Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:56:30.293Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Philosophical Anthropology on the Eve of Biological Determinism: Immanuel Kant and Georg Forster on the Moral Qualities and Biological Characteristics of the Human Race

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Thomas Strack
Thomas Strack
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the late eighteenth century, any attempt to categorize humankind by race was necessarily tied to the controversy surrounding slavery as well as to the debate about the general perfectibility of humankind, which, in turn, focused on the potential of “primative” peoples to achieve higher (European) levels of civilization. The widespread glorification of the Pacific Islanders as unspoiled childern of nature in the wake of Rousseau's idealization of a natural state and Bougainville's La Nouvelle Cythère made the debate even more complex; the enthusiastic reception of these texts in Europe bespoke an alienation from a polarized society and a dissatisfaction with rapid technological advances. Meanwhile, scientists were striving to avoid such rhetoric by attempting to define anthropology as a science, to collect data, and to categorize humankind free of political bias and the limitations of any particular philosophy of history.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 285 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Kohl, Karl-Heinz, Entzauberter Blick: Das Bild vom Guten Wilden und die Erfahrung der Zivilisation (Frankfurt am Main, 1983).Google Scholar

2. See Moravia, Sergio on the emergence of anthropology as a modern science in Paris, especially in the context of the Societé des Observateurs de l'Homme (Beobachtende Vernunft (Frankfurt am Main, 1989; see below).Google Scholar

3. See Lepenies, Wolf, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte (Munich, 1976). I feel especially indebted to Steve Gilbert for the many hours he spent discussing the subject with me, and forcing me to be a lot clearer about the issues than I would have been without his continuous criticism.Google Scholar

4. Pagden, Anthony, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Enthnology (Cambridge, London, 1982), 2.Google Scholar See also Todorov, Tzvetan, Die Eroberung Amerikas: Das Problem des Anderen (Frankfurt am Main, 1985),Google Scholar and most recently and more comprehensively Pagden, Anthony, European Enconters with the New World From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven, 1993).Google ScholarNeuber's, WolfgangFremde Welt im europäischen Horizontal: Zur Topik der deutschen Amerika-Reiseberichte der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, Bielefeld, and Munich, 1991) is still the best source for the German context.Google Scholar Todorov and Neuber, not unlike Pagden (especially Pagden European Encounters, 117–40), argue that the structure of knowledge and language itself determined perceptions, consequent interpretations, and consequent actions. Both authors agree that in the history of anthropology there is no natural affinity between facts and interpretation, only a history of removing inconsistencies within interpretive frameworks and the continuous replacement of one interpretive grid with another.

5. Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man, 9.

6. Ibid., 108, also 56.

7. See Brenner, Peter, Der Reisebericht in der deutschen Literatur. ein Forschungsüberblick als Vorstudie zu einer Gattungsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1990), for a very detailed and well researched history of the genre of travel reports.Google Scholar

8. Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, “Naturrecht,” 587.

9. CfStrack, Thomas, “From Fools to Explorers: Seventeenth-Century Revisions of the Christian View on Travel,” Colloquia Germanica 27, no. 3 (1994): 205–24.Google Scholar

10. See Mühlmann, Wilhelm, Geschichte der Anthropologie 2d. ed., (Frankfurt am Main and Bonn, 1968), 41Google Scholar on Pierre Bayle, Lahontan, and Montesquieu and their respective instrumental usage of Non-Europeans for their political goals. Their “invention” of the original state of man and the political implementation of the philosophy of natural law at the time of the debate between Kant and Forster can be exemplified by Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem, published in 1783. Mendelssohn makes a powerful plea for the separation of church and state, touching issues such as politics and theology, natural versus ecclesiastic law, reason and revelation, tolerance and civil equality.

11. Mühlmann, Geschichte der Anthropologie, 40.

12. See Stagl, Justin, “Die Methodisierung des Reisens im 16. Jahrhundert,” in Der Reisebericht ed. Brenner, Peter (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), 140–77Google Scholar, and Stagl, , “Der wohl unterwiesene Passagier. Reisekunst und Gesellschaftsbeschreibung vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert,” in Reise und Reisebeschreibungen im 18, und 19. Jahrhundert als Quellen der Kulturbeziehungsforschung ed Kasnobaev, B.I. (Berlin, 1980). 353–84.Google Scholar

13. See Mühlmann, Geschichte der Anthropologie, 45.

14. Quoted ibid., 46.

15. McGrane, Bernhard in his Beyond Anthropology: Society and the Other (New York, 1989)Google Scholar reduces travel reports of the period and anthropology at large to an illustration of this rather theoretical notion. Gérard Leclerc in his Anthropologie und Kolonialismus (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, and Vienna, 1976)Google Scholar rejects the term “anthropological period” for the second half of the eighteenth century, especially targeting such constructions, as he finds Enlightenment hommes des lettres using primative societies merely to produce “eine Typologie der möglichen Tätigkeiten des menschlichen Geistes” (p. 144).

16. See Moravia, Beobachtende Vermunft, 251 on Degérando's “Considérations sur les méthodes à suivre dans l'observation des peuples sauvages.” See also Lepenies, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte, 131–60.

17. See Lepenies, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte, 16–40, 97–105.

18. Strack, Thomas, Exotische Erfahrung und Intersubjektivität: Reiseberichte im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Paderborn, 1994).Google Scholar

19. See Krauss, Werner, Zur Anthropologie des 18. Jahrhunderts: Die Frühgeschichte der Menschheit im Blickpunkt der Aufklärung (Munich, 1979), 103–18.Google Scholar

20. Mühlmann, Geschichte der Anthropologie, 51.

21. Quoted in Krauss, Zur Anthropologie des 18. Jahrhunderts, 110.

22. Weingarten takes a different track in his analysis of the Kant-Forster debate. He focuse on “die beiden unterschiedlichen Ansätze zur Erfassung geschichtlicher Prozesse in der Natur.” Weingarten considers the Forster-Kant debate a continuation of the Herder-Kant debate—and rightfully so, when he says that “die Beurteilung der Geschichtsphilosophie Forsters und Herders sich wohl voll und ganz nur dann durchführen lässt, wenn die Naturphilosophie beider Autoren als Voraussetzung ihrer Geschichtsphilosphie verstanden wird.” Weingarten, Michael, “Menschenarten und Menschenrassen. Die Kontroverse zwischen Georg Forster und Immanuel Kant, in Georg Forster in seiner Epoche, ed. Pickerodt, Gerhart (Berlin, 1982), 118.Google Scholar My essay, however, focuses on the debate as an important episode in the history of epistemology and the scientific endeavor.

23. Here the analysis follows Weingarten's advice to stop trying to accuse Kant or Forster of racism; Weingarten describes this reductionism with regard to the historical circumstances as usually resulting in the raher dubious insight, “dass entweder Kants Ansichten Rassismus und kolonialer Unterdrückung Vorschub leisten sollen, oder umgekehrt eben dieser Vorwurf Forster gemacht wird.” Weingarten, “Menschenarten und Menschenrassen,” 117.

24. Meiners, Christoph, Grundriss der Geschichte der Menschheit (1785), (rpt. Königstein, Taunus, 1981).Google Scholar Samuel Thomas Soemmerring, Über die körperliche Verschiedenheit des Mohren vom Europäer, published in Mainz in 1784; 2d ed. entitled Über die körperliche Verschiedenheit des Negers vom Europäer (Frankfurt am Main, 1785).Google Scholar

25. “Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht,” gesammelte Schriften, Kant's, ed. Königlich preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1917), vol. 7, 120Google Scholar (this edition of Kant will henceforth be quoted by title of essay, volume, and page number only). For an exclent introduction to Kant's anthropology, its function within Kant's oeuvre, and its political impetus “im Dienst des Prozesses der Selbstverständigung eines nach Bildung und aufgeklärtem Selbstverständnis strebenden Publikums,” see Becker's, Wolfgang “Einleitung: Kants pragmatische Anthropologie,” in Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Stuttgart, 1983), 11.Google Scholar

26. Forster had no doubts that his report was being read “von den verschiedensten Klassen des Publikums mit einer allgemeinen Aufmerksamkeit” (p. 278). Forster described the European effort to acquire vast knowledge of non-European peoples to which he deemed himself a major contributor. This endeavor, he believed, “liefert zur Kenntniss des Menschengeschlechts die wichtigsten Beyträge, welches also durch unzählige neue Erfahrungswahrheiten den Verstand erleuchtet und bereichert, die schwankenden Begriffe bestimmt, und eine Last verjährter Vorurtheile von unseren müden Schultern hebt.” Forster, , “Cook, der Entedecker,” in Kleine Schriften zur Völker- und Länderkunde, vol. 5 of Georg Forsters Werke: Sämtliche Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe (Berlin, 1985), 183.Google Scholar Citations from Georg Forsters Werke: Sämtliche Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe (Berlin, 1965 )Google Scholar henceforth as Forster, title of essay, volume, and page.

27. See Mühlmann, Geschichte der Anthropologie, 43.

28. See Bernier, François, “Nouvelle division de la terre, par les différentes espèces ou races d'hommes qui l'habitent,” Journal des Sçavans 12 (1685).Google Scholar Since the thirteenth century, the French term race had been used to designate people of the aristocracy, people “de bonne race.” The term became increasingly important in sixteenth-century France in the context of the struggle between “la noblesse de'épée” and “la noblesse de robe.” In this context, the term race took on a broader meaning; it could be applied to any political or social foramation. By the end of the seventeenth century, one finds the synonymous usage of the terms human race and race. In the dictionary of the French academy of 1694, one reads of “la race mortelle, pour dire, le genre humain.” Quoted in “Rasse,” Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Brunner, Otto, Conze, Werner, and Koselleck, Reinhart, (Stuttgart, 1984), 137–41.Google Scholar

29. Quoted in “Rassse,” Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 142.

30. Quoted ibid., 143.

31. Carl von Linné applied as a means of classification “Hautfarbe, Körpergestalt und Temperamentsunterschiede.” Yet the problem of the origin of the human race still remained. As Mühlmann in his Geschichte der Anthropologie points out, “die unmittelbare Beobachtung schien den Botanikern und Zoologen eine Konstanz der Arten zu beweisen. Linné glaubte an eine Fortbildung aus einer begrenzten Anzahl von Urformen; zusammengesetze Formen sollten sich durch Kreuzung bilden” (p. 48). At the time of the debate over the scientific potential of a biological concept of race and its application to mankind, people either held that physical differences between nations were mere varieties, entirely susceptible to environmental changes, and thus believed in the monogenesis of humankind (frquently a religiously motivated point of view.) Or they sided with the polygenesists, as Thomas Jefferson did: “I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the whites in the endowment both of body and of mind.” Quoted in Gould, Stephen Jay, The Mismeasure of Man (New York and London, 1981), 32.Google Scholar

32. “Von den Verschiedenen Racen der Menschen”, vol. 2, 434.

33. “Nachlass,” vol. 15, part 2, 785.

34. See Forster, “Cook, der Entdecker,” vol. 5.

35. Cassirer, Ernst, Kants Leben und Lehre (Berlin, 1918), 236–37.Google Scholar

36. Riedel, Manfred, “Einleitung” to Kant's Schriften zur Geschichtsphilosphie (Stuttgart, 1974), 8–9.Google Scholar

37. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2d. ed. (1787) vol. 3, 144.Google Scholar Kant speaks of a rhapsody of sensations, which he believes man organizes according to a priori principles rooted in the structure of our faculty of reason. See Cassirer, Kants Leben und Lehre, 289–384, which is still one of the best introductions to these concepts of Kantian philosophy. Kant's essay “Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der Philosophie” of 1788, vol. 8, 157–84, shows that he was highly aware of the methodological issues at stake in his debate with Forster, and that he saw the relevance of his rather theoretical deliberations on the empirical study of nature. In this essay, he explicitly responds to Georg Forster's rejection of his earlier essay on the “Menschenracen” and tries to reconcile their views.

38. An even more elaborate discussion of the subject one finds in the Kritik der Urteilskraft, vol. 5, esp. § 75.

39. “Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in Weltbürgerlicher Absicht,” vol. 8, 27.

40. “Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, Nachlass,” vol. 15, part 2, 651. Manfred Riedel speaks of a critical turn in Kant's philosophy of history, parallel to the turn in his other Critiques. Riedel finds a “Kritische Wende … die Kant—parallel zur Kritik der reinen und praktischen Vernunft—auf dem Feld der Geschichtsphilosophie mit der ‘Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht’ (1784) vollzieht. Der neue methodische Ansatz dieser äusserlich bescheidenen, aber sachlich gehaltvollen Schrift liegt in der Trennung von Kosmologie, Moral und Geschichte. Die Geschichte der Menschengattung lässt sich nicht als Entwicklung einer angeborenen ‘moralischen Natur’ verstehen.” (Riedel, “Einleitung.” 15).

41. “Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, Nachlass,” vol. 15, part 2, 650.

42. The categorical imperative implies exactly this: “Nun sage ich: Der Mensch und überhaupt jedes vernünftige Wesen … existirt als Zweck an sich selbst, nicht bloss als Mittel zum beliegigen Gebrauche” (p. 428). Kant continues: “Handele so, dass du die Menschheit sowohl in deiner Person als auch in der Person eines jedes andern jederzeit als Zweck, niemals bloss als Mittel brauchst” (“Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten,” vol. 4, 429).

43. See “Vom ewigen Frieden,” vol. 8, esp. 341.

44. In “Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace,” vol. 8, 102, Kant explains his procedure as follows: “Thiere, deren Verschiedenheit so gross ist, dass zu deren Existenz eben so viel verschiedene Erschaffungen nöthig wären, können wohl zu einer Nominalgattung (um sie nach gewissen Ähnlichkeiten zu klassificiren), aber niemals zu einer Realgattung, als zu welcher durchaus wenigstens die Möglichkeit der Abstammung von einem einigen Paar erfordert wird, gehören.”

45. See “Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace,” vol. 8, 91.

46. See Adickes, Erich, Kant als Naturforscher, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1925), vol. 1, 407–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47. “Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen,” vol. 2, 434.

48. Ibid., 438–39.

49. Ibid., 521.

50. Ibid., 435.

51. “Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace,”vol. 8, 100.

52. “Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht,” vol. 7, 322.

53. “Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschheit,” vol. 2, 431.

54. See Berg, Eberhard, Zwischen den Welten: Über die Anthropologie der Aufklärung und ihr Verhältnis zu Entdeckungsreise und Welterfahrung mit besonderem Blick auf die Werke G. Forsters. (Berlin, 1979)Google Scholar, who holds exactly this position. For a detailed critique of this simplistic interpretation of Forster's travelogue, cf. Strack, Exotische Erfahrung, 22.

55. Forster's, Reise um die Welt (Frankfurt am Main, 1983)Google Scholar already foreshadowed the consequent development of his thought. See also Strack, Thomas, “Zur Kulturellen Dimension individueller Fremderfahrung: Georg Forsters Reise um die welt als Kommentar zum Kognitiv-kommunikativen Potential des Reiseberichts,” Zeitschrift für deustsche Philologie 114. no. 2 (1995): 161–81;Google Scholar this article reviews some of the most important secondary literature on Forster to date.

56. Forster, , “Vom Brodbaum,” in Kleine Schriften zur Naturgeschichte, Länder- und Vökerkunde, vol. 2 of Werke in vier Bänden, ed. Steiner, Gerhard (Frankfurt am Main, 1969), 37–70.Google Scholar

57. After the collapse of the Mainz republic, Forster died impoverished in French exile. On Forster's political ambitions see Saine, Thomas P., Georg Forster (New York, 1972)Google Scholar, and Peitsch, Helmut, Georg Forsters ‘Ansichten vom Niederrhein’: Zum Problem des Übergangs vom bürgerlichen Humanismus zum revolutionären Demokratismus (Frankfurt am Main, Bern, and Las Vegas, 1978).Google Scholar

58. Georg Forster's original critique of Kant's writings on the subject of race was published in 1786 under the title “Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen” (vol. 8, 130–57). In a letter to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Forster explains his problems with Kant's entire philosophical approach: “Aus Managel an philosophischen Vorkenntnissen und fast noch eigendicher, weil ich den philosophischen Jargon nicht verstand, gerieth ich mit Kant in Streit… Allein im Grunde sind es doch nur Klopffechterstreiche, und er wird mich durch alle Winkelzüge nicht bereden können, dass er in der Sache von den Menschenracen recht habe” (vol. 15, 208).

59. “Briefe,” vol. 14, 663.

60. “Cook, der Entdecker”, vol. 5, 280. Forster was always critical of any simple materialism. He followed in his father's footsteps, as he used materialist arguments, yet Georg never intended materialism to be the single means of interpretation, as Wolf Lepenies claims it to be the case in George's Reise um die Welt. See Lepenies, , “Eine vergessene Tradition der deutschen Anthropologie—Wissenschaft vom Menschen und Politik bei Georg Forster.” Saec 24 (1973): 50–78.Google Scholar

61. “Cook der Entdecker,” vol. 5, 234.

62. “Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen,” vol. 8, 132.

63. Ibid., 146.

64. Georg Forster had translated Herm Büffons Naturgeschichte der vierfüssigen Thiere (1780). Büffon's (1707–88) anatomically informed Historie naturelle describes how the originally homogeneous human race diversified through climate, nutrition, and way of life into different varieties. Buffon applies as a means of categorization the color of skin, physical size, and ethnic characteristics. Buffon does not, however, discuss races as biological units, but rather looks at peoples as “propagative communities” (the “Fortpflanzungsgemeinschaften”).

65. “Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen,” vol. 8, 149.

66. Ibid., 150.

67. Ibid., 147.

68. Soemerring, Über die körperliche Verschiedenheit des Mohren vom Europäer, 24.

69. The anthropologist Blumenbach criticized, for its simple determinism, his contemporary Soemmerring's overemphasis of the connection between intellectual capabilities and anatomical properties. For details, see Dougherty, Frank W. P., “Johann Friedrich Blumernbach und Samuel Thomas Soemmering: Eine Auseinandersetzung in anthropologischer Hinsicht?” in Samuel Thomas Soemmerring und die Gelehrten der Goethezeit, ed. Mann, Gunter et al. (Stuttgart and New York, 1985), 53.Google Scholar Georg Forster shared this criticism as he developed his own program of comparative ethnography. As Dougherty explains: “Für Blumenbach sind die Manifestationen der höheren Fakultäten—Sitten, Sprache, Kunst, die durch Reisebeschreibungen, durch gesammelte Artefakten und Kunstwerke und durch die vergleichende Philosophie erläutert werden können—fü die Bestimmung des Menschen ebenso wichtig wie die vergleichende Anatomie und Physiologie, aber von ganz anderer Art” (p. 54).

70. “Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen,” vol. 8, 139.

71. Ibid., 145.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid., 144.

74. See Forster's philosophy of nature in his programmatic essay “Ein Blick ins Ganze der Natur,” vol. 8, 77–97.

75. Forster, “Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen,” vol. 8, 145.

76. von Chamisso, Adelbert, Reise um die Welt mit der Romanzoffischen Entdeckungs-Expedition in den Jahren 1815–1818, vol. 2 of Sämtliche Werke (Munich, 1975), 14.Google Scholar

77. Forster, Reise um die Welt, 850.

78. See Mross, Klaus, “Ernst Gottfried Baldinger, gelehrter Arzt der Aufklärungszeit, und sein Schüler Samuel Thomas Soemmerring,” in Samuel Thomas Soemmerring und die Gelehrten der Goethezeit, 259.Google Scholar

79. Soemmerring, Über die körperliche Verschiedenheit des Mohren vom Europäer, 4.

80. “Briefe,” 1 November 1789, vol. 14.

81. “Leitfaden zu einer künftigen Geschichte der Menschheit,” vol. 8, 193.

82. “Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen,” vol. 8, 154.

83. Ibid. Cf. John Atkyns, A Voyage to Guinea … in 1721: “Though it be a little heterodox, I am persuaded that the black and white race have ab origine sprung from different coloured first parents.” Quoted in “Rasse,” Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 144.

84. Forster, Reise um die Welt, 332.

85. “Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen,” vol. 8, 155.

86. Forster, , “Vom Broadbaum,” in Kleine Schriften zur Naturgeschichte, Lander- und Völkerkunde (vol. 2 of Werke in vier Bänden, ed. Steiner, Gerhard) (Frankfurt am Main, 1969), 38.Google Scholar

87. Mühlmann elaborates on Herder's attitude toward the physical likeness of apes and men, exposing one of the most crucial problems of late eighteenth-century anthropology. He explains “dass Herders Erwägungen über die Bedeutung des aufrechten Ganges fur den Menschen ganz modern anmuten. Etwas später erschrickt allerdings der Theologe Herder vor dem Anthropologen Herder und meint, man dürfe die Menschenahnlichkeit des Affen nicht zu weit treiben.” Geschichte der Anthropologie, 62.

88. See “Rasse,” Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 135–78. A continuation of my investigation can be found in Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (rpt. 1996). He outlines the fallacies of the scientific classification of humankind in the age of positivism, especially of American craniology of the nineteenth century. For Gould, critically reviewing craniometry for its biological determinism does not mean denigrating the sciences. Rather, he points out that the particular method of reducing the intellectual potential of races to the average size or weight of their brains, without realizing how cultural biases tainted the results, reassured the white European males of their dominance in the age of colonialism. In these studies, the Caucasians always came out on top in any comparison of cranial capacity. Gould has exposed the “prevalence of unconscious finagling” (p. 55) in the majority of these studies. Gould points out that it had by no means been his intention to “contrast evil determinists who stray from the path of scientific objectivity with enlightened antideterminists who approach data with an open mind and therefore see truth.” Gould criticizes “the myth that science itself is an objective enterprise, done properly when scientists can shuck the constraints of their culture and view the world as it really is” (p. 21). Gould sees the scientific endeavor as a “gutsy, human enterprise,” yet he insists that theories are “not inexorable inductions from facts…. The most creative theories are often imaginative visions imposed upon facts” (p. 22). This enterprise, he believes, is always hampered by the “twin myths of objectivity and inexorable march towards truth” (p. 23) that becomes apparent in “two deep fallacies,” namely reification on the one hand, and the ranking of “complex variation as a gradual ascending scale” (p. 24) on the other.