu

Overview

People have always been xenophobic, but an explicit philosophical and scientific view of human racial difference only began to emerge during the modern period. Why and how did this happen? Surveying a range of philosophical and natural-scientific texts, dating from the Spanish Renaissance to the German Enlightenment, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference charts the evolution of the modern concept of race and shows that natural philosophy, particularly efforts to taxonomize and to order nature, played a crucial role.

Smith demonstrates how the denial of moral equality between Europeans and non-Europeans resulted from converging philosophical and scientific developments, including a declining belief in human nature's universality and the rise of biological classification. The racial typing of human beings grew from the need to understand humanity within an all-encompassing system of nature, alongside plants, minerals, primates, and other animals. While racial difference as seen through science did not arise in order to justify the enslavement of people, it became a rationalization and buttress for the practices of trans-Atlantic slavery. From the work of François Bernier to G. W. Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and others, Smith delves into philosophy's part in the legacy and damages of modern racism.

With a broad narrative stretching over two centuries, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference takes a critical historical look at how the racial categories that we divide ourselves into came into being.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691176345
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	03/14/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Justin E. H. Smith is university professor of the history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Diderot—Paris VII. He is the author of Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life (Princeton), coeditor and cotranslator of The Leibniz-Stahl Controversy, and a regular contributor to the New York Times and other publications.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

A Note on Citations and Terminology x

Introduction 1

I.1 Nature 1

I.2 Historical Ontology 2

I.3 The History of Science and the History of Philosophy 10

I.4 Aims and Outline 17

Chapter 1: Curious Kinks 24

1.1 Essence 24

1.2 Race and Cognition 28

1.3 Race without a Theory of Essences; or, Liberal Racism 32

1.4 Constructionism and Eliminativism 38

1.5 Natural Construction 47

1.6 Conclusion 54

Chapter 2: Toward a Historical Ontology of Race 56

2.1 False Positives in the History of Race 56

2.2 "Erst Spruce, Now Rusty and Squalid" 58

2.3 Race and Dualism 64

2.4 Conclusion 68

Chapter 3: New Worlds 70

3.1 "I Had to Laugh Vehemently at Aristotle's Meteorological Philosophy" 70

3.2 America and the Limits of Philosophy 72

3.3 Native Knowledge 78

3.4 Conclusion 90

Chapter 4: The Specter of Polygenesis 92

4.1 Libertinism and Naturalism from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century 92

4.2 Pre-Adamism 102

4.3 Diffusionist Models 105

4.4 Conclusion 113

Chapter 5: Diversity as Degeneration 114

5.1 The "History of Abused Nature" 114

5.2 Diet and Custom 123

5.3 Hybridism and the Threat of Ape-Human Kinship 129

5.4 Conclusion 138

Chapter 6: From Lineage to Biogeography 140

6.1 Race, Species, Breed 140

6.2 François Bernier's Racial Geography 143

6.3 A Gassendian Natural Philosopher in the Court of the Grand Moghul 149

6.4 Bernier and Leibniz 155

6.5 Conclusion 158

Chapter 7: Leibniz on Human Equality and Human Domination 160

7.1 Introduction 160

7.2 Chains: Leibniz on the Series Generationum 163

7.3 Chains, Continued: Leibniz on Slavery 170

7.4 The Science of Singular Things 183

7.5 Mapping the Diversity of the Russian Empire 187

7.6 Conclusion: Diversity without Race 202

Chapter 8: Anton Wilhelm Amo 207

8.1 "The Natural Genius of Africa" 207

8.2 Amo's Legacy 215

8.3 The Impassivity of the Human Mind 221

8.4 Conclusion: From Philippi to Kant 227

Chapter 9: Race and Its Discontents in the Enlightenment 231

9.1 Introduction 231

9.2 The Significance of Skin Color 235

9.3 Kant: From Non Sequitur to Critique? 241

9.4 J. G. Herder: The Expectation of Brotherhood 248

9.5 J. F. Blumenbach: Variety without Plurality 252

Conclusion 264

Biographical Notes 269

Bibliography 273

Index 293

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Combining philosophical and historical analysis and a mine of research, this book documents the evolution of the race construct in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At a time when the philosophy of race is vigorously reinventing itself, Justin Smith provides readers with an insightful foray into the modern European mindset constructing non-European otherness."—Koffi N. Maglo, University of Cincinnati

"Charting the discourse on human race in early modern philosophy, this book makes important contributions to the history and philosophy of race—a subject that continues to haunt contemporary debates. Smith covers an exceedingly complex terrain of disparate ideas and arguments, stretching across centuries and a wide range of national contexts. This is a valuable, thought-provoking, and innovative addition to the literature."—Staffan Müller-Wille, University of Exeter

Editorial Reviews

"It is a study that I would recommend for all those interested in developing a better understanding of the origins of ideas about human diversity and race in modern thought."—-John Solomos, Renaissance Quarterly

"A sophisticated history . . . [and] an important contribution to the pressing task of understanding and remedying our seemingly intractable color prejudice. . . . [Smith's] discussion is profound and absorbing throughout."—-Bernard Boxill, Journal of the History of Philosophy

"Smith's survey of the race concept in the early modern period is original, provocative, and stimulating all at once, balancing a sharp awareness of the enormous damage that the idea of racial divisions has had and an appreciation of how the concept relates to advances in our understanding of humanity’s place in the natural world. His study is a powerful demonstration of the role history can play in raising ethical awareness of such dangerous and tenacious concepts as race."—-Devin Vartija, Isis

From the Publisher

"In this innovative, thought-provoking book, Smith (history and philosophy of science, Université Paris Diderot, Paris 7) looks at the construction and evolution, in natural science and anthropology, of 17th- and 18th-century modern views of racial difference—views that led to racial typing, racial profiling, prejudice, and implicit bias. . . . This is a valuable book for those interested in philosophy, sociology, cultural studies and multiculturalism, the history of race, and the history of natural science and anthropology."

Choice