Race and the Enlightenment : a reader / edited by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Racism--History--18th century.

Enlightenment.

Racism.

History.

Physical Description:

ix, 166 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Blackwell Publishers, 1997.

Summary:

"... this fellow was quite black from head to foot, a clear proof that what he said was stupid" Immanuel Kant Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze collects into one convenient and controversial volume the most important and influential writings on race that the European Enlightenment produced. In Enlightenment thought reason and civilization became associated with "white" people and northern Europe, while unreason and savagery were conveniently located among "blacks" and non-whites outside Europe, in, for example, the "Dark Continent" of Africa.

The writers and thinkers represented here are: Linne, Buffon, Hume, Beattie, Kant, Herder, Blumenbach, Jefferson, Cuvier, and Hegel. In addition there are entries on the Negro from Diderot's Encyclopedie and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. All texts are situated within their historical, social, and intellectual contexts. A comprehensive introduction, presuming no prior familiarity with the texts concerned, serves as a guide to the student and general reader.

Contents:

1 The God-given Order of Nature 10

Carl von Linne, Homo in The System of Nature 10

2 The Geographical and Cultural Distribution of Mankind 15

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, A Natural History, General and Particular 15

3 "Negroes...naturally inferior to the whites" 29

David Hume, "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations" 29

"Of National Characters" 30

James Beattie, A Response to Hume 34

4 "This fellow was quite black...a clear proof that what he said was stupid" 38

Immanuel Kant, "On the Different Races of Man" 38

"On National Characteristics" 49

Physical Geography 58

5 The Kant-Herder Controversy 65

Immanuel Kant, Review of Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind 66

Johann Gottfried Herder, "Organization of the Peoples of Africa" 71

6 The Degeneration of Races 79

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, "Degeneration of the Species" 79

7 Entries in the Encyclopedie and the Encyclopaedia Britannica 91

"Negre," from the Encyclopedie 91

"Negro," from Encyclopaedia Britannica 93

8 "The difference is fixed in nature" 95

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia 95

9 "The race from which we are descended has been called Caucasian...the handsomest on earth" 104

Georges Leopold Cuvier, "Varieties of the Human Species" 104

10 Race, History, and Imperialism 109

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, "Geographical Basis of World History" 110

"Colonialism in the Internal Logic of Capitalist Modernity" 150.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

063120136X

0631201378

OCLC:

34663347