num_pages: 312
description: 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 Francois 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.
language: English
title: Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy
publisher: Oxford University Press