Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern PhilosophyPeople 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. |
Contents
1 | |
CURIOUS KINKS | 24 |
TOWARD A HISTORICAL ONTOLOGY OF RACE | 56 |
NEW WORLDS | 70 |
THE SPECTER OF POLYGENESIS | 92 |
DIVERSITY AS DEGENERATION | 114 |
FROM LINEAGE TO BIOGEOGRAPHY | 140 |
LEIBNIZ ON HUMAN EQUALITY AND HUMAN DOMINATION | 160 |
ANTON WILHELM AMO | 207 |
RACE AND ITS DISCONTENTS IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT | 231 |
CONCLUSION | 264 |
Biographical Notes | 269 |
273 | |
293 | |
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Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy Justin E. H. Smith No preview available - 2015 |