Lecture 21 Racism in the Age of Enlightenment
Lecture 21
Race and Racism
21.1 References for these Lectures
Isaac Kramnick, ed. The Portable Enlightenment Reader (London: Penguin, 1995).
Friedrich Nietzsche The Will to Power trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967)
Frantz Fanon Black Skin White Masks trans. Charles Lam Markmann (Macgimmon and Kee)
James Rachels The Elements of Moral Philosophy 4th Edition (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2003).
Kwame Anthony Appiah “Racisms”, in James Rachels, ed. The Right Thing To Do (Boston:
McGraw Hill, 2003): 264- 281.
Richard H. Popkin “Eighteenth Century Racism,” in Richard H. Popkin, Ed. The Columbia History of Western Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 1999): 508- 515
Jared Diamond Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (London: W.W.
Norton, 1997)
Michael Levin “Squaring the Circle” (review of Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel)
http://www.lrianc.com/swtaboo/stalkers/ml_ggs.html
Arudo Debito, “On Racism in Japan: Why one may be hopeful for the future,” presented at Meiji Gakuin University Symposium “International Studies of Our New Era: Immigrants, Refugees and Women,” Sunday, July 17th, 2005.
www.debito.org/meijigakuin071705.html –
Chris Hogg “Japanese racism deep and profound,” BBC News, Monday 11th July 2005
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4671687.stm
Professor N. Zack, course outline, PHIL 607 Philosophy of Race, Spring 2004
http://www.uoregon.edu/~uophil/faculty/nzack/zack607.htm
Benjamin Isaac: The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, Princeton University Press, 2004
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7737.pdf
21.2 Pre- Lecture Discussion questions.
1). What is race?
2). What is racism?
3). What is a phenotype?
4). What is a human?
5). What is Kant’s conception of human nature?
6). Why, for Kant, are all humans morally important?
7). Are there any moral issues concerning race in Japan?
8) Can you name any cases of Japanese people as either the victims or perpetrators of
racism?
9) What, in your opinion, is the cause of racism?
10) What are the differences between the Japanese and the Korean people? And are
these differences intrinsic, or contingent (caused by cultural or environmental factors,
for example?).
21.3 Reading Questions.
We will look at three texts from the 18th Century, written by three of the most important moral philosophers in history- David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Paine.
21.3 a). Reading David Hume Essays, Political and Philosophical (1742)
1). Why does Hume think that ‘Negroes’ (Africans) are naturally inferior to whites?
2). What counterexample to Kant’s opinion does he discuss?
3). Is his discussion of this counterexample adequate?
21.3 b). Reading Immanuel Kant The Difference Between the Races (1764)
1). What does Kant say about Chinese culture? Are these comments fair, do you think?
2). What does Kant say about the Japanese? Are these comments fair, do you think?
3). What does Kant say about African religion?
4). (p. 639). Kant reports on a black man who considered sexual equality foolish. Kant suggests that the black man had said something intelligent, then decides that he was, in fact, stupid. Why?
5). Do any of Kant’s comments on Blacks in this essay contradict his moral philosophy?
21.4 c). Reading Thomas Paine African Slavery in America (1775)
1). According to Paine, how many blacks were enslaved annually? How many were killed after one year of enslavement?
2). It was argued that slaves are simply property, and so their sale and purchase was therefore legal. How does Paine reply?
3). What is the argument from Biblical authority? And how does Paine respond?
4). What does Paine suggest be done with freed slaves? Are his suggestions ethical? Why, or why not?
21.5 Introduction: Rachels: Racism is an Expression of Ethical Egoism
A moral discussion on the topic of race is not a simple matter. This is because, as Rachels notes, there is no moral ambiguity or complexity: racism is clearly immoral and irrational. It is essentially arbitrary. It places moral significance on the morally trivial- that is, skin color. In Rachels’ Elements of Moral Complexity:
The requirement of impartiality… is at bottom nothing more than a proscription against arbitrariness in dealing with people. It is a rule that forbids us from treating one person differently from another when there is no good reason to do so (Rachels EMP: 14).
Later in the text, Rachels gives the following statement on Ethical Egoism, that is, the idea that it is morally correct to consider one’s own interests as more important than those of others.
There is a whole family of moral views that have this in common: they all involve dividing people into groups and saying that the interests of some groups count for more than the interests of other groups. Racism is the most conspicuous example; racism divides people into groups according to race and assigns greater importance to the interests of one race than to others. The practical result is that members of one race are treated better than others. Anti- Semitism works the same way, and so does nationalism (EMP: 88).
(Discussion: what is Nationalism, in this sense? Is a nationalistic attitude ever beneficial, rather than destructive? Note that Abe wants to make national pride a part of state education).
Rachels goes on to define morality in such a way as to define racism (and all other forms of arbitrariness) as immoral:
Morality is, at the very least, the effort to guide one’s conduct by reason- that is, to do what there are the best reasons for doing- while giving equal weight to the interests of each individual who will be affected by what one does. (Rachels EMP: 14).
Consequently,
Racism means counting the interests of the members of other races as less important than the interests of the members of one’s own race, despite the fact that there is no general difference between the races that would justify doing so. It is an offence against morality because it is first an offence against reason. Similar remarks could be made about other doctrines that provide humanity into the favored and disfavored, such as egoism, sexism, and nationalism. The upshot is that reason requires impartiality: We ought to act so as to promote the interests of everyone alike. (EMP: 193).
For Rachels, racism is nothing more than an aberration of correct moral thinking. Yet, as we know, many of the greatest moral philosophers were, by any definition, completely racist. Why is this? More centrally, was their racism consistent with, or in spite of, their moral theories?
21. 6 Race and Racism before the Enlightenment:
Racist and anti- Jewish (anti- Semitic) views were given religious justifications even before Christianity. Anti- Semitism existed in the Roman Empire, which imposed special taxes on Jews for not recognizing the Gods of Rome or for refusing to work on the Sabbath. In the Middle Ages, Jews were forced to convert to Christianity. Later generations of forced converts (who practiced their religion in secret) were then tortured and killed during the Spanish Inquisition. Jews were forced out of England in 1290, and France in 1390.
With the discovery of the Americas in the 1400’s, and the rise of slavery of Africans, it was widely argued that Africans and South Americans were not fully human and so were not entitled to their land or their freedom. Biblical explanations were offered to justify slavery and cultural destruction:
The accepted view at the time was that all people were descended from the survivors of Noah’s Ark. Europeans had found their origins as descendants of various grandchildren of Noah, dispersed after the building of the tower of Babel. Africans were assumed to be descendants of Ham and his son Canaan, whose skin was reported to have been darkened because they disgraced Noah. But where did the Native Americans come from? The Bible provided no clue. Various theories were proposed in order to grapple with the logistics of traveling from the Middle East to the Americas. Around 1600, some hardy souls suggested that the Indians had an origin separate from the biblical world. Such a view was heretical, since it denied that the Bible was the complete history of mankind. (Popkin p. 509).
This is not to say that Christianity was essentially racist: many early critics of racism were in fact members of the church. A few of the early priests in the Americas considered the Natives morally superior to the Europeans, and in 1537 Pope Paul declared that all the peoples of the world were human. This did nothing to slow the conquest of the Earth by Europeans, however.
21.7 Race and Racism at the Dawn of the Age of Reason: Count Buffon (1702- 1788) and Karl Linneaus (1707- 1778)
The Age of Enlightenment (also known as the ‘Age of Reason’) largely eliminated purely religious explanations for racial difference. Instead, natural, ‘scientific’ (or rather ‘pseudoscientific’) explanations were offered to account for racial difference. Count Buffon (1702-1788), widely considered the greatest biologist of all time, stated that all humans were members of the same species, Homo sapiens. Differences between racial groups were due, he thought, to climate and other factors. He believed that the original skin color was white. He thought that all children begin white, and gradually change color. “Due to climate, nutrition, and education, many people had degenerated from the natural condition to the varieties of mankind that we now find. If these people could be moved into a band of territory stretching from the Caucasus Mountains to northwestern Europe, fed French food, and given a French education, the differences among human beings would disappear. This assumed that all non- European qualities were due to degeneration and that the European person was the best. Buffon optimistically thought that in ten generations everyone would be transformed into Europeans, and then there would be no racial differences among people.” (Popkin: 511).
The Swedish biologist Linneaus (1707-1778) classified mankind into four permanent groups: American Indians, Asiatics, Africans, and Europeans. He defines the American Indians first: note, again, that the best qualities are attributed to the Europeans. (NB: how does his definition cohere with that of Kant? And how does this relate to Kant’s theory of human nature?)
[American Indians:] copper- colored, choleric, erect. hair black, straight, thick; nostrils wide; face harsh; beard scanty, obstinate, only content when free… regulated by customs. (2) Europeans, fair, sanguine, brawny. Hair yellow- brown, flowing; eyes blue, gentle, acute, inventive. Covered in close vestments. Governed by laws. (3). Asiatic. Sooty, melancholy, rigid. Hair black; eyes dark; severe, haughty, covetous. Covered with loose garments. Governed by opinion. (4). African. Black, phlegmatic, relaxed. Hair black, frizzled; skin silky, nose flat, lips tumid; crafty, indolent, negligent. Anoints himself with grease; governed by caprice. (Quoted in Popkin p. 510).
21. 7 David Hume: Empirical Racism
In David Hume and Immanuel Kant we see a distinction between two types of racism. Popkin calls these Empirical and Transcendental racism (Kwame Anthony Appiah, who we will read for the next lecture, calls these extrinsic and intrinsic racism). In his essay “Of National Characters,” Hume writes that
I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all of the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) [1] to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient GERMANS, the present TARTARS, have all still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are NEGROE slaves dispersed all over Europe, of which none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity, tho’ low people without education will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In JAMAICA indeed they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but ‘tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly (in Popkin p.512).
As an empiricist, Hume claimed to be basing his argument on what could be directly observed. As such, he was inconsistent with the basic principle of his epistemology, as there were plenty of intelligent Africans around to contradict his assumptions. The Jamaican that Hume refers to was in fact Francis Williams, a graduate of Cambridge University, who ran a school and wrote poetry in Latin. In Hume’s day there were around ten thousand blacks in London, some of whom were professionals, one of whom was an employee of the writer Samuel Johnson. There were also at least two black professors of philosophy in Europe at the time as well: Anton Wilhelm Amo in Halle, and James Eliza Capitein in Leiden. Phillis Wheatley, an African- American poet, was in fact sent to England to disprove the likes of Hume. A French campaigner, abbé Henri Grégoire (1750-1831), published his book The Literature of Negroes in both English and French for the same reason. Yet for the following century, people would quote “the great philosopher Hume” in defending slavery and the belief that blacks are ‘sub- humans.’
21.8 Immanuel Kant: Transcendental Racism
From Popkin: “Perhaps the strongest philosophical statement of the theory of the natural and irremediable inferiority of blacks was offered by Immanuel Kant. During most of his academic life, Kant gave a course on anthropology in which he accepted much of the explorer and traveler literature uncritically” [recall that Kant never traveled in his life]. He developed a theory that what constituted the conception of humanity itself was based on feeling [and also, that what makes us human is our reason]. He thus declared that the “African has no feeling beyond the trifling,” and that therefore barely his character, is barely capable of moral action, and is a lesser human being. In his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, Kant stated:
Mr. Hume challenges anyone to cite a simple example in which a Negro has shown talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere from their countries, although many of them have been set free, still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality; even among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble, and through superior gifts earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the difference between the two races of men, and it appears to be as great in regard to mental capacities as in color. (In Popkin p. 513).
Kant goes on to reject the reasoning of a particular black man, as he was “quite black from head to foot.” (This is, of course, the Genetic Fallacy). As Popkin points out, Kant is offering, not an empirical, but a transcendental basis for the distinction between blacks and whites. The inferiority of the blacks is beyond any particular observable trait. The German philosopher Johann Gottleib Fichte (1762- 1814) (a follower of Kant), used similar (un)reasoning to explain the essential inferiority of German Jews from other Germans: a Jew can read German, a Jew can write German, but a Jew can never be German.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
You need to know that philosophers are generally amateurs on any subject other than pure philosophy
You should know what Kant and Hume have to say on the subject of race.
You should decide whether the racism of these four thinkers is contradictory, or consistent, with their own moral thought.
You should know the distinction between empirical and ‘transcendental’ theories of racism
Homework:
please read the Kwame Anthony Appiah article in the Rachels anthology.
posted by G. Roche at 10:52 AM
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