Enlightenment, individual liberty and its origin in past-free thought

Enlightenment, individual liberty and its origin in past-free thought

The liberty of an individual consists, as I would like to define it for what is to follow, of affirmatively considering him/herself in his/her own, individual light. He/she should have the right to decide him/herself about the mirrors which, metaphorically speaking, are required for this self-consideration; the individual functions as his/her own light source for this purpose. From this there concludes that both this individual as well as all other individuals must be free to choose their own mirrors. Starting out from such a way of being oneself, interactions with other individuals and living beings as well as the environment will basically be under a lucky star – provided each individual has understood that apart from his/her own point of view there are also those of all those others.

In the sense of allowing for individual liberty for everybody, as I define secondly, it is fundamental that neither the individual nor his/her mirrors can be judged on according to group-specific interests or points of view, particularly not if such groups are either not ready to accept any kind of individuality existing out of itself and for itself which is independent of these groups, or if they even strive for abandoning it (within the group or even beyond it).

In the following, thirdly, such individual liberty will be discussed most of all in view of the just explained contemplative aspect of liberty, and here, for the start, the concept of `liberty´ is only to be understood as being based on this `considering oneself´. Issues connected to interactions between humans and animals or living beings, issues of action, dos and don´ts, of social and political leeway of action and its norms etc. will, firstly, be discussed only cursorily and, secondly, not based on problems of living together, but the focus shall exclusively be on an opposite being past-freely appreciated by an individual.

For, at the heart of the following considerations there will be Kant´s idea that, in the course of a self-cultivation of mankind based on pure practical reason, it is no longer possible to consider other humans, and I would like to add: animals and other living beings, simply as means to achieve purposes but that basically all these must also be understood and treated as ends in themselves (in Kant for the first time in: Groundworks of the Metaphysics of Morals). What is this supposed to mean? It means, as I understand it, the formal appreciation of any other living being (as well as one´s own person), without any rooting in the past. It is not about identities, not about origin, not about groups, but exclusively about the appreciation of other lives (as well as one´s own), and this may be called `formal´ insofar as it happens independently of certain outward features and insofar as, apart from any other requirements, the appreciated party is always also actually treated as an end in him/her/itself or if he/she/it is understood and addressed this way, each according to situation.

Animals and plants and unborn babies as well as severely mentally disabled humans or those suffering from dementia are above this criterion, and this is because they are completely incapable of non-appreciation, because they are completely incapable of purposefully considering other living beings as just means to achieve ends, because it is completely impossible to attribute any motivation to suppress and exploit other living beings. As they think and act neither against the background of somehow being rooted in the past, nor against the background of certain future goals, they are not at all in need of any kind of cultivation based on pure practical reason. But all other humans are.

Now, I think, it may be supposed to be out of the question to gain or derive any way of understanding other living beings as ends in themselves from the habits and experiences of exploiting other living beings to achieve certain objectives. Thus: how then do I know, and how then do I learn any way of formal appreciation which is not rooted in the past, how then do I learn what it means to consider and treat other living beings as ends in themselves? This I know and learn either by way of appropriately dealing with myself or with those humans as belonging to my environment (and in this culture, in that family, in this habitat the preconditions may be better, elsewhere they may be worse). This I know and learn when I experience or have been experiencing bad and undue kinds of suppression and exploitation. And finally I am capable of knowing and learning this by way of reading and internalising philosophical texts about it.

Certainly those getting along with exploitating and suppressing others as well as/or themselves, without this creating any aspiration of escaping it – it may as well be that they have given up all hope – make the largest share of humans living on the globe. According to the ideas of Enlightenment, as I understand them, these people can find a way out of their way of existing only if it is themselves who want and initiate liberation (and for this purpose, under some circumstances it may be very useful to be provided with a culture of writing). Liberation in its original sense, as Enlightenment understood it, cannot be experienced exclusively passively, for then even the party to be liberated would just be another patronised entity.

Fourthly: along with viewing and understanding the self through the self, in one´s own light, there comes that in principle it can be ruled out that this individual might consider him/herself an end in him/herself to achieve any kind of objective. Instead, the individual him/herself is an end in him/herself. Humans who have recognized this as being valid for themselves may always also expect such a self-perception and self-understanding from other humans, and they will find it easy to vice versa never treat them exclusively as means to achieve any objective.

If we confront such an idea of individual liberty, which is linked to the individual´s awareness of the (at least basically possible) liberty of other individuals, with the history of humankind in view of aspects of unfreedom, the fact is particularly striking that even in societies where there existed ideas of individual liberty which were similar to those sketched above humans were considered and kept as slaves.

Being forced to live as a slave means the complete negation of the above mentioned aspects of individual liberty. Neither any self-understanding of the above explained kind nor the idea of being nobody´s means to an end are possible. But why then was slavery not abandoned in Christian cultures? Why do serfdom and the suppression of others still exist, in ways which in principle make individual liberty impossible, and even in Christian societies?

The following is structured into 8 sections and a conclusion. These sections are titled:

1. The radicalism of individual liberty. 2 The idea of individual liberty is linked to the demand to understand other individuals not as a means but as ends in themselves. 3. Resistance by `authoritarian thinking´. 4. On the ways in which Early Christianity dealt with slavery – trying to attempt an explanation. 5. Ways of suppressing, exploiting and disregarding other individuals – today and in the past. 6. Individual liberty in the sense of Enlightenment can only be realised by help of past-free thought. 7. Misunderstandings concerning the alleged racism and cultural chauvinism of Enlightenment thinkers. 8. Which way of arguing corresponds to individual liberty? Remarks on Kant´s philosophy.

1. The radicalism of individual liberty

The idea of individual liberty as the initially sketched basic stimulation for the lives of individuals enable them to a kind of self-understanding which is radically different from self-concepts as are gained from group-related guiding principles. Where the idea of individual liberty is really relevant, questions of individuation can under no circumstances be asked or answered on the basis of belonging to groups. This begins with the meaning of the concept of the `individual´. The uniqueness of a free individual cannot reasonably be determined while starting out from his or her physical uniqueness. Certainly, it is possible to attribute features to individual persons while starting out from a group they belong to. In the light of individual liberty, however, these are secondary descriptions.

For, in this context the understanding of individual persons must, after all, be grasped while starting out from their each respective self-understanding; however if the latter embeds itself into the idea of individual liberty, we must in each case at first ask about the individual person to achieve any adequate description. Uniqueness, which here is meant in the sense of the individual´s liberty, can just as well not be defined according to certain religious or political or linguistic or cultural or any biological group-specific affiliation, and this holds in principle.

Now, of course, there may be individuals who do not need any such idea of individual liberty for a satisfying life, but who are actually satisfied with being wrapped up in a group structure. They understand themselves as elements of their own cultural, religious or biological group, they have no interest in being any different from all others belonging to the group, they have no interest in being provided with mirrors in which they might see different images of themselves etc. If this was no state of individuals resulting from suppression and the abuse of power, it would certainly be no state we should worry about – provided those individuals as living in such a state have understood that there are also other humans with other views, other ways of life and other humans who do not agree with belonging to any group structure whatsoever and could not be happy with it.

Humans being wrapped up in a group define themselves as well as others according to events or ways of thinking of the past. On the other hand, they cannot deny that even in their own group, which defines their own existence, there were single individuals in the past whose significance went and goes beyond the group as such. For, even within the frame of e. g. religious or political group-thinking some of these people are constantly reminded to, and this is if they are supposed to serve as models or if they are appreciated in any other heroic sense. Beyond these relations it is questionable whether also loyalty to individual people in the past and present may be part of the group´s loyalty to those who are or were no heroes, and if those humans as being wrapped up in a group should ask themselves how many of their fellow group members in the past and present have been or still are deeply unhappy about their (enforced) affiliation to the group.¹

With groups, tribes, parties, religious or cultural communities, social compounds of any kind, humans will never consider other humans ends in themselves, and if, then this happens only in single cases and in a way coincidentally, and not in the sense of group-related requirements. Furthermore, individuals within the group who, by way of certain guiding principles and claims to power, try to become superior to everybody else may at any time orient and manipulate group-defined forms of existence as well as a self-understanding of individuals which refers to the group.

To have it in Maria Montessori´s words, and they are more valid today than ever: `Nobody can be free if he/she is not independent, that is why the first active expressions of the child´s individual liberty must be guided in such a way that by way of its activity it will achieve its independence. […] That still we have not completely adopted the highest meaning of the word independence is due to the fact that the social form in which we live is still one of serfdom.´²

2. The idea of individual liberty is linked to the demand to understand other individuals not as a means but as ends in themselves.

Only the thinkers of Enlightenment created a really powerful understanding of individual liberty and the thus connected starting conditions. One must be aware of how limited the lives of the people had been before, under which existence-threatening conditions e. g. free thinking and writing happened still in the 18^th century. Enlightenment thinkers draft utopias, of course they cannot expect their ideas to be immediately realised. Thus, being very much aware of the danger to life and limb, they sometimes write secretly, for example anonymously or under pseudonym, or they wrap up their convictions in complicated arguments which at first sight do not reveal what is meant, after all. The control apparatus of the authorities, including pre-censorship, censorship and gaol, had to be placated, distracted or deceived. To understand how dramatic all this really was, we must become aware of the whole range of thus-connected events, for example we must have a look at cases which became failures. For example, if somebody spent the rest or a longer part of his/her life in gaol, well, then he/she may hardly be supposed to have been capable any longer of writing down his/her ideas. Today, however, we frequently write history just according to success, we see those authors whose projects were successful, at least in the long run, and this way we distort the historical picture in a way which entices to diffuse the historical starting conditions for developments and struggles. Then these days, starting out from this, the sometimes startlingly naïve demand is uttered that the respective protagonists should have been just a little bit more courageous or stubborn or upright or whatever.

Enlightenment thought results in utopias; coincidently these proponents of Enlightenment themselves, as individuals, were living in Europe or North America. Relevant for their thinking and their work was the fact that previously certain developments and inventions had taken place there and that they made use of the results of such processes (such as the fact that there existed writing tools or printing) and, just the same, they could benefit from methods and technologies (e. g. they were trained in working through books, reading and understanding the theories of others, and were capable of expressing their thoughts in speech and writing).

Today however, to highlight the necessary educational background as well as all that what allowed them to work, there is no need to over-emphasize geographic origins or historical-topological or historical-political aspects of the development and manifestation of Enlightenment thought. Coincidentally, all this happened in Europe/North America, however just as well it could have happened in Indonesia or Central Africa or elsewhere if there had been comparable starting conditions there.

Here, concerning those who worked out theoretical foundations, the focus is on their individual thought as such. In my opinion, only while starting out from the aspect of Enlightened individuality it is possible to sufficiently explain what the claim of Enlightenment was and is at all. Only if the `becoming Enlightened´ of individuals, starting out from the initially sketched self-consideration and self-reflection without suppression and restriction, is made the focus of consideration, we will understand the lever of Enlightenment and where it must be positioned. There exist a number of state or social utopias, mostly in the form of novels or satires, from the period of Enlightenment, and usually the attribute `utopia´ is most of all understood in the political sense,³ however the really radical-utopian element of Enlightenment thought is but the idea of the individual becoming mature, as the trigger for social change. As within these utopian contexts the individuals cannot be primarily understood as individualised bodies but as the aspect of liberation is an effect of thinking and desiring, Enlightenment shows a certain degree of over-emphasizing human reason or human intellect. But this is no problem, and probably people like to criticize it only because the accusers in each case want to level the greatness of the thus connected individual-utopian demands and perhaps want to replace it by political ideas of their own. After all, political groupthink (of all kinds) is frequently based on the members of the group indeed not being told to think and decide independently but to bow to the group.

The individual-utopian thought of the theoreticians of Enlightenment does not only include the aspect of `bottom up´ reason, that is change `from bottom to top´, in the sense of society or culture, but, and this is even more important, the aspect of the absolute appreciation of the potentiality of any human. In most contexts this aspect, in its significance and charisma, has no chance at all but, in my opinion, is frequently made ineffective because of being inadequately considered.

3. Resistance by `authoritarian thinking´

Those who – as theoreticians – were the first to present the radical idea of individual liberty were the thinkers of Enlightenment. They had to expect and to do with resistance of the meanest kind. After all, this resistance undermined the implementation of their ideas in many respects. There was, to start with, the inhibiting effect of the secret societies which absorbed the individual potentials of many prudent people of those days. Furthermore, we may point out to the brutally unleashed counter-terror of the French Revolution and other, similar revolutionary events, and we may refer to the developing power of national and nationalistic ways of thinking in the 19^th century.

Of course, over several ages of the history of mankind the interest of the various authorities as well as, interestingly, many social theories or political theories, does not or not completely start with individual liberty. The interest of any kind of `authoritarian thought´ starts with the question of how individual liberty could be limited most effectively, or how it could be theoretically grasped in such a way as to allow for a peaceful and functioning living together – always starting out from referring to the group as a whole. Individuals are not imagined by their positive potentiality but, on the contrary, always as being deficient. This means paradigmatically: man is a wolf rather than a man to another man, when he hasn´t yet found out what the other man is like.⁴ Hostility as well as the innate tendency towards non-altruistic behaviour are given as the first and foremost features of being human, starting out from this, all thus connected theorems, ideas, norms are formulated.

Also in the context of political and social decision-making (in the past and today), their addressees are usually understood to be elements of a mass of humans. The humans belonging to this mass are not defined by their each respective self-understanding or self-relation, and frequently they are not understood to be ends in themselves, but they are understood to be counted elements in the course of adding up human bodies. Enlightenment-critical philosophy may perhaps respect, at best, the philosophical principle of `autonomy´, but one feels compelled to emphasize, in every respect, its limitations and shortcomings.⁵

Over all ages of world history, a special kind of `authoritarian thought´ has been characterising the thinking and doing of `homo oikonomikos´, of economic man, whose goals are characterised by understanding other humans primarily as means by way of which one´s own purposes may be achieved. Business and trade seems to be predestined for certain asymmetries as well as for both moderate and despicably terrible ways of suppressing and exploiting other humans (and living beings). It is exclusively this sector where, in my opinion, we find the driving force for the will to expand and suppress of e. g. European regimes as well as the motor of colonisation, enslavement and exploitation of any kind (in the past and today). This becomes clearly obvious e. g. by the fact that the second and the third keyword of the French Revolution: equality, fraternity, when it came to applying them to impoverished people, was basically `just a utopia, announced by the Ventôse decrees, of the Jacobin democracy of Year II´.⁶ In the context of the French Revolution, ownership structures were not at all fundamentally restructured; in how far this has been done successfully at other times and in other systems is questionable in my opinion.

4. On the ways in which Early Christianity dealt with slavery – trying to attempt an explanation

In the 4^th century AD, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Sometimes brutally persecuted and opposed, then tolerated, and finally declared the only religion of the Empire, apart from Jewry – we might easily believe that this way certain religious ideas might intrude society or effect change. At least concerning slavery, however, this was not the case. Slavery or any possible discourse on slavery had hardly played any role for moral philosophy in antiquity. `Man was in the fore, independent of social status which is marginal given man´s inner, moral liberty. We encounter a similar attitude with Christianity´.⁷

In the following, excerpts from two monographs are going to be presented, by help of which we may approach an explanation of why slavery was not abandoned in the early Christian cultures:

1. Richard Klein: Die Sklaverei in der Sicht der Bischöfe Ambrosius und Augustinus (1988).

2. Georg Kontoulis: Zum Problem der Sklaverei (doyleia) bei den kappadokischen Kirchenvätern und Johannes Chrysostomus (1993).

The Church Fathers and Church Teachers who are going to be discussed are:

Ambrose of Milan (339-397)

Augustine (354-430)

John Chrysostom (before 350-407)

Gregory of Nyssa (about 340-after 394)

Basil the Great (330-379), the latter´s brother

Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390), a friend of the latter two – the latter three are also known as the Cappadocian Church Fathers.

Concerning the issue of slavery and its justification, early Christianity knew indeed different positions and considerations. Richard Klein writes in his study: `The concept of man of patristic literature is characterized by the imago dei idea whose roots and lines of development on the one hand originate from the pagan-Greek tradition, in particular from Plato and the Stoics, however on the other hand from Jewish Old Testament tradition, in particular in Philo of Alexandria, and which finally become tangible in St. Paul´s letters´; a distinction is made between body and soul and spirit; spirit and soul are superior to the body; the spirit has the task of `taming the base instincts, the partes irrationalis animae´.⁸ Being made in the image of God is attributed to spirit, reason and its virtues. Now, in line with the Stoics, one distinguishes a wise man from the other humans who do not succeed with controlling their physical nature by help of reason.

The wise man represents the highest ideal of humanity (in the Stoics, for Ambrose, for other Church Fathers). His rationality consolidates the idea of being made in the image of God; this is a quality instinctive man has not. Now the `virtues-based´ superiority of the wise man as well as of rationally behaving humans also justifies social and political superiority: the higher degree of ratio justifies the exertion of power over other humans.

`The same principle becomes obvious from the Bishop´s (Ambrose) statements on the talents and ways of behaviour of man and woman. There is probably hardly any other Church Father whose statements on the nature of woman are as scathing. Her general inferiority, as it was upheld most of all even in Later Jewry […] and the mistakes and vices to be identified with her are without further ado traced back to being insufficiently equipped with sapientia. As the man alone, due to his ratio, is provided with strong moral firmness to rule others, the woman must in principle be inferior to him´.⁹

Most of all in Aristotle `the woman is rigorously denied any status which might be equal to that of the man […]´.¹⁰ Ambrose´s texts and attitudes are in many respects identical with those of Cicero. In Ambrose, however, to this there adds his extraordinary emphasis on the obligation to charity.

`No section dealing exclusively with slaves and slavery or with the thus resulting problems is to be found in Ambrose´s texts´.<sup>11</sup> Based on e. g. a passage in Corinthians (1. Cor. 7,23), this is true for him: only the wise man is free; everybody not being wise is unfree. This is to be understood in this sense: they are guided by their affectations and emotions, they sway in the wind, they are foolish and weak-minded. The wise man, on the other hand, remains perfect in Christ, firmly rooted in the faith. That is why `he is capable of ruling. The foolish, on the other hand […], lacks the temperamental requirements for independently exerting power, due to his lack of sapientia. He must subject to the law of nature and must live in mala servitus´.¹² This is supported by two examples from the Old Testament (Ham and Esau: Gen. 9, 26 and Gen. 27,40). In both these cases, the consequences of a lack of reason and insight became obvious.

The wise man is thus legitimated as somebody who has a claim to rule; on the other hand, he has also an obligation to care for those being weaker. It can be `stated that Ambrose approves of the state of the slaves without reservations and even considers it a necessary, nature- and God-ordained institution if it becomes obvious that, because of insipientia, they are not capable of living autonomously´.¹³

However, there are people who are (justly) enslaved and those who have been unjustly deprived of their freedom. Ambrose agrees with this, and for such cases he has most of all spiritualising recommendations.¹⁴ To comfort the slaves, he refers to the example of Joseph who had been sold to Egyptian slavery (Jos. 20). `Nowhere in the New Testament there is any demand to abandon slavery, neither by Jesus himself nor by the Apostles, on the contrary, it is clearly stated that everybody must maintain his/her status´.¹⁵

`It needs no further justification that Ambrose, with his method of on the one hand accepting slavery as being justified and on the other hand mostly relativizing it in the Stoic-Christian sense, believes to do justice to the social situation of his time, however also to the Christian imperative of love´. ¹⁶

Also Augustine left no `work of his own, no sermon, which [would] exclusively´ be dedicated to the topic of slavery.¹⁷ However, in his case we know by far more literature than in the case of Ambrose.

On the whole, Augustine mentions slaves and their situation very often; on the one hand, from the frequently given `examples from the everyday lives of families´ we may read the significance and `the role of slavery in Hippo and other cities of North Africa´; the `different degree of variety of the images, which are frequently presented as a contrast to a pastoral exhortation or a theological explanation, provides realistic and genuine illustrative material concerning the attitude of the ruling class from where also Augustine comes´.<sup>18</sup> `In most cases, the starting point and the end point of most remarks on the everyday lives of slaves is the metaphorical, moral-theological meaning. After all, the unique significance the concept of the slave has for Augustine results from the Paulinian nature of his theology, according to which man is always a slave and thus unfree´.¹⁹

The New Testament reflects the common understanding of the time (both in the region of Asia Minor and elsewhere): slaves are subject to unlimited service; the masters have unlimited claims, the slaves are obliged to unreserved devotion – without any inhumane, contemptuous ideas being connected to this.

One important point for early Christianity is the following consideration: Christ himself is understood to be a serf. `Christ has not come to do his own will but the will of Him who sent him. Like a slave does not act on his own accord but according to the order of him who sends him, also the members of the Christian religion are obliged to obey the directives of the Son of God´.²⁰

The Paulinian dualism this is based on consists of locating a slavery of evil in the earthly world, the freedom of grace, on the other hand, in the faith resp. the other world. Factually, this kind of freedom is a limited kind of freedom; it means `at the same time life in the service of a superior. Like for St. Paul any human was either a slave of sin and sinful violence or a slave of Christ, also Augustine can never imagine a human existence in absolute freedom. […] Mankind as a whole is subject to that salvation-historical-theological antagonism between servitus peccati and servitus dei […]. Any understanding of Augustine´s attitude towards the issue of slavery in the state and society of his time is based on that theologically grounded division of all humankind into freemen and serfs, in the context of which he counts Jews, heretics and pagans among the latter´.²¹

According to Augustine, by nature nobody is another one´s slave, which is meant to say: before the Fall everybody was equal, with the exception of the hierarchical relation between men and women as well as between parents and children. Then there developed human societies where there existed different classes. These must be maintained, and any equality of all humans is justified by and has its place in the faith.

According to Cicero, those peoples as having been conquered by the Romans benefit from their servitude; this is adopted by Augustine (see Augustine, Civ. Dei 19, 21). `But not only for the sake of legitimating the Roman mission of peace and rule this Church Father reaches back to the Greek doctrine of natural law, which he adopted from Cicero´.²²

Frequently Augustine, `in a dismissive and really disconcerting way´, speaks of `lazy and cowardly, gossipy slaves who always think about running away´; also he cannot `move away from that doctrine […] which says that slaves are a mentally and morally inferior group of humans and must be treated accordingly´.²³

`Thus, there remains as a conclusion that Augustine, when judging on slavery among the peoples in general, but particularly when referring to the fate of historical individuals, is indeed not different from the common attitude among the Jews and his own people. Both in the legal and the social respect, for him the dignity and reputation of free men are more important than the personal value of slaves, ownership of whom is not at all dubious for him´.²⁴

`Although Augustine in his theological and philosophical thought makes several and different attempts to legitimate slavery, we must not overlook that in his everyday life he was always surrounded by slaves and that, due to being familiar with them, usually neither he nor anybody else felt any need to consider what slavery was based on. Even before he was able to reflect on it, at his parents´ home he experienced the services of the serfs as a matter of course. Although his father, Patricius, did not belong to the wealthy part of the citizenry of the Numidian town of Thagaste, as a member of the curial class, like the other families of his class, he owned some household slaves. Augustine grew up under their care´.²⁵

`Even if Augustine, being a citizen of the Roman Empire, considered slavery to be legally grounded and socially necessary, for him as a Bishop of the Catholic Church the living together of master and slave was redefined by a the Divine law. All legal statutes given by worldly rulers over the course of history remains at a civic-political level and serves for the well-functioning order of life in family and state´; now, this order shall furthermore be humanised in the Christian sense, `by all thinking and acting being oriented at God´s commandments […]. As the common denominator of the Divine law Augustine defines the equality of all humans in the love of God; for the Creator made both the poor and the rich from one clay, and according to His will the Earth carries the poor and the rich in one. Thus, the Divine law does not mean the abandonment of the legal institution of slavery but very well a new dimension of the living together of humans´.²⁶

Summary of Klein´s analysis:

`By their statements´, Ambrose and his disciple Augustine `are considerate of not putting into question the legal-social structure as well as the traditional ideas of society concerning slavery. They considered the unfree members of the house to be humans of the lowest class´ who are obliged to unconditional obedience. `A philosophical-theological framework coming from the intellectual tradition of Hellenism, however also with Jewish roots, is the welcome foundation of a position which always newly refers to the Biblical code of conduct´.²⁷

`If we compare this common basic attitude, which is observed in the case of both bishops, to the statements by the Eastern theologians, a considerable discrepancy becomes obvious. Other than in the West, there one was much less ready to accept a practice which was predetermined by laws and social norms. If already Basil the Great […] explained the development of serfdom as a result of human vice which destroys the nobility of nature […], John Chrysostom, in the course of a serious allegation against the rich landowners, believes that, if they did not believe to be able to do without their many servants, they should be satisfied with one or a maximum of two. In the ears of these circles, who abhorred any kind of manual labour, it must have sounded really outrageous when he called out to them that God provided the humans with hands and feet so as to make them capable of helping themselves. Although he cannot get himself to like the idea of complete abandonment, as this would mean a complete reversal of the social relations, the concrete suggestions he makes for the care for the future freedmen amounts to a step-by-step abandonment of slavery upon the approval of the masters. The most rigorous and uncompromising voice to be heard among the clerical representatives of the Eastern half of the Empire is that of Bishop Gregory of Nyssa from Asia Minor. For him, any kind of personal dependence is not only an offense against man´s free and independent nature but also a crime against Christ himself who was sent by God to save mankind´.²⁸

According to the ideas of the Eastern Church Fathers, a harsh and humiliating life as a slave is considered a violation of Divine and human law; what must be strived for in the long run is an end of all slavery.

`The two leading representatives of the Western Church distance themselves from this, and their agreement is conspicuous´.<sup>29</sup> Ambrose is oriented at the Stoics. According to his theory, a high degree of rationality and control of urges justifies power over other humans. Ambrose resists any general liberation of slaves or abandonment of serfdom `because he clings to the natural law-based explanation by Cicero and Panaetius according to which humans depend on each other based on mutual service grounded on the division of labour´.³⁰

Augustine again emphasizes Christ´s appearance as a serf; according to this example, humans must serve and obey God. Within this dependence, however, they must be considered truly free. `By the Paulinian grounding of his theology, Augustine laid the foundation for characterising all those who did not count themselves among the chosen servants of God as such. He believes the Jews to be the slaves of the Law´.<sup>31</sup> All those `who have not taken the new burden of the rule of Jesus Christ´ are `summarised under the keyword servi peccati and are considered unworthy of eternal life´. Before the Fall there was equality; this has been lifted because of man´s sinfulness; slavery is the punishment for the original sin (in all eternity).

From the manifold depictions of the living together of free men and serfs at his time and society there results this insight: we cannot attribute a kind of attitude to Augustine which `labels slaves exclusively as material property´. Augustine cares about the salvation of the `serfs.´ `The discrepancy between state law and the Christian concept of man becomes obvious most of all from the way in which masters deal with their female slaves. If they insist in their customary right and just treat them as objects of their concupiscence, they violate Christian moral law which attributes untouchable dignity to any human, he/she may be free or unfree. This way of behaviour, which was not at all legally indictable but is repeatedly sharply criticised by Augustine, is contrasted to the Christian principle of having been made in the image of God, which includes all humans, as well as the commandment of fraternity demanded by St. Paul.³²

Augustine can by no means be stylised as a `pioneer of a gradual dissolution of slavery´. As a God-sent keeper of souls, he believes to be called on to enforce the commandment of Christian love within the framework of the social order; he was less moved by class interest but primarily by `the eternal salvation of the flock entrusted to him´.³³

Also some considerations from Georg Kontoulis´s analysis shall be presented here; also they may provide some insights and explanation attempts for further considering the matter.

`In general, Humanism did not fight slavery as an integral element of society. Rather, the Humanists of the 15^th and 16^th centuries adopted from antiquity the philosophical reason-giving for slavery, and from Roman law (ius gentium: family law and law of nations) the practical recognition of slavery as an institution´.³⁴

David Hume `considered slavery not only the cruellest manifestation of civic submission but also considered it a disadvantageous factor for the well-being and the population density of mankind (Essays Moral, Political and Literary I; Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations).

Also Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) discussed the issue of slavery in the age of Neo-Humanism and agree with its general opinions and basic positions concerning antiquity. He considered slavery a state which had supported the education of classical man. The existence of slavery, he said, supported the unfolding of the Hellenistic ideal and the realisation of the high values of Greek culture. The positive attitude of the Neo-Humanist towards slavery is explained by their sympathy for the aristocratic form of society, where slavery and `uncultivated classes´ are the lowest and contribute economically and politically to unfolding the cultural ideals of antiquity among the leading class of society´.³⁵

Kontoulis gives an overview of literature stating that Christianity had or must overcome slavery.³⁶

Then he explains the anthropology of the NT: a slave is no longer considered an object, a tool, but a fellow human.³⁷ `However, this equality of all humans was no cause of any radical change of society in the early period of Christianity. The historical events provide evidence that the Christian doctrine was powerless in the face of the political and economic situation of the time and thus also when it came to the issue of slavery as the crucial issue of antiquity and that in practice it was neither able to rapidly change the social structure and order nor the anthropological ideas of its environment. Anyway, the Parousia expectation made any radical change of the current situation look neither reasonable nor implementable under the perspective of the irrelevance of this perishable earthly life and its phenomena´.³⁸

`An overview of the shortly sketched and interpreted evidence from Early Christian literature, from the Apologists and the older Church Fathers, makes obvious that there is no unmistakable verdict against slavery. On the contrary, it is tolerated, taken as a matter of course, and there is no call against it. In case of disagreements one strives for a humane solution. The rights of the masters are not put into question. At least the slave is recognized as a person whose Christian dignity must not be touched. Accordingly, the slave is even recommended to disobey orders which violate the Divine command. Here the salvation of his soul has priority; the Divine command is superior to human orders. Otherwise the slave, quite in the sense of the Old Testament, is made subject to strict submission to his master. Only this way the social peace can be maintained, whose maintaining is the state´s task. The institution of slavery belongs to the structural framework of the state, as it is considered a consequence of human sinfulness, after all. This way, slavery is theologically justified and can thus prevail without hindrance within Christian society. At least the Church does not leave the slave unattended but, within the limits of its clerical care, even cares about the slaves. Frequently the Church Fathers and also Augustine make attempts to reduce tensions, conflicts as well as cruel, inhumane and ungodly behaviour towards the slaves, to take care for a peaceful living together and to, wherever possible, establish a humane relationship between masters and slaves´.³⁹

Other than in Aristotle (the slave, similar to an animal, is an animated tool, an object – Politeia A 4), the slave is considered a human and a creation of God, a member of the Christian community and an individual capable of virtue. However, there is no urge for liberation, there is no attempt at a radical change of the social situation. The Church Fathers both in the West and the East adjusted to the political situation. Christianity does not effect any social revolution and is in principle oriented towards otherworldliness.

Basil the Great considers man first of all a creation of God. Man made in the image of God (Gen. 1, 26) is a microcosm. What counts are charity and good deeds.

`For Basil, slavery is part of the appearance of this earthly, perishable world which was introduced after the destruction of the natural and blessed original state. […] The existence of slavery was an integral element, a socio-economic institution which was deeply rooted in state and society throughout the entire age. […] He as well as other Church Fathers did not only fight fiercely against immorality, pagan customs and relics of antiquity, but most of all they denounced and sharply criticised the injustice and the many ways of the economic exploitation of the impoverished lower classes which was common at many places. Certainly, this way they did not cause the abandonment of slavery´.⁴⁰

`The main tendency of Basil´s writings is the fight against the slavery of sinfulness, not against the civic institution of slavery´; Basil criticises `the repressive structures of state, society and Church. From Basil´s writings it becomes obvious that the overwhelming majority of the ruling establishment in the 4^th century has an interest in slavery and its further existence. Slaves are indispensable as workforce. Their status is neither doubted by society nor by the Church. No actions against slavery are known from this age. Also, we cannot state any groundbreaking improvements of the status of the slave´, in legal terms, he/she is an unfree person.⁴¹

The appeals by the Church Fathers and their commitment to slaves must not be misunderstood as a `programme for the abandonment of slavery´; such an interpretation is not in accordance with the `historicity and truth of the facts´.⁴²

Gregory of Nyssa, Basil´s younger brother, `belongs to the great triumvirate of the Cappadocians who lastingly influenced the Church and played an outstanding role for the dogmatic, theological-Christological disputes of the 4^th century´.⁴³

`Gregory of Nyssa shows an outspoken talent for philosophical speculation. His opinions betray Plato´s influence, in particular his apologetic writings against Eunomius. Otherwise, we observe some influence by Origines. His works are much philosophical, so that it was through him that a lot of philosophical thought intruded Christianity´.⁴⁴

`His contribution to the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381 was quite considerable, and his role must not be underestimated´; he `was predominantly occupied with theology, hermeneutics and mysticism, the relationship between God and man as well as the incarnation of logos being the main issues of his analyses. Nevertheless, he did not overlook the everyday problems and social issues of his environment. This is proven by his moral doctrines in favour of the poor as well as his texts against the usurers. […] Man as an extraordinary being takes a special position in his writings. Also the topic of slavery is occasionally touched or explained in detail, when it is about spiritual serfdom´.⁴⁵

Among God´s creations, he says, man is the highest, the most outstanding, the crown of creation, the God-ordained ruler of nature and the rest of creation, and both therein and with everything he/she is guided by reason and free will. `Thus, man is an image of true Divinity and is obliged to become similar to God by his/her free decision´.<sup>46</sup> `Gregory of Nyssa does not present man´s relation to the world as a crass antithesis, as it is the case in some Church Fathers, but as harmony. Man […] is the lord of the world. His dominating power consists of both, man and world, being able to jointly leave the state of going on with sighing and suffering […]. For, with man also the world will be delivered, and without it he/she will not´.⁴⁷

Delivering oneself means: escaping the state of being a slave (a slave of one´s own emotions and desires), by way of regaining the original equality with God.

In the Christian community, both slaves and masters are called `brothers´; there `the traditional barriers have theoretically been lifted. However, this does not hold for the realm of common law which continues to exist and remains untouchable´.⁴⁸ However, in Gregory of Nyssa we find frequent calls, in his texts and sermons, to treat slaves in a Christian and humane way. Yet still: `No legal equality is in sight, although this Church Father propagates it theoretically and believes it to be possible. In the same way in which such a way of behaviour seems to be practically impossible, for social and psychological reasons, in a society which is still characterised by paganism, it appears to be possible for Gregory of Nyssa´s humane and Christian self-consciousness´.⁴⁹

`On the issue of slavery we find a typical sentence in his comment on the Book of Ecclesiastes of the Old Testament (2, 7), where Gregory of Nyssa in unmistakeable language turns against the human traffickers in view of the slavery they practice´.<sup>50</sup> `According to Gregory of Nyssa´s statement, slavery does not appear as having been created by God, as nature-given and –conditioned. Furthermore, this passage shows a certain degree of the Church Father´s dislike of the custom of making a reasonable being, provided with logos by the Maker, a slave, like a piece of cattle, like a common good. Man as an outstanding creation of God must not be reduced to being a slave, he repeatedly emphasizes in his exegetic comments and sermons. For, by enslaving a human, he/she becomes an object and is thus equated with unreasonable nature.

However, Gregory does not go as far as to drawing particular, practical consequences from this theoretical insight. This is most of all to be explained by the fact that in Gregory of Nyssa, like so often in patristic literature, we encounter slavery in the spiritual sense. But Gregory does not overlook either slavery as it was practiced and legally fixed in his age or its many problems. He does not believe it to be just and considers it inhumane´.⁵¹

`The comment on Eccl. 2, 7 also informs about the common ways of purchase and sale. Slave trade was an all-encompassing phenomenon all over the ancient world. At least it cannot be denied that even the Christian Byzantine Age did not only tolerate slavery but even necessitated it by its structure. Constantine the Great indeed legally banned heathens and Christians from keeping or trading in Christian slaves (decree: Codex Just. XVI 3). But this was no announcement of the abandonment of slavery. Slave trade, which generally appeared as a matter of course in those days, is sharply denounced by Gregory´.⁵² Much more than his brother Basil, Gregory condemned slave trade and the thus resulting profit, because this kind of trade makes the noblest being and image of God its subject and victim. But man, he may be master or slave, is the lord of the world. In Gregory´s writings the slave is not presented as a human second order, not as being unreasonable, as being wrapped in ignorance, as Plato once had it (Politikos 309a), but he/she is a creation of God and thus lord of the world. There is no difference between master and slave, theoretically the existing law of slavery is lifted. But Gregory of Nyssa does not call for the abandonment of slavery´.⁵³

`Gregory of Nyssa […] considers the human problem under the perspective of theology, whereas the sociological structure of the time is not particularly taken into consideration´; for him, slavery is less `a spatio-temporal, sociological institution but an ethical, spiritual bond. The Christian is free even if he/she is socially under the burden of slavery´.⁵⁴ In a way, by the writings of Gregory of Nyssa `the idea of the inadmissibility of slavery´, which had previously been supported by the Sophists and the Stoics, becomes an element of Christian literature.⁵⁵ Accordingly, his writings must not be overinterpreted as a call for revolution or for an anti-slavery movement.⁵⁶

Furthermore, Kontoulis discusses a concrete problem from the environment of Gregory of Nazianzus, which is `about a handsome and educated slave´ whom a lady from the upper class had entrusted with the administration of her house. Gregory of Nazianzus sen. and his son, the famous theologian, had ordained him a priest, without the knowledge and legal consent of his mistress and thus in violation of the valid laws which would have required his prior liberation´. The lady `complained officially and demanded clarification. […] Gregory of Nazianzus recognizes her rights to the slave but tries to change her mind by way of persuasion and by presenting arguments from the Bible, to assuage her this way. She should, he said, prove to be a Christian and not fight certain rights and actions of the Church and its servants´.⁵⁷ `This is a complicated affair. […] As the basic idea, in the letter [by Gregory] the equality of all humans before God stands out, including masters and slaves; before Him, worldly dignity and social prestige as well as the various social ranks play no role. At least Gregory knows how to master the tensed situation and to assuage the noble lady by way of his conciliatory suggestions and to this way convince her of leaving the matter to the Church´.<sup>58</sup> However, his action must not at all be understood as an appeal `to overthrow society. This Church Father tries to create humane conditions within the boundaries of the existing social structure, a way of living together which is as peaceful as possible, and in particular to support its spiritual metamorphosis in the spirit of Christ. We shall, he underlines, at first consider God and His nomos, not worldly criteria´.⁵⁹

Finally Kontoulis discusses John Chrysostom, who was a prominent champion of the equality of all humans (as children of God), who denounced in particular luxurious ways of life and instead demanded selfless services to humanity while emphasizing the obligation to care for fellow humans. In his writings, the slave `who has been made in the image of God is a child of his maker and equal to all men. Guided by the principle of the Christian commandment of charity this, however, is in a way a first germ of a fundamental change, although for the time being it remains theoretical´.⁶⁰ Also John Chrysostom does not present any political programme of the abandonment of slavery; however he constantly urges for rethinking also in quite a practical sense´.

`Chrysostom does not put the civic institution of slavery into question, also he does not make the issue of slavery a topic of discussion. More than the other Church Fathers of his time he takes up the topic of slavery, but like them he did not write any treatise on the matter. When he speaks about slaves and masters, this is in view of Christian behaviour. Both masters and slaves are advised to keep their mutual obligations and to avoid tensions and hardships. Nowhere there is any rejection of the status of being a slave. Surprisingly often the usefulness and indispensability of slavery is emphasized as a […] [bond] enforcing virtue´.⁶¹

In sum, it must be stated that, although with Constantine and making Christianity the state religion from the early 4^th century on there happened a historical turn, although from then on the Church and the worldly power were cooperating, still everywhere, even in Byzantium, the Roman law and understanding of the law remained valid and that Christian thinking had no deep, radical effect on the social situation.

`One was still far away from any policy of treating all humans as being equal, independent of their social status, although it was preached and charged as a Christian virtue, even more as this was rather morally-religiously motivated and understood as an eschatological good´.<sup>62</sup> There was no demand to abandon slavery. `The Church Fathers considered man an entity consisting of body and soul, and they placed weight predominantly on the spiritual part, slavery being secondary as a social phenomenon´.⁶³ `From the analysed writings it becomes clearly obvious that slavery was a widespread phenomenon of the ancient world and continued undisturbedly […] still in Christian times. For the early Church there is no evidence of any document which might officially reject slavery. Also, there are no indications that this topic was publicly discussed´.⁶⁴

5. Ways of suppressing, exploiting and disregarding other individuals – today and in the past

Probably the suppression, exploitation and disdain of humans have always been able to establish in the context of human living together, and where this was the case, we may understand the idea of the alleged stability of a group-based way of living together as one of the main driving forces. The various kinds of slavery represent the most extreme kind of suppression, exploitation and disdain. Although slavery in antiquity was confronted with Christianity and colonial slavery was confronted with the ideas of Enlightenment, none of these thought forms and ways of thinking was able to change anything fundamental about this reality of suppression and exploitation. The suppression of other people is itself an extremely powerful guarantor for the establishment and existence of asymmetrical and exploitation structures; the greed and brutality of the exploiting and suppressing side form a powerful coalition with the fear and paralysation of the exploited and suppressed side. Is this supposed to be the kind of stability humans want for the structures of their groups?

`May it be Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, North Africa or south of the Sahara – the achievements of ancient cultures cannot be explained without slaves.´⁶⁵ There are great differences concerning details, which cannot be explained here (see the list of references at the end of this text which, however, makes no claims of being complete). In Egypt, for example, most of all foreign prisoners were enslaved who had been brought to the country as a result of acts of war. When, for the Egyptian monumental buildings, one needed a much higher number of workforce than common for the rest of the economy, Egypt started the industrial import of African slaves.

Tiziana J. Chiusi explains: `Slavery is a phenomenon antiquity was much familiar with. For us it is a matter of course that man becomes a legal person by birth, i. e. that he/she can be a bearer of rights and obligations. In Rome, like elsewhere in antiquity, this was not the case: being born did not automatically mean being a legal person. Against the aristocratic understanding according to which slavery was a product of nature,<sup>66</sup> however, the jurists supported the idea that it was a historical product, a consequence of certain circumstances, as by nature all humans were born free. Accordingly Ulpian, a jurist of the third century AD, writes that `iure naturali omnes liberi nascerentur´, that according to the law of nature everybody is born free; […]. However, as it is known to all nations, the Roman jurists define it as an institution of ius gentium, the law of the nations; and because slavery has become an element of the legal order, then the benefit of liberation was invented (D. 1.14 Ulp. 1 inst).´⁶⁷

Slavery according to the Roman understanding, says Chiusi, `was not racist´<sup>68</sup> but closely linked to the Roman doctrine of property and those legal ideas as establishing round the figure of the patri familias. According to Roman law, capable of property are only those `who have no father as the head of their family above them (sui iuris) and are thus themselves patres familias´,⁶⁹ in the context of which it is insignificant if they actually had children. After all, ancient society was not at all obliged to any principle of equality.

In this regard, Christian thought did not succeed with bringing any change (see Sect. 4); certainly one of the reasons was that, in view of economic efficiency, no one was ready to do without slavery. Then in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, starting out from European territory, several regimes appropriated important non-European territories, large colonial empires were founded, at first in South America by Spain and Portugal, on the Antilles, in North America and India by England, on the Antilles, in West Africa, Canada and India by France. There established an intercontinental trace by powerful trade companies most of all of the Portuguese, English and Dutch. Then in the course of the 19^th century, Britain and France succeeded with establishing so called second colonial empires. Also Germany, Belgium and Italy joined in in the course of the 19^th century, to participate in the exploitation of territories, now in particular on the African continent.

After all, the origin of trans-Atlantic human trafficking is the Arab-Islamic slave trade. After Egypt had been Islamised, from the 7^th century AD there began the systematic enslavement of the surrounding peoples.⁷⁰ For 190 years India was a British colony. `By way of a sophisticated, ruthless system of interconnected colonial measures, the British colonial rulers prevented the development of India´s productive forces, they overexploited the natural resources, developed the economy one-sidedly and poorly, brutally exploited the people of the country and pressed all of them under colonial yoke. The limitless and brutal exploitation of the people resulted in the accumulation, increase and concentration of enormous wealth in the hands of the British colonial rulers.´<sup>71</sup> The same is true for the longevity and stability of exploitation in other regions. For example, the `Code Noir´⁷² decree, passed by King Louis XIV in France in 1685 was in force until 1848.

First approaches `at the development of an international protection of human rights in the form of a ban on slave trade´ were only partly based on humanitarian motives, they were supported by `the economic upswing [in Europe] at the end of the 18^th and the beginning of the 19^th century´, when waged work pushed through `in the establishing monetary and market economy´ and, because of its profitability, started replacing slavery.⁷³ In London in 1787 the Society for the Abolition of Slave Trade was formed. Thus, starting out from individual initiatives, the idea that slavery was no longer acceptable unfolded its effectiveness.⁷⁴ The political legislative and executive reacted to this, among others in the form of human rights and international law regulations and conventions.

However, in my opinion the way of presenting all these connections still seems to be burdened with a degree of imbalance. For example, in the 19^th and 20^th centuries there were indeed slave rebellions, and sometimes they were not as pointless as one might think, and not all of them ended in resignation, however on the whole they are hardly noticed. Still it is “the Europeans” who are presented, in whatever way, as the respectively active side. We must get rid of this as well as of other asymmetries. For this purpose, however, it must be taken into the account how much people have always liked the devaluation and discrimination of other people. Even if it is true that e. g. the ways of slavery in Roman antiquity were not racist, and even if we admit that with Christianity the idea of equality came up, for example antiquity and the Christian world, like the Islamic world, were nevertheless permeated by deeply rooted class thinking and much enthusiasm with discrimination.

Reinhart Koselleck discusses the historical-political semantics of `asymmetrical counter-concepts´.<sup>75</sup> `Self-designations and concepts imposed by others are part of the everyday dealings of humans. […] There may be agreement concerning the use of terms, or each party uses a word for the counterpart which differs from what the latter uses for him/herself. […] In the former case, mutual recognition is linguistically implied, in the latter case the designation includes a degree of disdain, so that the other side may feel addressed but not recognized. […] The effectiveness of mutual attributions increases over history as soon as they are applied to groups.´⁷⁶ Apart from neutral, generally applicable names, groups have repeatedly applied exclusive labels to each other; from those practices there result “counter-concepts” `which discriminate against the excluded party´.<sup>77</sup> Asymmetrical counter-concepts in particular of historical and political significance are e. g. the conceptual pairs of `Hellene – barbarian´, `Christian – pagan´ as well as `Übermensch – Untermensch´. The power of such dualisms has known boom periods and periods of disempowerment; however they are based on a repeating chord which is rooted in thinking the negation and may be started again any time.

The suspension of such dualisms begins with the concept of the “cosmopolitan”⁷⁸ which is continued by the Stoics. `The Stoics considered logos-pervaded cosmos their home, in which all humans […], like all gods and stars, participated.´<sup>79</sup> `The first fatherland, says Seneca […],⁸⁰ is cosmos, the second one is that into which one was born coincidentally. […] These are no mutually excluding concepts but complementary concepts of different sizes which are supposed to liaise concrete political tasks with the general philosophical experience of the world. The dualism of style does not live on negation.´⁸¹

Also the current discourse all over the world must be interpreted as a certain kind of the suppression, exploitation and disdain of others, which shows that frequently one pursues the idea that the best thing is not to listen to dissidents, that their opinions shall be extinct. The idea that others should be encountered by hatred and rejection, the idea that other people must become the servants of one´s own view of the world, the assumption that we must really and truly assume a hierarchical structure of mankind – all these are kinds of suppression and servitude, meaning actually that the respective actors consider other humans, as individuals, null and void.

As soon as anybody starts considering other humans means for his/her own purposes and treats them accordingly, in such a context these others can no longer be understood to be ends or values or goals in themselves, to serve other purposes than just being a means, or to just be. Dependencies by which other humans are kept in such a function of being just a means, in the context of which their individuality and individual liberty are completely ignored, are to be found everywhere, in all cultures and societies, at all times.

6. Individual liberty in the sense of Enlightenment can only be realised by help of past-free thought

The most important criterion on the way towards a self-cultivation of mankind (to have it with Kant: on the basis of pure practical reason) is that of past-free thinking and acting, for this is the requirement for being able at all to learn how the formal appreciation of other living beings as means in themselves could be realised even in concrete situations of life. Humans who are capable of this orient their thinking and acting not primarily at past, traditional group affiliations, norms, laws or states but at future, possible states of a better world which will be characterised by individual liberty and the unconditioned formal appreciation of any human and living being as a means in itself.

These humans do not appear as groups or in the context of groups but as individuals. The utopian state of a better world cannot be achieved by political parties, religious groups or military units under commanders (although certainly all of these pursue ideas of a, in their sense, better world), the utopian state in the sense of individual liberty and the appreciation of oneself as well as others as ends in themselves is a state of the world which actually has already been realised by the ideas of Enlightened persons and can be implemented also in the physical world only from there. For this purpose, humans capable of the formal appreciation of other humans have either left their affiliation to tribes, families, traditions, skin colours, religions, body sizes, sexes etc. or they consider these coincidental, insignificant epiphenomena of their existence.

They are impeded from all possible sides; one of the main problems of the realisation of utopian states in physical reality is the power of homo oikonimicus: with all these Enlightened individuals it is simply impossible to make money. By way of a political party which put alleged solutions into the people´s minds, by way of religious and traditional ideas by help of which people are kept dependent, as well as by help of violence and suppression of any kind, on the other hand, one can very well make much money. And there is yet another difficulty: in view of publics which are strongly influenced by media we cannot assume that these many individuals will be able or willing to make themselves heard; even more they will not unite to attract attention, or at best in cases of emergency – for why should they give up on understanding themselves as free individuals to join any group of whatever label?

Modern, pluralist societies are actually composed of such humans as well as of humans who want to or must keep e. g. traditions or stick to habits and are thus tied to groups. From this there result tension, hostilities, all kinds of problems of living together. All those thinking or having been thinking primarily according to group-belongings, in our or in any other society, are usually not very much capable of distinguishing between the different components, for they lack the perspective of individual, free existence, and seen from the outside all humans look the same, seem to speak the same language.

Now, however, nobody has any right to impose his/her own, group-induced, point of view on the worlds of other humans. Those being capable of past-free thought and able to treat themselves and others as ends in themselves may physically look like any other human, and perhaps they may not sufficiently be heard: yet still, they bear the nucleus of a world which will do without suppression and exploitation and hatred. They are fundamentally, and this means: always and not only if they or their group like it, capable of treating other individual humans and living beings with formal appreciation and respect.

7. Misunderstandings concerning the alleged racism and cultural chauvinism of Enlightenment thinkers

Frequently it is called “cultural chauvinism” if theoreticians, such as those of the Age of Enlightenment, put the achievement of the radical idea of individual liberty to the fore; it is understood to be the attitude of arrogant Europeans towards other cultures and ways of life, which way they intend to upgrade themselves and evaluate all others. To me, this seems to be part of a sad misunderstanding. If in texts from these centuries (17^th and 18^th) something is written about other peoples or cultures which today we believe to be inappropriate, we must at first find out if this was written from the point of view of utopian thought. This is done by reading texts by the same author or having a look at his biography and generally at his agenda (as far as their exist information about this). If this is the case, that is if texts were written from the point of view of utopian thought, then all statements found should be located under their own empirical horizon. Under such a horizon, remarks which (today) at first sight may be read as being derogatory or contemptuous cannot at all be referred to and do not at all address, in a descriptive sense, certain individuals. Instead, under a semantic horizon of concepts of suppression or liberty, they are codifications of dependent or independent ways of life. If statements are made about lacking diligence, about anxiety, or generally about the nature of certain groups of humans, this marks dispositions and starting conditions under which the addressed humans live or must live within their respective groups and situations because right there where they are living and right in the way in which they are living they are not provided with the achievement of individual liberty and will, in all foreseeable future, not be provided with it.

The semantics of such statements must be read against the background that it is not at all about a description of the world and the humans but about the narration of a utopia, it comes from horizons of meaning which are exclusively obliged to the categories of “suppression” and “liberty”.

Only who makes the cardinal error of reading and understanding the writings of the philosophers of Enlightenment in the light of the biographical, national or cultural affiliations of the authors can come up with the idea that these texts are meant to play off cultures against each other. Only who applies, retrospectively, the unspeakable race theories of the 19^th and 20^th centuries and particularly the thus connected intentions to all authors of Enlightenment believes them to be racist and cultural chauvinists, and this among others because in each case he/she assumes the used phrases and sentences to belong to one and the same language and kind of semantics. This, however, is an expression of presupposing completely unfounded linearities as well as an expression of lacking hermeneutic carefulness when it comes to the interpretation of texts and passages.

Also: in Europe in the 18^th century there existed a wide range of most different authors, and only a few of them can be counted among the thinkers of Enlightenment or radical Enlightenment.⁸² Reactionary-Christian, effusive-esoteric, counter-Enlightenment authors ARE NO ENLIGHTENMENT PHILOSOPHERS. Enlightenment philosophers are those who, quills in their hands, stood up against the suppression of their times. Their texts can be understood only if one makes oneself aware of the extreme threat under which liberal-minded people had to live in the17th and 18^th centuries (s. a.). Everyday life, the sciences, cultural life, the economy were dominated by political interests and the power interests of the Church; and by way of rigid censorship they decided and put under threat the lives and work of all those striving for Enlightenment.

Thus if, when receiving and interpreting the texts by authors from the age of Enlightenment, one focuses on thinking the utopia of being liberated from dependency and suppression by certain authorities, if one recognizes these theories of Enlightenment as theories about individual liberty and the autonomy of man, formulated by autonomous individuals, then one will understand that the author´s biography, the place where he grew up, the number of his sisters, the colour of his eyes, or other contingent features of his life, are irrelevant for his achievements. It is thus as irrelevant for the emancipation of other nations from their suppressors, which is believed to be possible in the future, which physical characteristics the individual members of these nations have developed.

That is to say, any attribution of a collective feature can in principle – from the perspective of individual liberty – not address an individual as such which (coincidentally) is living with this group. Such features may also be given in passing; their significance for an individual, however, would have to be defined by the member him/herself. The reason why group-related features are in principle not suitable if a free or possibly free individual is supposed to be addressed becomes factually obvious from each individual biography which provides evidence for how, on the way towards freedom and autonomy, one leaves or must leave such influences and definition behind. Of course, all of us have been influenced by the environment and culture within which we grew up, but always, simply because of being human, we have the possibility to liberate ourselves from these and other influences, to doubt them, to reject them, to frame them differently, or to simply look for other environments which are more suitable for us as individuals.

Now, it is certainly possible to understand the idea of individual liberty as not being worth striving for, as wrong, and as unduly reshaping other cultures. One might thus demand: leave these people alone, wherever they may live, and let them live their own ways of life, and do not at all make them familiar with the radical idea of individual liberty! However, as far as I see, this is not the demand, but the demand is rather something like this: let the people, wherever they may live, live their own ways of life, and do not at all make them familiar with the “European” way of thinking!

However, in Europe or the in countries of the Western world the majority of the people do not and did not live in a state of radical individual liberty; many of them would indeed not consider such a state which is worth striving for. Also there, among many the opinion is predominant that a satisfying life is only possible if one completely merges with the group one believes to belong to. Thus, it is at least dubious to call Enlightenment thought “European” thought. I say it again: Enlightenment is indeed possibly rooted in certain historical events and developments, and many of these happened in Europe, but just the same they might have happened in any other part of the world, to then produce the Movement of Enlightenment there. That is why any geographic or perhaps capitalism-critical definition of this movement of thought does not make sense, and if one does so, unfortunately one has not understood what the thinkers of Enlightenment were about. From the heights of utopia, their thinking and wanting are dragged down to the depths of nationalist or racist ways of thinking. One counts them among the rich and powerful figures of history because they did not have to live in slums, because they had enough to eat and had access to doctors.

From a certain point of view such accusations may be justified, however to me it seems that they ignore all the misery and suffering which, as hinted at above, spread across the lives of those European authors from the 17^th and 18^th centuries who stood up too clearly and too radically against the (worldly and spiritually) powerful. Like nobody living in a slum has the possibility to write down and reasonably spread ideas which might change the world, by far most of the women and just the same most of the men of those days did not have any possibility to express their criticism and to also successfully spread them.

To write down their ideas or to take care that these ideas could be read at all by other people, authors had frequently to reach into the bag of tricks. For example, quotations and indirect references to the writings of other, sometimes ancient, authors were woven into one´s own texts, sometimes such quotations were modified. Ex-post deciphering is only possible if one knows the original quote. Only after such a deciphering it becomes obvious what these authors were about, what they had in mind. But even methods of encryption were connected to a certain degree of danger, for those being in charge of censorship were themselves either priests, theologians or otherwise scholars, often they were professors at schools of higher education or universities. Also they were provided with the common academic education, and in general they had the necessary knowledge of the relevant literature from which Enlightenment thinkers, for the purpose of criticizing power situations, the suppression of individuals by the powerful of those days, and generally the common intellectual tutelage, intended to quote.

Another effective means of writing consisted of making the texts ambiguous: woven into straight sentences and statements, right into more or less dry analyses of arguments and theses, one placed ironic, satirical, burlesque elements, in a way as to prevent the censor from understanding, or better: not even noticing, them. Thus, sometimes certain passages of some texts say quite the opposite of what was supported by the author.

In particular Voltaire and Montesquieu in some of their texts chose satirical means to express their criticism of Church and state, e. g. concerning the way in which the enslavement, suppression and exploitation of the people of other nations and cultures was justified or brushed right under the carpet. They may be blamed for this; even Kant may be accused of not having written in more political ways, of not having more directly attacked the powerful figures of his time, their greed and hypocrisy etc. It is possible to approach texts from a past age in this way, to ex-post confront them with one´s own sublime claims to Enlightenment and to condemn them accordingly. Certainly, this was frequently done given the bitter, desperate insight that individuals could not be compensated for the injustice they had immediately suffered.

However, one must in any case be aware of the fact that those authors who are discussed this way were treading a fine line. There was no broad, diffusion-capable knowledge and information culture to count on: concerning one´s writings and thinking one was completely alone, and one was confronted not only with a rigid policy of censorship but also with a broad population which believed and had to believe what they were told and inculcated with by the authorities. As Sue Peabody tells at the beginning of her study “There Are No Slaves in France”. The Political Culture and Slavery in the Ancien Régime, still the opinion of the French people of today is indeed very effectively influenced by what was told in those days, and they are influenced by it insofar as they are really and truly convinced that their nation had not known slavery.⁸³

Another fundamental difficulty is that these days certain cultural and linguistic linearities are presupposed, linearities by way of which, belonging to today´s world of ideas and being familiar with its hermeneutic regulations, one believes to be entitled to the claim that any word of Enlightenment texts must be rhetorically based and understood in exactly the same way as theories of today. Today, all those many satirical texts of the history of philosophy (and there are masses of them) are hardly known these days, for they are hardly read anymore, at least not in the context of philosophy studies. And even less does anybody base his/her academic career on analyses of such texts. If this is going to go on in the coming centuries, many ancient texts and many texts of Humanism, of Reformation, of early Enlightenment and Enlightenment will be completely forgotten one day.

Today, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Bréde et de Montesquieu (1689-1755), is most of all famous for his texts on the theory of the state. However, with the exception of smaller essays and contributions, as an author he started with an epistolary novel, Lettres persanes (Persian Letters) (1721) which was at once officially banned. This epistolary novel is basically an Enlightenment treatise touching all relevant issues of morality, religion, society, peace, politics. This epistolary novel, stylistically flanked by mockery and irony, denounces in particular the then prevailing conditions in France, and this is done by way of Enlightenment and by allowing for Enlightenment, thus: by way of making the readers think and educating them towards taking a critical view. All utopian texts of this age, which were particularly popular in Britain, proceed this way: one construes an external (actual or virtual) viewpoint of an observer of the situation (in one´s own country) and is this way able to express profound criticism as well as to make radical proposals for improvement.

Montesquieu´s main work, De l´esprit des loix,⁸⁴ (The Spirit of the Laws) was met with much resistance from the various sides, which is why in Geneva in 1750 he published the defence: Défense de l´Esprit de loix which, however, made no impression at least on the censors. In 1751 the Catholic Church put De l´esprit de loix on its list of banned books, where it remained until 1967 (the year in which the list was abandoned).

8. Which ways of arguing are useful for Enlightenment? What are the derogatory passages on people belonging to foreign cultures and of foreign origin supposed to mean? Remarks on Kant´s philosophy and its objectives and aspirations against the background of other Enlightenment texts and debates

Apart from Montesquieu, Voltaire and other Enlightenment thinkers, also Kant is accused of having made snide remarks about foreign ethnicities and cultures, and he is thus said to have been a racist (or at least a cultural chauvinist). I am going to attempt to solve this problem by discussing how exactly the words and passages in question are meant and what their function is. After all, over the entire work they appear only occasionally, which is why, on the other hand, they seem to be so inappropriate.

Whereas it is in any case prudent and necessary to critically examine older texts and their authors, and as usually this is done in the respectively wider context of a discipline´s scientific analysis of a work, the ways in which certain authors, such as those from the Age of Enlightenment, are accused of racism, chauvinism, sexism, do not provide for any comprehensive consideration of the each respective overall corpus of their works. The passages in question are supposed to suffice, and that is in the sense of the idea: had this author really been an outstanding mind, not only of his/her own time but also of human history, he would have never written any such dubious remark.

Apart from the fact that already this starting position makes things crooked, now the reactions, such as in the case of Kant, are not really helpful. Indeed it cannot be about trying to “save” an author, although this is quite obviously the idea if one says that the few expressions and remarks are “not so bad” or that they are “due to the spirit of the time”. It is even more dubious if one claims that these words are not the author´s but those of others or that they were written at a time when the author had not yet been really philosophically mature or that they belong to his, philosophically seen, secondary works. In my opinion, the latter two “escape routes” are completely absurd. I believe them to be as mistaken as generally those research approaches concerning Kant by way of which one has always been trying to exclude works one does not like from a canon which is, after all, self-made. This is handy indeed, for this way the amount of text one wants to discuss is reduced. At the same time, however, this way right from the beginning one deprives oneself (and Kant) of any possibility, if only for testing purposes, to understand his philosophical system as one coherent and intended whole.

From a perspective I introduced in 2017, his philosophy presents itself precisely as one such system, intended right from the beginning, which step by step and over many decades is argumentatively secured, expanded and consolidated in the sense of sceptical thought.

Seen this way, also those passages which are difficult to tolerate are intrinsic elements of Kant´s overall conception; I understand this overall conception to be one coherent argument across all his printed works, by way of which Kant at the same time builds a philosophical system, with a comprehensive knowledge of the philosophical tradition while constantly contrasting his own ideas to it, based on a planning idea which guides his thoughts both on the whole and in detail. This system is firmly and safely rooted in critique and transcendental philosophy as its cornerstones. In the course of the work, this edifice is realised by way of a method which neither right from the beginning adopts nor rejects traditional, everyday concepts and ideas but adopts them only preliminarily, to then put them to the test. Doing so, in the sense of philosophical arguing he even makes use of contrasting concepts to each other as well as irony and satire, by immediately combining expressions or statements which are paradoxical or contradict what has been said earlier. The readers are meant to find out about this; as I have explained elsewhere, it is meant to make them think for themselves.

Now, what is crucial with Kant´s works and those of other Enlightenment philosophers must, on the one hand, be identified in the subtexts, in a way in the texts behind the texts. In case of many passages we have to do with replicating statements and allusions. These texts must thus be understood to be multi-levelled. Frequently, what is behind certain passages in Voltaire are texts by other authors whom he attacks and mocks at (Maupertuis; Bossuet; Bouhours; Dubos etc.); this holds also for Montesquieu´s texts, and things are the same with Kant, he, again, also refers to Voltaire and Montesquieu (and many others).

Now, here reception history stumbles over its own feet, and this is for two reasons: In philosophy, this multilayeredness of texts has somewhat disappeared from view, in particular because since the mid-19^th century one is no longer ready to accept that older authors do not make their references explicit, that they do not mention by name the authors they reply to. Indeed, they place certain clearly recognizable keywords (and in those days the informed contemporaries knew at once what and who was meant), only today one must indeed WANT to recognize these keywords for what they are. Secondly, of course the works of the famous authors (such as Voltaire, Kant, Montesquieu, Hume and others) are being thoroughly read since then, however the texts they implicitly refer to are not at all read anymore. This is an asymmetry caused by reception history itself, which has particularly pathetic consequences where, in combination with the above mentioned refusal to recognize allusions and motivated by selective and fragmentary reading, which today is generally presented as a great achievement of analytical philosophy, it is IMPOSSIBLE to have any awareness of the entire context of thoughts, concepts and allusions and the ways in which they are referred to each other.

Another methodological problem is this one: these days one discusses Voltaire, Rousseau or Montesquieu rather in the French-speaking countries, Kant, Reimarus or Lessing in the German-speaking countries, and Pope, Swift, Shaftesbury or Hume in the English-speaking countries. Against this background, it is no longer possible to adequately take into consideration how close these authors were to each other in terms of their thought and ways of proceeding. In those days Europe was covered by an extended network of scientific interaction, communication, mutual attention and appreciation. This entirety cannot be meaningfully elicited if before the object of investigation has been divided into linguistic and disciplinary branches between which there is hardly any exchange. The disciplinary drift is due to the circumstance that quite a few of the greatest works from the Age of Enlightenment, because of the ongoing breaking away of crucial topical fields from which there developed independent sciences (sociology, psychology) have in the course of time no longer be counted among philosophy.

The question is if the ways of asking and the methods of the analysis of the history of philosophy need not be adjusted. To this there adds: in cultural history and the history of philosophy the focus is hardly ever on the rift which separates Enlightening from everything developing all over Europe since the beginning of the 19^th century – s separation which is so radical that basically no common grounds can be identified any longer for the methods and ideas of the Enlightenment philosophers on the one hand and the follow-up generation on the other. There is no linearity between the conditions for understanding, and there is no commensurability of ideas and objectives.⁸⁵

2) The second crucial aspect of the texts of many Enlightenment philosophers is the idea of the effectiveness of utopias or of the twisting of perspectives: it is primarily about the outside view at the situation in one´s own society (or world). The possibilities to make critical remarks by help of this method are obvious. Some Enlightenment philosophers make use of ”the foreign” in the sense of a science-fiction-like approach of reflecting on “one´s own” or of overcolouring (caricature) “one´s own”.

Both: the texts behind the texts as well as the literary nature, in the utopian-fictitious sense, of the works of the Enlightenment philosophers will be focused on in the course of the following considerations; when it comes to statements on non-European cultures or ethnicities which, from today´s point of view, seem to be problematic, in view of both characteristics it must be stated: it is the ambiguity of certain works and sentences which must not be denied; it is their ambiguity which makes these works veritable texts of Enlightenment ambitions and intuitions, and it is ignorance of this ambiguity which has contributed to the fact that frequently, when it comes to judging on Enlightenment and its texts, inadequate criteria are applied.

The following is structured into several sections:

1. Typical features of works of Enlightenment and Early Enlightenment – some examples. 1.1 The outside view for purposes of criticism. 1.2 Religion or natural science? 2. The texts and debates behind the texts of Enlightenment. 3. The meaning and purpose of including the foreign – the “savage” in Kant´s printed works. 4. Kant´s discursive method. 5. How to analyse differences between humans on the Globe. 6. The location between physical geography, the philosophy of history and the natural sciences. 7. The agenda of the printed work is not the agenda of the lectures – concepts of man in the lectures. 8. Who is addressed by the Enlightenment philosophers´ call for self-emancipation? 9. Summary.

1. Typical features of Enlightenment and Early Enlightenment – some examples

1.1. The outside view for purposes of criticism

In 1667 Samuel Pufendorf published his work on the constitution of the German Empire⁸⁶ under a pseudonym (Severinus von Monzambano); he writes in the first person and in Latin and addresses his sentences to Severinus´s fictitious brother, Laelius. He explicitly reveals the secret of his authorship only in an edition of the text which is published in 1706, when he is already dead. Pufendorf´s work is radically critical, sometimes he is merciless even when judging on clerical (Catholic) claims. Apart from the pseudonymity, what is fascinating with this text is the outside view he composes into his work and which, in terms of rhetoric, contributes a degree of objectivity which, as a fake, encourages and calls on thinking about changes of perspective and their methodical usefulness.⁸⁷

Precisely like this is the fictitious travel correspondence literature, among which there count Montesquieu´s Persian Letters (Lettres person, 1721), just like also Voltaire´s Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733; one year later under the title: Lettres philosophique), which seem to be about the typical features of the English but which really include a harsh criticism of the French society. Analogously, as it is generally known, Swift´s Gulliver´s Travels⁸⁸ or Defoe´s Robinson Crusoe aim at the same kind of criticism of the state of one´s own society. In the course of time, these books were degraded to children´s books, sometimes while leaving away important passages. Today they are no longer part of the curriculum of academic philosophy.

The outside view, sometimes in connection with the view into a different “inside” and into completely new worlds, is an element also other authors make use of, such as Thomas Morus⁸⁹ and Erasmus of Rotterdam (both referring to Lucian of Samosata, first Science-Fiction author ever)⁹⁰, Tommaso Campanella (Civitas solis, 1623), Francis Bacon (Nova atlantis, 1627), Gabriel de Foigny (La terre Australe connue, 1676), Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (Entretiens de Télémaque, 1699) or François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon (Aventures de Télémaque, 1699). Also Voltaire makes use of this outside view, sometimes in connection with spontaneous changes of perspective, and he does so hundreds of times in his works, sometimes he bases them on such a change (e. g. Micromégas). Less known Louis-Armand de Lom d`Arce, called Baron de Lahonton (1666-1716), makes use of the reversal of perspective in his Dialogues de Monsieur le baron de Lahontan et d´un Sauvage, dans l`Amerique (1704).⁹¹ What is indirectly denounced is European behaviour, the European civilization; Adario, the fictitious conversation partner, plays the role of the prudent, virtuous “savage”. Still in the late 18th century fiction is published with inbuilt cultural criticism, `starting out from the Archimedian point of the overseas cultural pattern´.⁹²

All these works are frequently (hidden behind the story) about social and cultural criticism of European societies. There, and also on the whole, Enlightenment was first of all interested in cleaning up its own backyard. It finds different ways of making use of the “foreign” and “different”, without any need of further reference to gods and heavenly spheres, in the form of literarily designed human or extra-terrestrial beings or interactions, for moral teaching or criticism of society or for self-reflection.

Basically, also any universalistic criticism e. g. of superstition or religion as such proceeds in the sense of taking an outside view if it is not able to identify with any concrete kind of religiosity, either from a veritably atheistic perspective or, as we know it e. g. from Lessing´s Nathan the Wise, or by pursuing the idea which Ernst Cassirer calls the idea of an `identity of religion, notwithstanding any differences of rites and all dichotomies of ideas and opinions´.<sup>93</sup> In particular Voltaire sharply polemicises against any kind of religious group, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, for the purpose, as Cassirer says, of demonstrating `how little the core of religion and morality depends on particular beliefs´; this polemic, he says, is the on one hand destructive, but on the other hand this is true: `It tries to make use of destruction as a constructive means´.⁹⁴ What Voltaire has in mind, is writing a general history of the human intellect⁹⁵ and calling into life a general human project of tolerance. His declared enemies are the reactionary, clerical representatives of the Ancient Régime.

1.2. Religion or natural science?

The most different approaches attempt to identify different human phenotypes on the Globe; Captain John Atkins was one of the first to support the idea that mankind originates from several progenitors.⁹⁶ Questions concerning the origin of man and animal were otherwise generally connected to answers one believed to may take from the Bible. Obvious discrepancies between religious texts and natural-scientific insights culminate by different hypotheses, such as Pre-Adamitism.⁹⁷

In 1684 Francois Bernier had put forward the first theory of different human races, structured according to habitats and different phenotypes, and quite arbitrary in terms of delimitation. The first one settled Europe as far as to the Nile, Asia, Persia and the Maldives, the second one settled the rest of Africa; the third one is to be found around the Indian Ocean, in China and Central Asia. The fourth one, he says, are the inhabitants of Lapland, the Sámi. In 1758, Carl von Linné in his Systema naturae suggests four varieties of homo sapiens, attributing phenotypical characteristics (skin colour) as well as features from the ancient doctrine of temperaments: Americans, he says, are of red colour and of the choleric type; Africans are said to be black and phlegmatic, Europeans are white and of the sanguine type; Asians are of a light yellow and melancholic. “In a later edition the human species is divided into two classes; one of them, the lower one, represented the highly developed ape as well as the hardly developed human, the native or `savage´[…]; to the other, higher, class there belongs the civilised European.´⁹⁸ Also Johann Friedrich Blumenbach classified homo sapiens, for the first time in his dissertation thesis of 1775, De generis humani varietate native, according to his characteristics. He divides into: Europeans, Mongols (= Asians), Ethiopians, Americans, and Malaysians. For Blumenbach, the Europeans (Caucasians) are the origin of all other variations, giving the reason that they are the most beautiful variant. Buffon distinguishes 6 human races (Laplanders, Mongols, Southern Asians, Europeans, Ethiopians, and Americans). – Most of these classifications were rather arbitrary, based not on the best data; frequently the distinction was the result of taxonomic, scientific curiosity, and at that time there was no claim to establish humans of higher or lower value.

If, however, this is joined by historico-philosophical or religious ideas, if one attempts to explain certain characteristics and ways of life e. g. by way of Biblical stories about alleged progenitors of mankind on the various continents,⁹⁹ then this is in most cases already connected to a trend towards valuation and de-valuation. The same holds for authors who assume a “progress” of mankind, among them also the authors of travel reports,¹⁰⁰ and it is particularly true for historico-philosophical attempts of presenting a big picture of the cultural development of mankind.

2. Texts and debates behind the texts

Kant was well informed about both the debates of his time and older ones, and he refers to them sometimes more in detail, sometimes just cursorily. In Kant, replicating is the foundation of the composition the structure of the system, and every work, almost every second or third paragraph, is in line with this. The goal is to present one´s own philosophy as an answer to any question and any problem, no matter the realm it may belong to. Current developments are no exception. However, as it has initially been given as a general habit of the time, seldom the reference points of the replies are given by name.

Yet still, for dealing thoroughly with Kant´s works it is indispensable to uncover also the sources he refers to. If one proceeds this way, it is not at all about historicising Kant, about connecting his achievements to the philosophical tradition, thus bereaving it of its ingenuity and uniqueness – no, quite on the contrary: only if the sources and references are comprehensively revealed one will be capable of really and truly recognizing and appreciating what Kant (both specifically and on the whole) achieves. Throughout all his works the most different theories of the tradition are discussed, Kant proceeds sceptically and assesses claims to validity by way of a hypothetical way of arguing which always goes across several works. We should thus be careful when interpreting. Frequently there is a discrepancy between the statements as they look at first sight and their actual meaning, which can be traced down if one takes exact notice of the context and knows the background of other relevant theories. In particular, one must take the possibility into consideration that the author writes ambiguously.

For the question of in which ways Kant presents humans belonging to other cultures and ethnicities, the works Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764), On the Different Races of Man (1775/1777), the review of Herder´s Ideas for the Philosophy of a History of Humanity (1785), the essay Determination of the Concept of a Human Race (1785) as well as the treatise On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy (1788) must be viewed at, and furthermore Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790), Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798) and Physical Geography (1802).

All the questions about how to proceed, as they are directly or indirectly asked in the texts from the 1780s, are answered by the concluding Critique of the Power of Judgement which makes it possible at all that a precise and secured classification of the status of teleological statements is possible on the basis of a transcendental-philosophical principle. For, the scientificity of any discipline and any element of a system is at stake. This is commonly recognized as a goal of Kant´s project where it is explicitly mentioned (Prolegomena). However, the plan to make metaphysics as a whole scientific had to be prepared and carried out for all sub-fields of metaphysics, and one of these sub-fields is indeed the science of man.

This is a very ancient discipline which, in the 18^th century, is supposed to be methodically renovated by way of including the natural sciences. All over Europe one takes much effort to provide for the necessary data, and they are found on the one hand in medical or physiological texts and in travel reports on the other. Since antiquity there had always been information and disinformation in the form of horror stories; often both the attraction and the market value of such reports grew proportionally with the number of sensations and monstrosities to be found in them – indeed for a long time independently of how much evidence such descriptions could claim.

By and by, the share of serious reports was growing, but not long before Kant published his essay of 1775, for example in Prussia there had been a debate which was triggered by a clergyman, who had himself never been on American soil, presenting a text about different kinds of humans (`Espece humain´) where he depicted the indigenous people of America as being degenerated and both physically and intellectually inferior to Europeans.<sup>101</sup> The name of this author: Cornelis de Pauw (1739-1799). One replied immediately and attacked him, from several sides, in the form of longer and shorter contributions, and these disputes went on for years. There are, says Gisbert Beyerhaus, `only a few examples of such a sudden rise and complete decline such as the Abbé de Pauw from the Lower Rhine. Between 1768 until the beginning of the French Revolution he was frequently in the focus of the cultural-historical debate in Germany and France, mostly under fierce criticism. His works are translated in every civilised language or were distributed by excerpts. The Journal des Scavans¹⁰² fills several of its volumes with refutations. The Académie des Inscriptions et Belle Lettres, whose main representative, however, was personally challenged, fought against him in the course of at least three meetings.¹⁰³ In 1776 de Pauw is at the peak of his glory. Then, quite gradually, he starts fading and declining.´¹⁰⁴

Minds were occupied also with other debates and issues, such as the question about the cause of the black skin colour.¹⁰⁵ Voltaire, Kant, Montesquieu, Hume and other authors sometimes reacted to certain, such as religiously, enthusiastically or otherwise arbitrary, hypotheses by integrating short passages into their texts which were not further explicated and, by their tone and content, were clearly different from the each respective text. For example Voltaire in the Introduction to Essai sur les mœurs, in the second paragraph: „Il n’est permis qu’à un aveugle de douter que les Blancs, les Nègres, les Albinos, les Hottentots, les Lapons, les Chinois, les Américains, soient des races entièrement différentes“ – only a blind man is allowed to doubt that all these are completely different races.¹⁰⁶ However, this is no topically clear statement; and indeed it raises the question: Well now, who is it to allow so? Apart from the indirectly addressed, purely visual evidence of these classifications, it is also about the authorities or instances which are or might be in charge of judgement, and as this sentence includes several topics and levels of meaning, it is indeed not at all clear if its content “is true” or gives Voltaire´s “opinion”.

Voltaire´s statement may, or should, as well be read as an ironic stinger against the “Negre” article in the Encyclopédie.¹⁰⁷ In the latter´s first section (76-79), written by Samuel Formey (at that time already the Secretary of the Academy in Berlin), the question if the various humans in the world originate from one mother is tersely commented on by: `Il ne nous est pas permis d’en douter´ (77) – we are not allowed to doubt this. Well, quite obviously this is a matter of interpretation, at least Formey argues quite frequently by referring to outside features from which, he says, one may conclude that there are different kinds of humans (`espece des hommes´). Conclusion here and elsewhere: After all, Voltaire likes to pour out his mockery about the inconsistencies and self-contradictions of other authors or authorities, and always the idea is to put the fundamental equality of all humans first – granted, by way of sometimes ambiguous rhetoric. Then occasionally he even polemicises against concepts of being chosen and other kinds of thinking along privileges.

As a reader, one is oneself in charge of deciphering indirect considerations, in Voltaire, and just the same in Montesquieu, Kant or other authors, whenever one encounters confusing insertions of this or other kinds.

Montesquieu begins his deliberations on slavery¹⁰⁸ with `civil slavery´ as a counter-concept to the principle of civil equality. Slavery as the complete appropriation of another human, he says, violates the spirit of any constitution and all morality. In the 2<sup>nd</sup> chapter he disproves that prisoners of war may be enslaved and that debtors may be sold to their creditors. Then he analyses hypothetical justifications of slavery. This is followed by chapters which Montesquieu starts by “I would love to say that”, “I would like to claim”, “if I had to defend the right to keep slaves”, thus proving his statements to be elements of hypothetical arguments. In the process he denounces the disdain of other cultures as well as suppression as a means of exerting pressure for missionary purposes, in both cases he actually refers to the crimes committed by the European invaders in America. Before, in the 9th chapter, the arc of suspense comes to a close, by Montesquieu stating that certainly none of those defending slavery `would like to draw lots for whom of them[selves] should remain free and who should become a slave´ (Montesquieu 1782, 103), in the 5^th chapter, which is also presented as being hypothetical and deals with the enslavement of Black people, the author gets all worked into a multi-levelled satire. `As the Europeans have extinct the Americans, they had to make the Africans slaves´, so that all the work could be done (1). Sugar would be too expensive if the sugar cane was not cultivated and processed by slaves.´ (2). These, he says, are `black from head to toe´; because of the shape of their noses it is `almost impossible to have pity with them´ (3). It is impossible, he says, to imagine that God, as the wisest being, had provided a black body with a soul, or even with a good soul (4). It is, he goes on, natural to think that the colour makes the nature of man, that indeed the Oriental peoples, who make eunuchs, take away from the black males that what they have in common with the Whites, only in a more distinct way (5). Also the Egyptians, `the best philosophers in the world´, had, because of the colour (of the hair this time), killed `all red-haired people who had fallen into their hands´ (6). One proof, he says, that Black people have no reason is that they appreciate glass beads more than gold which is so important among civilised nations (7). `It is impossible to consider these people human because, if we took them for being human, one might get the idea that we were ourselves no good Christians´ (8). At last it says that minor minds make too much fuss about the injustice done to the Africans. Was it as great as they claim, the rulers (in Europe) would have done something against it, for reasons of compassion and sympathy (as Christians) (9).¹⁰⁹

With each of these sentences it is indirectly the Europeans who are accused for their bloodlust (1), for their greed for luxury (2), for their stupidity (3; 5), for their intellectual narrow-mindedness (4; 8) (6), for their arrogance (7), as well as for their bigotry (9). The allegedly so important feature of skin colour is – by way of satire – disavowed; the conventions of payment transactions (glass beads or gold) are in a way proven to be of equal value, only that, as we know that gold is guilty of the crimes mentioned under (1), in view of moral aspects, as I would like to say, there results a higher value of the African culture. By their deeds (1) and by their intellectual idols (6), the Europeans are unmasked as criminals, what they believe of their God and his way of providing souls is after all, by indirectly proving their godlessness, proven to be null and void. For the current Reclam edition of the work this chapter has been removed, by the way.

By quite a clear reference in Observations (`all black from head to toe´)<sup>110</sup> Kant alludes to this 5<sup>th</sup> chapter of the 15<sup>th</sup> Book (in Montesquieu: „noirs depuis les pieds jusqu’à la tête“).<sup>111</sup> In Montesquieu, hinting at the colour is clearly marked as a satire by the then following passages. Among others, God, and the Egyptians shortly after (being the “best philosophers in the world´) are given as those who give the colour of skin or hair as a reason for their shameful behaviour. Thus, retrospectively it becomes obvious how much value one should place on such features, indeed no value at all. This is followed by the already sketched “proof” that other people may be denied reason because of their fondness of a `glass necklace´.

In Kant, by way of Montesquieu´s satire, a black man´s statement on how to treat women,¹¹² which is at first hypothetically classified as being worth of consideration, is rejected.¹¹³ If, by help of an ambiguous satire which has already been unmasked as nonsense, something is supposed to be justified or refuted, the method itself proves to be nonsensical (i. e. “stupid”).

Observations presents surprises also elsewhere. It is one of Kant´s works which is believed to be second or third rate. Unfortunately, rhetoric characteristics of his early works have as yet been made a topic of discussion only where they are blatantly obvious or where Kant himself mentions them, such as in letters (e. g. the text Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics, 1766).

In Observations at least he makes several times use of the attribute `foolish´ (meaning something like `childish´). Kant uses it to designate the `emotion of the beautiful´, insofar as one is missing `the noble´ in this context,¹¹⁴ and he uses this label for Anacreontic poems (215), for men spending too much time with women (217), for sanguine persons (222), for the French (247), for the Chinese (252), for Black Africans and their `idolatry´ (253), for the Gothic period and knighthood (255) as well as, elsewhere, for arrogant people¹¹⁵ and for inactive action.¹¹⁶ However, of all these passages the attribution of African people is given the most weight, because it is combined with a longer passage presenting Hume´s footnote from Of National Characters,¹¹⁷ and because it looks as if (even) Kant denies talent, ingenuity or potential to certain people because of their skin colour and as if he would like to attribute all this to people of different skin colour. At the given time, when Observations was written, there was no German translation of this footnote¹¹⁸ – this just for those who assume that Kant had not understood or been able to read English (for which there is no proof at all).

In my opinion, even in Hume there are key-expressions by help of which he signals that this footnote must be deciphered, while indeed delivering hints at unmasking it as a satire. For example, I would like to understand the beginning and the end of the footnote as a frame which indicates ambiguity quite clearly. I would like to understand `apt to suspect´ as a reference to Shaftesbury´s caricature of the philosopher in Soliloqui (289f)<sup>119</sup> (as, according to my research, “apt to suspect” is an expression which is rarely found before 1753), and I understand the parrot at the end of the footnote to be a clear hint at satire, for any literate contemporary must at once have recognized the vicious caricature of the Pope (as a parrot) in Rabelais´ well-known cycle of novels.<sup>120</sup> Remaining in this key, I then read the contrasting of `ingenious manufacturers´ (to be found in a History of Germany of 1690¹²¹) to `the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient GERMANS´, both resulting in the statement: `Such a uniform and constant difference could not have happened, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men“, as an ironic compilation of claims which unhinge each other, so that the claim that eternal contrasts or superordinations and subordinations of human societies or nations, which are said to have been created by nature, can indirectly be deciphered as nonsense.

By way of referring to Hume, indirectly and tongue-in-cheek Kant composes into his chapter about national characters in Observations that, after all, it does not make sense to discuss national characters. In that same passage (253) or in this chapter, for his part he presents two interlocked applications of satirical, contradictory concepts: the first one concerns confusing nature and culture. The section begins with the claim that African people `are by their nature not provided with any emotion going beyond the foolish´, that they had no `talents´ and had never excelled in `art or science´, not even in any `other laudable quality´ - and this is where the conceptual trap is readily set: art or science are obviously cultural achievements which require an organized combination of human activities; by no means is it possible that nature or any natural talent or any quality are responsible for this. Then, as a reader, one may fall into this trap, if it goes on: `among the Whites´, it says, `constantly some are rising up from the lowest riff raff and, because of outstanding talent, earn reputation in the world´ - obviously, also this depends primarily on what is made possible or supported by the each respective culture within which the individual lives; after all, “riff raff“ and „reputation“ are terms which cannot be grounded on or be defined by nature but only in the context of culture. This way, however, the result of `such an essential difference´ between `these two human races´ is obsolete, for all the sketched contrasts are indeed not the result of physical but of cultural effort.

The second satire is revealed if one goes on reading and is provided, together with the adoration of fetishes in African cultures, which is exposed to ridicule, with the `grotesque faces´ (255) from the centuries of early Christianity a few pages later, then everything, it says, was about knighthood and adventurism and crusades, there had been `monks with the Mass book in one hand and the battle flag in the other, leading whole armies of betrayed victims, to have their bones buried under far away skies and in holier soil´ (255). Warriors, it says, were consecrated and `sanctified by solemn oaths to commit violent deeds and crimes´ (256) – certainly this is worse than consecrating a feather.

Certainly, one may remind to the fact that, to make the people in Europe reconsider their own society, it is not really necessary to disparage other cultures. Also the representatives of this kind of criticism may hardly be supposed to appreciate the fact that here, rhetorically seen, indeed the text owes everything to the initially ridiculed African, for it is him/her to only allow for the necessary satirical edge.

In the handbook on Physical Geography Kant published with the support of F. Th. Rink in 1802, we find comparably satirical passages, sometimes together with caricaturing elements, in §§ 37 and 43 of the first part, but most of all in §§ 1-7 of the second part.¹²² The text also includes humorous passages: `Even in Virginia [Blacks] remain Blacks over many generations´,¹²³ an allusion to the aspect of virginity connected to the name “Virginia” and the thus connoted white colour.

3. The sense and purpose of including the foreign – the “savage” in Kant´s printed works

By referring to “savage”, Kant exploits the fact that natural state and society are mutually exclusive for satirical purposes of criticising and reprimanding his own culture which, however, does not necessarily become obvious when reading the texts for the first time. This reprimand goes into several directions: on the one hand it is about the brutality and wars of bourgeois societies, which way much of what makes civil societies special is revealed as lies, at least on paper. Secondly, it is about ideas of “honour” and “valour” connected to this brutality. And finally, the shameful actions and the enormous infamy and brutality of European invaders, most of all in the “New World”, is addressed and condemned.

The “savage” is introduced in Observations. `Among all those savages there is no nation which shows such a sublime mind than those of North America. They have a strong sense of honour […] The Canadian savage, by the way, is true and honest […]. He is extremely proud, perceives the whole value of freedom […]´.<sup>124</sup> This is seamlessly followed by Lycurgus´s figure who, as legend has it, probably `made laws for savages of this kind´. Kant continues his thought as far as to a possible “Spartan republic” in America, then he ups the ante, equals the Argonauts with the “Indians” and states: `All those savages have little sense of the beautiful in the moral sense, and the generous forgiveness of an insult, which is at the same time noble and beautiful, is a virtue which is completely unknown among the savages but is despised as an abject cowardice. Bravery is the greatest merit of the savage, and revenge is his sweetest pleasure.´¹²⁵ Now, things are like this: the generous forgiveness of an insult, which here in Kant is allegedly noble and beautiful, was never attempted in a Europe of frequent duelling and warfare. Kant´s criticism of idols such as the Spartans or the Greek heroes becomes obvious only if one recognizes the ambiguity of what is attributed to “the savages”, and this works only if the actual state of societies in Europe is included.¹²⁶ Thus like Montaigne, Voltaire and others ostensibly discuss terrible things (such as cannibalism) among other cultures, to indirectly and satirically criticise European cruelties,¹²⁷ Kant proceeds in the same way, also in other, later passages.¹²⁸

In Kant´s texts we also identify straightforward reprimand, stated by way of the analogy of savages and civilised world, at first in 1793,¹²⁹ then in 1795¹³⁰ and in 1797: disputes, it says, should be decided `in a civilised way, like by a trial, not in the barbarian way (as the savages do), that is by way of war´.¹³¹

Apart from condemning warfare, it seems as if Kant also wants to say that the indigenous people of North America and their alleged endurance of pain are no model for Prussia´s soldierly culture, which is why several times in his printed works he critically addresses their “insensibility” and stoic coldness, on the other hand he also appreciates it in several ways (see below).

In Kant´s work, the “savage” is also used in the sense of Rousseau´s ideal: as a human who is indeed not exposed to the moral decay of the bourgeois culture and is, in a sense, “free”;¹³² then a way of life is coded in which somebody is on his/her own and does not participate in the advantages of those human societies as being organised by statute and law¹³³ and is, thus seen, “lawless”.¹³⁴ Thirdly, Kant emphasizes that humans who live and grow up closer to nature are by far superior to “cultivated people” in terms of skills such as “having a good nose”,¹³⁵ running fast and sharp-sightedness.¹³⁶

In Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View the ironic analogy is reversed in the poetological sense: `Who always can express himself in a symbolic way´, he says, lacks concepts of reason, the often admired depiction of the “savages” by their speeches is nothing else than `conceptual poverty´, and thus even `those ancient books, from Homer to Ossian, or from Orpheus as far as to the Prophets, owe the splendidness of their presentation just to a lack of means of giving expression to their concepts´,¹³⁷ which is quite a funny twist of thought, for Kant himself appreciated at least Homer very much.

Thus, the “savage” is in the widest sense a human living in the natural state,¹³⁸ and Kant in his printed works strictly separates his realm and the realm of organised forms of society. In the printed works we find precisely one passage where the “savages” are connected to the concept of “nation”.¹³⁹ Nowhere does he speak of “nation(s) of the savages”. On the whole, the term “savage nations” [wilde Nationen] is only found four times.¹⁴⁰ In terms of quantity, these findings are contrasted by using “people(s)” [Volk/Völker] 555 times altogether and using “nation(s)” [Nation/en] 68 times altogether. In the printed work, where it is to be found 25 times, with the exception of three passages,¹⁴¹ even the term “peoples” [Völkerschaft/en] always refers to state entities or forms of society, not to humans in the natural state. In the following it is going to be about these three passages.

Two times “people” is applied to the indigenous population of Canada, in my opinion for the purpose of appreciation and recognition;¹⁴² in my opinion the third passage¹⁴³ can be clearly proven as a passage where figurative speech is used for the purpose of satirically reversing the perspective and thus, after all, for sharp criticism of the Europeans. This passage is the most shocking one and certainly contributed most to Kant having been declared a racist. It says: `By its greatest perfection, humankind is a race of the Whites. The yellow Indians are less talented. The Negroes are much lower, but lowest is part of the American peoples´.

To make the claimed ambiguity plausible, at first one would have to point out that Kant clearly denounces the illegal actions of Spanish invaders in South America as such: one had to ask oneself in how far it could be legal, in order of putting humans of other cultures or `savages´ `into a legal state (such as the American savages, the Hottentotten, the New Hollanders)´, to `establish colonies´ really `by help of violence, or (which is not much better) by help of fraudulent purchase, thus becoming the owner of their soil […], and [in how far it could be legal] to make use of [one´s own] superiority with disregard of their initial property´. The answer is: `However, one easily sees through this veil of injustice (Jesuitism), of approving of all means which are justified by the ends, thus this way of purchasing soil is reprehensible.´¹⁴⁴

Based on this knowledge, we are at first able to better understand another, also ambiguous passage. Kant writes about the `very´ savage inhabitants of what is Australia today, which `alone is almost as big as Europe: they would `not even accept, like other savages do, toys and red cloth. How difficult would it have been to gain more detailed knowledge of the interior, had not the ingenuity of the Europeans found other means for this purpose! Anyway, the nations of the southern hemisphere are at the lowest stage of mankind, and they have no other interests than sensual pleasure. The savages of the North, although they live closer towards the Pole, betray by far more talent and address.´¹⁴⁵

Here, “the Europeans” are semantically close enough to the next sentence which announces the withering assessment. Thus, the suggestion that in Kant “savages” cannot be conceptually contextualised with “nations” is perhaps not even necessary here. By the way, due to the geographic information `the southern hemisphere´, the withering assessment also covers those Europeans as illegally settling on all continents of that hemisphere.

These Europeans, who are at the lowest stage of mankind, are furthermore described this way: they had `no other interests than sensual pleasure´ which, taken up again a few pages later, where it is about `an educated young Icelander whose longing for his poor fatherland was the more fervent, the more glamorous the pleasures and distractions in London´ were. `Accordingly, the desire to return to their homes was particularly strong among all those who, as non-Europeans or so called savages, had been introduced to the midst of the most sensual pleasures of our continent. Even concerning the Captain, who was robbed as a Negro child and became famous in Holland for his scholarliness, it is very probable that his longing for home made him invisible in Europe.´¹⁴⁶

These explanations allow for a better understanding of the said problematic passage in Physical Geography (316), in so far as there a rhetorical trick is applied which is similar to the one in Observations. The satirical effect is created by the “perfection of the race of the Whites” which seems to be substantiated by the colour grading, to then hit the blow which unmasks the reader by his/her arrogance and prejudices. Those being lowest are the Europeans who make their way through the New World by committing murder.

This kind of satire is continued: `The inhabitant of the moderate part of the world, most of all those living in its central part, is physically more beautiful, more industrious, more humorous, more moderate in his passions, more reasonable than any other human race in the world. Thus, at all times these peoples were the teachers of the others and conquered them. The Romans, the Greeks, the ancient Nordic peoples, Jenghis Khan, the Turks, Timur, the Europeans after Columbus´s discoveries, astonished all southern countries because of their arts and their weapons.´<sup>147</sup> Also here, by two attempts, Kant contrasts arrogant-positive descriptions to the surprise element of reprehensibility: at first, the list of attributes is followed by a – surprising – causal main clause `Thus […] have conquered.´ Why then should these people, given their praised moderate and reasonable ways, conquer other people? This contrast unhinges all what has been said before or at least moves it into the light of extraordinary dubiousness. Kant ups the ante and actually names the aggressors, and who has still not understood that the allegedly advanced civilisations of the Romans and Greeks, just like the expanding Europeans (slaughtering everything indigenous in the “New World”) are here counted among the aggressors, should consider that the list includes the names of “Jenghis Khan” and “Timur”. This kind of subtle caricature is crowned at the end, by the belittling word `astonished´.

As a conclusion it may be stated that all the sketched passages show a punchline and are made ambiguously, and that is for the purpose of criticising the situation in Europe or in the regions occupied by Europeans. It is about disavowing certain ideals of Greek or Roman or medieval thought, of exposing the uncivilised behaviour of allegedly civilised people, of unmasking pride and arrogance, and of revealing the criminal nature of the Church and the greed of European rulers. The fact that the “savages” or the “Peruvians” or the “Blacks” are sometimes characterised in such inappropriate and derogatory ways serves satirical purposes.

4. Kant´s discursive method

Kant received the information he adopts from other authors, from travel reports, from reports by people who for some time had been living in other countries, from natural-philosophy treatises, and from other texts. Sometimes this goes back as far as to antiquity contexts. Kant takes up questions about different ethnicities and cultures in different climate zones, because – as they belong to anthropology and to physical geography – they must be answered in the context of his philosophical system.

Kant´s discursive way of proceeding in his overall work presents itself, for all fields of metaphysics, in such a way that at first approaches, concepts and contents are weighed and assessed, sometimes by immediately contrasting them to each other, which explains the somewhat colourful atmosphere of some of his early texts, even more as Kant does not always explicitly reveal this way of proceeding. However, the contribution of 1775 is introduced by the remark that the presented analysis is going `to be food for thought, but rather like a game of this kind instead of being thorough research´. ¹⁴⁸

In Kant, in the essays from 1775 and 1785, theoretical considerations are transferred to man, in analogy to animals or plants and their species, kinds, phyla,¹⁴⁹ and this way also the concept of race is introduced in 1775.¹⁵⁰ Among the “race of the Whites” Kant counts, apart from the Europeans, the Moors, the Arabs, Turkish-Tartarian peoples, the Persians, as well as all other peoples of Asia. Apart from them, he discusses the Blacks (of Senegambia), the North Americans, the Indians, and the Northerners. As shortly sketched above, in the debates of the time these classifications were always also connected to natural-history and natural philosophy issues. For example, one would have liked to know in which ways the deep black skin colour of people living in Africa was connected to physical/chemical aspects.

Kant underlines the insufficient certainty of the theory coming along with these classifications. He writes: all these are `assumptions which are at least sufficiently grounded to be as credible as other assumptions which find the differences of kinds of humans inconsistent enough, so that rather they assume many local creations.´¹⁵¹ Philosophically seen, he writes, claiming simple (yet funny) expediences of nature according to Voltaire (such as: that God created the Laplander, so that there is somebody to eat the reindeer) is not helpful, possibly one might achieve better results by help of chemistry.

Also the, often applied in Kant, strategy of indirectly or directly irritating the reader serves for emphasizing uncertainties. The text of 1775 is irritating in several respects, apart from the dissonances resulting from the principle of methodical carefulness and the then still applied slapdash theorising (e. g. about the alleged original species), there are topical contradictions, e. g. of the kind that initially he speaks of four races: white, black, Hunnish, and Hindustani,¹⁵² to then, differently, speak of the following four: white, red, black, olive-yellow (plus other features). However, the Hunnish race given in the former list could not have developed at all from the latter list, at least not according to the previously presented “theory”. And now, this way any mindful reader becomes aware that what is negotiated here is hypothetical and at least incomplete.

Completely unfounded is also the following step: let us assume, according to the knowledge of the time, that the colours of plants and animals are connected to the effect of iron in their “fluids” (e. g. to the state of being dissolved or not); in analogy to animals and their blood, in the case of humans one might develop theories about connections to the colour of skin. And this now is the imposition: `With the species of the Whites, however, this iron dissolved in the fluids would not at all be condensed, which way at the same time the perfect mixture of fluids and strength of this breed of people compared to others is proven.´<sup>153</sup> Of course, this is not at all “proven”, and the irritating nature of this “derivation” is indeed already announced by the fact that here the previously clearly defined concepts are either not applied or are completely confused with each other (“species” instead of “race”; “breed of people” instead of “race”). Quite in line with his sceptical-ironic way of proceeding in other texts (e. g. that on areas in space), here Kant adds with a wink: `However, this is only a brief incentive to analyse in a field I am too unfamiliar with to dare even assumptions I could rely on.´¹⁵⁴

Now, this is immediately (inserted as late as in 1777) followed by the astonishing statement that, although one cannot have any knowledge of the species from which all those different phenotypical manifestations origin, as this happened in the distant past, one nevertheless simply assumes that the phenotype of the brunette human with white skin colour is the phenotype of origin. From it, it says, there developed blonde white humans, humans with copper-red hair, then humans with black skin colour as well as humans with “olive-yellow” skin colour.¹⁵⁵ Related hypotheses are mentioned, they predominantly concern the geographical distance, e. g. caused by certain religions having been separated in the past by water, seas, oceans, by way of which one could explain why these different phenotypes did not intermingle.¹⁵⁶

Subsequent to a hypothetical way of arguing, Kant´s discursive-sceptical method provides the solution in the form of topical clarifications as well as methods-reflective results. That is why it is imperative that the above mentioned texts of 1764, 1775, 1785 and 1788 are read in the light of Critique of the Power of Judgement – if one wants to understand the irritations and riddles the author confronts us with from their solution. By the way, the contribution of 1788 very clearly anticipates this third Critique, such as when discussing the concept of a fundamental power, of an organised being, and the limitations of explanations of purposes and causes. `However, we know such powers […] only from experience within ourselves, that is by our reason and will, as a cause of the possibility of certain, quite purposefully made products, that is the works of art.´¹⁵⁷ In Critique of the Power of Judgement, teleological statements are methodically attributed to an epistemic potentiality for whose complete explication one must refer to reflecting judgement, to the awareness of a, still subjective, validity of certain statements, or also: to their hypothetical status e. g. when it comes to modelling (in the natural sciences).

However, the previously used methodical tool set, which was transcendentally grounded in the third Critique, allows for rejecting any claim to objectivity of insight or theory in the case of teleological statements and explanations. Any teleological explanation of the world, as it is given on the basis of data and descriptions, requires an authority which has invented the ideas of purpose and is capable of implementing them: and usually this is God or nature (or both). Kant demonstrates epistemologically that only the thinking subject can be this authority.

Furthermore: in Kant there is in principle no place for phenotypical differences between humans living in different regions of the Globe, neither in the realm of practical philosophy nor in deliberations arguing along human liberty and autonomy. Liberty based on the will to freedom and the capability of being free, right based on the recognition of lawfulness as an element of liberty: these cornerstones of mankind were supposed, starting out at first from abandoning unfreedom and injustice in Europe, to be continued all over the world. This is the utopia of the age, and this utopian trait of his philosophy cannot be overlooked also in Kant if one reads his works in their overall context.

Kant illustrates this utopian direction in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798): `The physiological knowledge of man is out for researching what nature makes of man, the pragmatic one is out for what He, as a freely acting being, makes of himself, or what he is able and supposed to make´.¹⁵⁸ Thus, everything naturally given is part of researchable, in the context of physics and natural philosophy, theoretical knowledge of the world: ´Thus, even the knowledge of the human races, as they are products belonging to the game of nature, is not yet counted among the pragmatic but only among the theoretical knowledge of the world.´¹⁵⁹

5. How to analyse differences between humans on the Globe

Kantian philosophy, in its anthropological and moral-practical dimensions, may be understood to be a past-freely grounded theory concerning what man can and is supposed to make of him/herself, and all this can in principle not be made, in any imaginable way, dependent on what makes humans, insofar as they are imagined dependently on the conditions and prerequisites of nature and physiology.

Man may be classified as an animal, in Kant this is to be found in those texts where the concept of race is meaningful. Like Montesquieu, Kant combines phenotypical differences of humans from different regions on the Globe with the climatic prerequisites (humidity/aridity, cold/heat) which are attributed to their habitats. Kant´s principle of the unity of procreation follows Buffon´s theory;¹⁶⁰ the principle of common fertility (unity of procreation) provides evidence of one single human species on the Globe. The methodical ideal ist that of the natural sciences. Kant explicitly presents the differences between different phenotypes on the Globe as part of the natural-scientific DESCRIPTION of the Earth.

In his review of the second part of Herder´s Ideas for a Philosophy of Human History Kant writes in 1785 that all sorts of things could be concluded from travel reports or descriptions of countries, e. g., with the same degree of evidentness, both the insight that the males of some peoples do not have any beard and the insight that they have a beard but pluck it. Or, with the same degree of evidentness: `that Americans and Negroes are a race whose intellectual capacities have deteriorated below the other members of the human species, on the other hand, however, that, according to indeed so uncertain news, by their natural talents they must be estimated to be equal to any other inhabitant of the world, that thus the philosopher faces the choice between assuming natural differences or judging on everything according to the tout comme chez nous principle, which way then all his systems, built on such shaky foundations, must look like dilapidated hypotheses´.<sup>161</sup> Here it seems as if a classification-mad, chauvinist Kant is after tolerant and liberal Herder. However, a closer look is worthwhile: `in Kant´s printed works, `intellectual ability´ appears exclusively at this passage, and this means that the word is no intrinsic element of the work, nowhere is it dealt with in more detail, but instead the fact that it is mentioned only once indirectly marks it as being useless. What is meant is those talents and skills man is provided with by nature, and Kant always subsumes these under the term “natural talents”. Thus, now the question is raised if those mentioned `in this concern [concerning their thought}, as concerns their natural talents, must be appreciated as being equal to all other inhabitants of the world´. Thus: Are they capable of thinking as well as we do? Does everybody have the same capability to think? Of course not. What does the human capability to think depend on? Well, under the condition that there is something which may be supported, it depends first of all on being supported and on the way in which it is supported, and it is never nature which is in charge of this but culture. In Africa and America, however, the cultural conditions are completely different from those in Europe [at the given time]. Thus, even in the review of Herder´s ideas I would like to read the passage in question as a provocative conceptual contrast (“thought vs. “natural talents”).

In Kant, in 1785 it is against Herder, and even in 1775/77 and also in 1788 it is about defending the classification of humans according to habitat. Why? Already from the debates and texts of the 1760s and 1770s it becomes obvious it becomes obvious that after all any version of an evaluative kind of anthropology can be concluded, no matter on which attitude, hypothesis or theory it is based. Accordingly, in de Pauw the devaluation and defamation of indigenous people is the reason for stating that these poor, degenerated people had to be protected against the evil European invaders. In a certain way this is well-meant; but others made use of such characterisations to justify slavery.

Kant´s remedy: an evaluating kind of anthropology can be prevented by making valuation as such impossible. Natural-scientific and natural-historical laws must be identified and assessed for their suitability (1775/77, 1785, and 1788). Then, in terms of methodology by way of the analysis of reflective judgement in the third Critique, these are proven to be regulative, meaning that their validity is exclusively hypothetical and that they may be used for organising the observation data. Any transfer to the field of practical philosophy is impossible.

So far, so good. Then, however, there is the question why in Kant – other than e. g. in Christoph Girtanner´s work, who formulates his sentences by way of an illustrative language without any devaluation¹⁶² - so many unfriendly or disparaging descriptions of humans of alien origin are to be found. The most striking ones are these: The `gepletschte (squashed) nose´,<sup>163</sup> in the sense of a “flat nose”. According to Kant, also the common European has such a nose, other than the Greek, whose nose, he says, goes `straight out from the forehead´.¹⁶⁴ “Bloated parts of the body”¹⁶⁵ are those parts as “being capable of absorbing water”. This is a common phrase in the context of describing plants, in particular trees.¹⁶⁶ A `thick, everted nose and stubby lips´<sup>167</sup> are similarly to be found e. g. in M. V. de La Croze<sup>168</sup> who writes of “broad, squashed noses” and of “large, thick stubby lips”.<sup>169</sup> La Croze gives this as a quotation from Poncet´s Voiage d´Ethiopie,<sup>170</sup> but of course the translation is his own. In Kant´s printed works, this way of describing lips appears three times altogether, that is apart from 1775 also in 1802, in Physical Geography;<sup>171</sup> it seems that Kant made use of it as early as in his lectures of the 1750s, and neither there nor in the printed works it is embedded in any context of ironical distancing. Furthermore we read in Kant, seldom in his printed works, that Black people `stink´¹⁷² or had an unpleasant smell.¹⁷³ This is also to be found in a dissertation which is partly included into Diderot´s Encyclopédie¹⁷⁴ (the article on Negre),¹⁷⁵ in the context of which it is claimed that `une odeur deasagréable´ (an unpleasant smell) is due to gall transpiring through the pores of the skin.<sup>176</sup> The Chinese (378), the inhabitants of the Moluccas (389), those of the Kingdom of Whida (416f) as well as the Laplanders (426) are called cowards, and `sluggish´, he says, are all `inhabitants of the hot zone´ (316), in particular the Peruvians (429).¹⁷⁷

Taken together, one finds indeed that these explanations are not neutral. Thus, has then Kant failed with his plan of a neutral anthropology? I think: no, because it cannot be withheld that in principle Kant separates: the realm of nature and physiology (human body) from that of freedom, of self-cultivation and of cultural maturity. All the statements in question primarily refer to the physiological. In some regions on the Globe the conditions for transcendentally grounded freedom being in charge are less favourable than elsewhere; but this is subject to the change of the times. Like e. g. a rather rough Germanic people can develop (from the point of view of those days) to cultural heydays in the course of centuries, in the future this may as well happen with all other peoples and tribes on Earth.

6. The location between physical geography, the philosophy of history and natural sciences

Traditionally, the considerations on humans from other cultural spaces and climate zones, in particular if it is about issues of their development history, belong to the realm of historia sacra. Linked to the Biblical exegesis were sacral-historical attempts to gain insight or to produce narrations on nature, the humans living therein and their history. Philosophy had at first to disconnect from this, in particular when in the course of Counter-Reformation `trends of increased disciplining, indeed of a Christianisation of Philosophy´ contributed to ideas of a `Revelation-based, Biblicist kind of natural science´. `Since Bacon, the new natural sciences have vigorously defended themselves against the principle of concluding on insights into nature from the Bible´.¹⁷⁸ The emphasis on the ideal of the natural-scientific method in Kant belongs to this tradition, he completes it by methodologically proving its limits and by the thorough grounding of practical philosophy. His works from the late 80s and 90s work both out in more detail, and as the only authority which is entitled to connect both realms: that of nature and that of freedom, he gives the thinking subject (Critik der Urtheilskraft). Kant´s way of proceeding in the 1780s has been perfectly analysed in a monograph on the debate between Kant and Georg Forster which happened at that time.¹⁷⁹

Concerning the overall conception Kant finally attributes the question of how to determine phenotypical and cultural differences between humans on the Globe to physical geography. The edition he has published in 1802 is based on the material of the lectures but is definitely an independently composed handbook, similar to those on logic (1800) and pedagogy (1803).

In the 1802 handbook’s introduction Kant emphasizes that, in the context of “knowledge of the world”, there exist man and nature about which knowledge can be gained. Only reason is able to provide the criteria necessary for distinguishing these two, and reason has no interest in geographic, political or cultural differences but in developmental potential in the sense of PRAGMATICALLY interpreting man and his/her self-development into free individuals who think for themselves (see the quotation from Anthropology above). Physical geography, on the other hand, is said to primarily just providing description;¹⁸⁰ for a natural history in the real sense there lacks knowledge of data and changes.

7. The agenda of the printed works is not that of the lectures – concepts of man in the lectures

In the transcripts of the lectures on Physical Geography the depictions of humans and their customs are mostly neutral, however there are some evaluative attributions which are sometime very drastic. Here now, all related passages to be found on the 320 pages of Vol. 26/1 as well as on the 1150 pages of Vol. 26/2 of the Academy edition, edited by Werner Stark,¹⁸¹ are going to be listed. All unmentioned passages include (in my opinion) mostly neutral information about oceans, countries, the history of the Earth, climate, flora, fauna, culture, religion, everyday life, politics, economy, agriculture, science and trade.

In the temperate zones of the northern hemisphere, all around the Globe, one finds the most beautiful people (Vol. 26/1, 86f). In Africa the people are of `black colour, they have woolly hair, broad faces, squashed noses and `blubber lips´. From Senegambia there come the blackest, however also the `most beautiful [people] in the world´ (87, also 274), on `the Gold Coast there are very black ones, and they have very thick blubber lips´; in Abyssinia they are said to stink terrible (87). All inhabitants of the hottest zone are `extremely lazy´(94); inhabitants of America are both timid as well as superstitious and envious, their minds are slack, and they are very sensitive and fearful (95). Northerners, it says, show similar dispositions, even concerning their desire for strong drinks, only they are not envious `because their Climate does not so much incite to lust´(95). Hottentottens, it says, are not fussy, `in cases of emergency trodden soles´ may be eaten (101). The Chinese are said to be very relaxed and show an `extremely artificial behaviour´, on the other hand they do not feel ashamed of it; they are vengeful, cowards, diligent and like gambling (200). `Nobody in China swears or curses´ (201). In Siam the sciences are `bad´ (211). The inhabitants of the Nicobars were unjustly accused of `eating human meat´ (236). The inhabitants of Ceylon, it says, are of `brown colour, but not ugly, they are spirited, gay and polite, gentle, pennywise, but strong liars´ (238). The Turks in Syria are `well-shaped, hospitable, generous to the poor and to travellers´, they are `lazy, could sit with each other for hours without talking. Greed is their predominant vice. They are not supposed to drink wine, but still they do so secretly´; they never gamble for money´ (262). The Georgians are bad Christians, `unchaste, thieving, boozy´(263). The Hottentottens at the Cape of Africa, it says, have an `awkward, propped up nose, and thick, stubby lips´, they get very old and run very fast (264). After customs of hygiene, customs on celebration days etc. have been told in quite a disparaging way, it says that they own `much natural wit and much skilfulness´, that they are `honest and very chaste, also hospitable´ (265), then again there follow more distanced descriptions of their everyday culture, `everything must smell like cow dung´, they are said to have many lice. The woman must work while the men are engaged in smoking, boozing and a bit of hunting. Often their laziness brings much distress (266). On Madagascar, the Blacks are said to be `tall, swift´, the women are `beautiful and good´ (270), in the Kingdom of Munhumutupa the inhabitants are black, gallant, they run fast (271). In Congo there live the most teachable Blacks of all, they become `advocates, judges, doctors´ etc. (272). In Senegambia there is great treachery, `because of selling slaves´; often, it says, one king burns down his own villages to capture slaves and buy brandy for the thus made money; parents sell their `children, and the latter sell the former´ (274). Blacks from Sierra Leone are said to stink much (275). In the countries of West Africa, it says, the wild „tigers“ eat only Africans, not Europeans (276). In Guinea, `the Blacks are not unpleasantly educated´, their noses are not flat; they are proud but very malicious and thieving (277). In the Kingdom of Whidah the Blacks are very industrious, full of compliments, `the most mischievous thieves in the whole world´ (280). The Abyssinians, it says, are `witty, highly educated´, honest, `not quarrelsome; the `Niggers in Abyssinia´ are said to be `as ugly and then as unmannerly and spiteful´ as all other Blacks (287). Italians, it says, are `jealous, vengeful´ and prudent politicians (291). The Laplanders in Sweden are `lazy and cowardly´ (296). Chile has `gay and bold inhabitants´; Peruvians are sluggish (301) and indifferent (302). The Tapuya in South America are said to eat their enemies (306). Peoples in the North of Canada, it says, are `affable and prudent´ (309), towards the South they have, according to the French, ´very ugly faces and their manners are wild and spiteful´, in times of need, it says, they eat their women and children (310). The Algonquins and other peoples of Canada are `much inclined towards independence´; none of them would be ready to `adopt the European way of life, although the latter often chose the former´s way of life´ (312). On the islands in the Caribbean there are many Blacks serving as slaves, often they are dangerous, those from Senegal are the wittiest; Creoles are said to be wittier than their fathers; Blacks from Madagascar cannot be tamed (315); Blacks from the Kingdom of Munhumutapa die soon, are often very stupid `but conceal themselves in very artificial ways; while being arrogant´; those from the Caribbean look melancholic, cannot understand how gold could be preferred from glass, they are said to be sluggish, to have spleens and much pride. When it comes to revenge, they do not know any limits, and reconciliation is unknown to them (316). –

Thus end the excerpts from Volume 26/1. Volume 26/2 goes on in similar ways: the inhabitants of the polar zone, it says, are `shameless´ (108), also European princes are said to have shameless looks (109). `Most Africans have pouting noses, and thick stubby lips, which they have in common with the Hottentottens´ (108f, also 110). As „races“, first of all Goths, Moors, Brits and Saxons are mentioned; Germans are said to have `blue terrible eyes´ (108) and strong bodies (109), which here means “stout” (this, it says, holds also for the Blacks: 109). Of African albinos it says that they are `very stupid and completely bestial´, which is why the Blacks exclude them from the community (112). Asian albinos are claimed to be known as „cockroaches“, as they `stink terrible´ (112). The Hottentottens look “very ugly” (113). The genealogical question about the first man: `If one would like to give them as an original race, one would also make the colours of white and olive the same, and this would contradict the origin of man, who originates from one individual man. […] Was Adam white or black?´ (113) As Blacks are living only in Africa, that is in just one (also rather inaccessible) part of the world, the first humans were “probably” white (114). However, in any case they must have been living in hot regions, where there is enough food, for they had indeed to learn agriculture. Blacks, it says, are stupid, also Samoids and other humans living near the Pole (116); Americans are said to be indifferent, Europeans are said to be courageous. These descriptions are mixed with descriptions of humans with monkey tails (on Borneo), of giants (Patagonia) and Pygmies and speckled humans (116f).

In the following chapter we read, in a passage which obviously quotes Hume´s footnote from the essay “Of National Characters” (1748), that Blacks and Whites were of `quite different nature´ (121), Blacks are said to be silly-minded, they are like women, are of no “manly nature”, do not know any prudence and prowess (when fighting) and are born slaves (122). However, this follows a section where it is told how Black children teach themselves all sorts of things and also train their intellect very much. Those who have always been slaves are said to be found in India/Asia, the people there are great cowards, just like those in China (122). They, like the Africans, lack talent to the same degree, which (like in Hume) is grounded on lacking achievements in the sciences and arts; the Chinese, it says, is also lazy (123). This is followed by disparaging descriptions of Indians, Turks, Chinese, Creoles, Russians, Spaniards, followed by statements on the natural goodness, morality and honesty of all humans in the world (124).

Fertile countries, it says, create stupid people: that is why the Poles are lazy, other than the English, French, Germans etc. (131). The Greeks are said to have the most perfect taste (because of their architecture and sculpture); architecture in China, India and Egypt, it says, has no taste, Chinese are generally said to have no taste at all (133). The Chinese tend towards betrayal, lies, dissimulating, they are cowards, they are not suitable for warfare, they have ridiculous habits (229; similarly also 585). The section on China in the later minutes also mentions their alleged inclination to betrayal and to `evil-mindedness´ (585), otherwise, however, their culture is depicted much more positively (585 ff). The inhabitants of what is Vietnam today are said to be unfaithful, lazy and lustful (236); those of what is Thailand today are said to be arrogant, submissive, fearful (237). Indian people are said to be similar cowards than the Chinese (238), disheartened in warfare (239), `small, cowards, quiet, servile, difficult to satisfy´ (241). The monks there, on the other hand, are `probably the kindest people on Earth´, they behave honestly and charitably (238). The Parsi in India do `not look good´ but are `quiet and diligent´ (246); the people in Persia, it says, used to be ugly in the past, but now they are becoming ever more beautiful, due to Caucasian women (248). Persians are said to be free, independent, they make well-sounding verses (248), are well-grown, have an inclination to all kinds of arts, are good horsemen (249). Arabian people are very hospitable, moderate, serious, `usually honest´, but the merchants are said to be rogues. Arabs, it says, are high-minded, `brave, skilful, it was them who spread the sciences across Europe´, and they invented algebra (250). Today´s Oman is said to be a paradise, to have the `most beautiful climate´, its inhabitants are `the best´, there are no drunkards, nobody steals, all of them are hospitable, however they are pirates and believe `to be allowed to hate all people because of their religion´ (251). Tartars are said to be very ugly (254), some of them have a kind of tail, like monkeys, and these are hated by the rest (255). In Japan, the Europeans were `chased away because of the Portuguese who had been too vehement when introducing the Christian religion´ (256). The Japanese are small, squat, `prudent, brave, very intellectual, defiant, more honest than the Chinese, and perhaps the bravest nation in all of Asia´, famous `particularly for their defiance and disregard of life´ (257). In parts of the Philippines, it says, there are humans with tails. The inhabitants of Manila are great defenders of their freedom (259). The people on the Mariana Islands are `strong, well-grown´, mostly they walk around naked, the woman command the men (260). The people of the Moluccas are kinder than all other Indian people (261). On Borneo and Sulawesi, it says, there lives a nation which is the most valiant of the Orient (261); on Java, it says, the people are `thieving, servile, furious, then easily disheartened´ and industrious (262); of those on Nicobar they say that they are man eaters, `probably because for the Europeans, when these were trying to steal their country from them, they were dangerous when defending themselves´ (263), for cannibals are only to be found in America (264). On the Maldives, it says, the people are `arrogant and smug in their struggle for rank´ (267). African people are said to like chatting and to be skilful stealers (268); on the Gold Coast they are `evil´ (269). They are `easily melancholic and often drown themselves, out of fear of slavery. They are very stupid by nature and have no inclination to any kind of science´(272) The Hottentottens at the Cape are freedom-loving and, when excrementing, close to the `state of animals´, they look ugly (272). On Madagascar the inhabitants are `very stupid´ (274). In East Europe, it says, the Bessarabian Tartars are `the best nation in the world, among them mine and yours is absolutely safe because all of them are poor´ (279). The inhabitants of Rome are said to be of a foolish nature, similar to the young French; anyway Italians are frequently ridiculous; they have more academies than Europe altogether, but there prevails the greatest ignorance, as `among them [the religion prevents] them from making use of higher reason´; on the other hand they are geniuses of the fine arts and the sciences (281). According to Caesar, the French are described as being witty, funny, rash (282). When being young, they are said to be foolish, bold, gay and obnoxious, in their old age they are kind, moderately funny, sociable. The French, it says, show an inclination to the thorough sciences but may make jokes even about them; in Europe they set the agenda in all possible respects, they have refined and courteous customs but also commit the most despicable massacres (283). The Spaniards are said to be arrogant and proud; as far as to being ridiculous; their religion keeps them blind and superstitious; Portugal is full of Jews, they are unfaithful, treacherous, bad soldiers (284); The English are free spirits (due to the Anglo-Saxons); only the Germans are said to have known and have had real freedom, compared to them, the Romans and Greeks were slaves; England does not accept any kind of subservience and no slaves; everybody there judges according to his own mind, they disdain all other nations, except for the Germans (286). The Germans are the most noble people when it comes to their talents and arts, they are skilful in arts and sciences, often admirable; they are born for war, they are the inventors of printing and powder, they are very diligent, from them there have originated greater men and the people are more educated than they used to do in France (286f). The Catholic Southern Germans, it says, are `stupid and ignorant because of religion´, compared to those from the North (287). The Swedish are said to be more inclined to the thorough than to the beautiful sciences, they are hot-tempered and fierce (287). In Russia, it says, there are `2 races of inhabitants`; in the North they are awkward, lazy and unmannerly; in the South they are bright and witty (287). `The nature of a nation becomes obvious only with freedom, misfortune makes vicious and sad, slavery makes immoral´; thus, it is only because of the circumstances that the Russians are drunkards, treacherous, distrustful, this is not really their nature (288). In Poland, the people are said to be lazy, cowards, `disheartened, flexible given their slavery, weak and rash´ (288). In the “New World”, it says, compared to the “Old World” there had developed species quite of their own, and accordingly also the American indigenous human is `completely different from other humans´, not as sociable, the women are treated cold-heartedly and suppressed (289), they are not cheerful or lively. The Spaniards, it says, have almost extinct the indigenous people (290), Black Africans in Senegal are the `wittiest and best looking people´, the Creoles are spirited. They treat (other) Blacks disdainfully, all Blacks are arrogant, vain, very stupid, although they know very well how to hide this; Caribbean people look very melancholic and are phlegmatic (290). In Peru, it says, the natives are lazy and phlegmatic, in Chile they are `the livelier, good hunters and soldiers´ (291). On some Caribbean islands, it says, there are many Blacks, to grow indigo, sugar and tobacco (294). The French are said to call all the inhabitants of all countries to the North´ `Esquimaux´ because they eat raw meat´ (295). Americans, it says, are all of a copper red, they are `agile, have no beards, and are of no lasting constitution´; they have an inclination to freedom, of which, however, any `traces are seldom found´ (295). - `Anyway, the nation in the South is at the lowest possible state of mankind, as they have no other interest than eating. The savages in the North, although living closer to the Pole, are much more interesting.´ (370). In the mountains, it says, there always live freedom-loving people; the difference between the Scots of the Highlands and those of the Lowlands is that the latter `are educated in a very weak manner´ (379).

Albinos are said to be `astonishingly stupid and dim´ (507), it might be that humans of different phenotypes lose skills when mixing with each other (507); The Chinese and the Japanese might origin from Indians and Mongols having mixed with each other (508); Mongols, it says, must be considered the “monsters” of the human nature, they are said to have `dreadful bodies and have caused much trouble´ (508). – The original colour of the skin seems to have been white, this colour may `generate into another colour´. Adam, it says, was white and blond (509), the blondest people are probably the Germans (509f). Black skin, it says, developed for a long time only in `New Guinea and Africa´, and that was because of the lasting heat of the sun (511). According to Hume, it says, given the great difference despite spatial closeness, the habitat does not influence the nature and skills of humans; according to Montesquieu, it did influence (512f). North Americans are said to be insensitive, ascetic when it comes to begetting children, brave in war as long as there is still hope for victory, other than the Europeans who defend themselves to the last drop of blood. Peruvians, it says, are imperturbable, even the slaves (513); this seems to be due to the great dullness of their senses; also they are dim-witted and forget everything the Jesuits are teaching them as soon as leaving the church (514). The indigenous peoples are very valiant, vengeful, lustful, money-hungry, vain, cowards, fearful (514); Black people are said to be very fickle and frivolous, they are prudent at an early age and as teenagers already speak like the old-aged; yet still they remain childish and prefer going to the dance on their only day off (514). – Also in the minutes of the 1780s the humans with monkey tales (Borneo) are mentioned, but this is qualified there: it might as well be an error by sailors passing the island (517); then people with tiger spots on their skin as well as cretins, humans with enlarged thyroid, are made a topic, who are said to be of gentle temperament, which is said to be due to a lack of reason (518). In terms of their diet, Black people are contrasted to `civilised nations´ (521). Siberian peoples, it says, are often starving in winter because they are too lazy to `care for the future´ (521) The Americans, it says, treat women like pets, they must do all the work, in Asia, it says, they are locked in, exempt from work and mostly treated well. `Only in Europe gallantry has been introduced.´ (523) – Both `children and savages´ do not detest `certain things because of their smell´; thus, liking or disliking them is supposed to be a matter of fashion (536). In the sections on national characters most descriptions are similar to those of the earlier manuscript. The inhabitants of Tonkin, it says, are `more honest than the Chinese, on the other hand they are astonishingly poor, otherwise, however, they are similar to this nation´ (592). Persian and Latin words originally come from the German or Celtic languages (593f). From the originally German peoples, which seem to have something great about them, there originate the French (from the Franks), the English (from the Danes, Norwegians and Saxons), and the Italians (596). Between the Muslim Persians and the Turks, it says, there is the greatest religious hatred in the world (594). In the Turkish countries, it says, the inhabitants are proud, audacious, melancholic and very awkward (594). The Bedouins are said to be careless and hospitable, like the peoples of the Russian steppe; this, it says, is due to their poverty. Among the rich, `hospitality exhausts itself by politeness´ (595). Bedouins, it says, like robbing travellers. The Kirghiz are said to be a very `predatory nation´. Russians, Tungus and Mongols always curse each other (597). The Tungus are said to be very proud, `like all of these being lazy nations´ (598) The inhabitants of Africa, with the exception of the descendants of the Mauritanians, are said to be Black people, the three `most famous nations´ (in today´s Senegal and Mali) are civilized peoples and of the Muslim religion (600). Otherwise, it says, the Blacks are `much inclined to stealing and brandy´ (600). From the Slave Coast (Guinea), it says, `up to 120,000 a year of the miserable ones are taken to America to the plantations´, where in most cases they are `kept under cruel circumstances´ (600). Because of this danger of being kidnapped, it says, they cannot trust each other, not even among families. The Hottentottens are once again described in a very disparaging way, they are, it says, the `hulkiest people in the world´ (601); they do not feel disgusted by stench and live under filthy circumstances (602). On La Réunion, it says, one has found amber which `necessarily they must have got from Prussia´, although it is unclear how this might have happened (607). The inhabitants of Chile, it says, are the most valiant and very insensitive (608); in Brazil there are sugar, coffee, and tobacco plantations where Blacks work and are kept `very cruelly´ (609); this workforce, it says, is expensively imported from Africa because the American indigenous peoples are so insensitive that they cannot be driven to work (609). On those indigenous as being missionized by the Jesuits it says that they remain as dim-witted as before and are unable to learn how to count (610), as their own words have too many syllables; however, this betrays `that among them one really encounters less capability than among other raw humans´ (611); in my opinion, these lines include a lot of irony. – North Americans, it says, are valiant and vengeful, insensitive, they bring up their children without resorting to violence but by ideas of honour and leave them in `complete liberty […] which, after all, is an indication that children, if left in liberty, turn out better than those being forced´. They are said to eat their enemies (611). In their youth they are playful, but as adults they become very melancholic (612); Blacks, it says, are `now also resorting to a kind of bravery´ (612f) and incite rebellions. One notices, it says, that `the savages are very similar to each other, a circumstance which has allowed to somewhat discover the original drives of man. Their friendship is much more enthusiastic than the European one, and particularly theft [sic!] is much detested among them. Of all the American peoples, it says, the North Americans are the most reasonable ones; the Europeans have stolen their lands and brought nothing than misery and illnesses; thus some day they will be extinct (613). The Inuit are described by the French as a `cruel, defiant and stubborn´ nation, but by the English as `a very mild nation´ (614). If you turn around the kayak of a Greenlander, it says, the others will laugh, this shows `how people who are constantly in danger do not know any compassion´ (615). Greenlanders, it says, do not find stench disgusting. Women, it says, are considered pets, however `in refined and civilised life´ they are kept at very high esteem (615f). Even they give orders, and this might generally incite `considering the difference between these two categories´ (616).

In Australia, it says, there live people `in the greatest stage of savagery, they do not even have gods as the Greenlanders do´; the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego are said to be closest to savagery and foolishness, they do not show the slightest degree of intellect, are not at all curious (664f). The boats of indigenous people, it says, are faster than any European hunting vessel (736). The Americans are said to be a race of their own, possibly they do not originate from the Mongols. They are of `a different nature, they have less reason than the Whites, and other races´ (741). America, it says, is `one incredibly large wilderness´, gifted with natural products; `the human intellect´, however, is in `deepest darkness´ there. On New Zealand and Malicolo, it says, the people are ugly `but of extraordinary intellect´, on Tahiti they show a delicate, beautiful `physical constitution´ (767). The adjustment of Black people to a hot climate is explained by the condition of their skin; their skin, it says, is able to sweat the harmful `phlogiston´ out of the air (815f). The inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego are said to be the `most miserable people in the world´ (842), small, puny, without beard, greedy for food, they leave their huts open, eat `their children and perhaps even themselves´ (843; in a similar vein 1090f). The face of a Calmuck human is more different from that of a European that the face of a Black (881). The first race, it says, was that of the Europeans and the Asians, then there developed the Calmucks, the Indians and the Blacks (882). The oily skin of the Blacks, it says, is the cause of the stench of their bodies (883). Among the American indigenous people, it says, `all human qualities have ceased to exist to the highest degree´, they lack motivation, are insensitive; European doctors, it says, were astonished `how these people are capable of enduring such pain during operations´; also the sexual drive is very weak among them (886). If their offspring comes to Europe, they become lively like it is typical for Europeans, if they stay in America, they have `something stubbornly insensitive about them´ (887). It may be, it says, that Indian people have colder blood than `the other peoples´, thus often their hands are cold; this might also explain the `cold-bloodedness and resignation ´ of their minds (887). Also albinos are said to transpire and stink; the stench is not caused by impurity (91) but because Africa as a country transpires so much, one human alone cannot process this by help of his lungs but this must also happen via the skin (892). Senegalese Blacks, it says, are blackest, prettiest of all, their `lips are not as thick´ as those of others; one may find Black people `pretty if one is much familiar with them, for our disgust of the colour of black is nothing than a habit´ (893). It is nonsense to seek the cause of the black skin colour in Biblical stories about curse and punishment; Black people, it says, would `consider it a severe punishment to be white´ because this would be completely unsuitable for their climate, furthermore we do `not even know of what colour Noah or Adam were´ (895). Of no animal the species of its origin is known (896). The possible look of first man is discussed (897-901). Among American indigenous people, it says, all vitality has gone, they are `degraded people´, in contrast to which Black people are `very teachable and cultivatable´. The American never laughs and does not say a word (901). The Germans, it says, have much improved because of mixing with others; their original nature is sluggish (901). Americans: insensitive. Blacks: lively, vain. Indians: self-controlled, reserved, gifted with everything which requires morality and perseverance, but no fiery courage. Europeans: seem to unite all talents with them (907f). Chinese, it says, are not as quick-tempered as Europeans, `all of them [look] like philosophers´, are used to the strictest discipline (1045); the Turks are said to have more intellect than the Chinese (1048). The Indian peoples deserve a better lot, under a European ruler they would be happier (1058). Malayans, it says, are a bad breed and assassins (1064). Persia, it says, is much famous, very important in the past, now in a miserable state; from the Persian nation everything possible could be developed; they have very much culture and more sciences than the Turks (1068f). Persians are said to be bright, well-behaved, capable, honest, but by their nature `of such a low mindset that they do not know any other reward than that coming from riches, like the quality of all Orientals is avarice´. The oldest Parthians must (for linguistic reasons) have been German (1068). The Arabs, it says, are honest, of a good kind, `and even where they are rapacious, they are not so easily violent´ (1069); they have a few sciences, are sociable and bright. Turks, it says, are brave, the best people in every region whatsoever (1070), they outdo the Greeks and others, even Christian peoples. Betrayal and malice is more common among Christians; Turks are honest, however they love rebellion and egotism too much and have too little justice (1071). They have no respect for laws; Chinese and Indians, it says, have too little courage; respect of laws `requires higher ideas´ (1071). If people have to blindly follow religion, no reason can develop (1072). Black Africans have a `good mind, are gay, witty and bright, are ruled by kings´; they are able to endure labour nobody else could endure; 20,000 of them are sold to America every year; one must resort to violence to get hold of them, or they are made drunk, they like getting drunk; Black people sell or betray each other to the Europeans (1080). The unspeakable conditions of kidnapping into slavery are described (1081). Black people, it says, are bright and can learn many things, no matters of intellect but language and the art of trade and all wit which belongs to purchasing (1081). The Greenlanders, it says, are delicate and decent (1085); the Peruvians are the most dim-witted people of all America, they keep their money in their mouths because they have no pockets (1091).

In the following excerpts from the printed edition of 1838: `There are no different kinds of humans´ (1108). Humans of the American and Black phenotypes are `good-natured and tolerant´; however the character of any descendant of a White and a Black is worthless (1110). American indigenous people, it says, are insensitive (s. a.), they do not know any fear of death, which `probably [comes] from their great love of freedom´ (1111). The Spaniards would have `degraded´ their race, had they not mixed with the people of Mexico, it says, American indigenous people are said to be degraded because they have never been living long enough anywhere (1111). `The first peoples were of such a physical constitution that they were suitable for any region. But now all human races have developed, […] now no other race is possible´ (1112). `All peoples more or less love intoxication: this is due to the burden of human life, then intoxication prevents them from thinking about it´, Humans are `by their nature not good´, they show a `tendency towards the evil´, they are constantly waging war at each other. `In their opinion, the highest virtue of the savages is bravery in war´ (1115); war, it says, creates more evil men than it carries off (1116). But there will not always be war; someday freedom and justice will put an end to all despotism. The human talents which are original and which must be cultivated are: a) living animals, b) living and reasonable people, and c) personalities who are capable of reason and sanity (1116).¹⁸² Thus end the passages from the printed edition of 1838.

`One rails against the habits of other peoples while forgetting that one does the same´ (1121). By reference to Hume: among 1,000 freed Blacks one does not find one example of somebody who has `excelled with particular skilfulness´ (1132). Cretins, also called goofs, are `like children, are treated likewise´ (1132). The Chinese are no geniuses of art, they `do not even try´ to imitate e. g. European ship-building, `over them´ there is much `culture and police´, however of a slavish kind (1139); the Chinese, it says, are restlessly industrious 1140). They do not develop their culture, everything is `in the saddest state´ (1141). Trade in Black slaves `is certainly reprehensible, but it would happen even if there was no European´ (1142). – Thus end the excerpts of valuing passages from the minutes of lectures on physical geography.

Having introduced physical geography into the academic curriculum is Kant´s merit. He is the inventor of this discipline, and he transfers a gigantic amount of information (in a value-neutral way) which his listeners of those days could hear nowhere else and could read only if they were rich enough to purchase expensive books. I believe he describes peoples and cultures also under aesthetic and moral aspects and on the whole in quite a simplistic manner to help this wealth of information to be remembered. Thus, one may furthermore employ it in the sense of a kind of casual moral instruction, as elements of a Shock-headed Peter kind of pedagogy, as transfer picture and memory aids. It is not about people from foreign cultures as if one might meet them the next day (which in those days seemed to be absolutely impossible) but about “types” which are brought closer to the world of experience and habits of European people, to make the listeners think about them. Some foreign cultures are described as being completely different and, because of being so alien, as impossible to be brought closer, in particular the indigenous American and African cultures.

The only ones to frequently have a clean state are the Germans. Why is this so? Because this way the listeners, who are German, can be motivated; because they can be signalled: Look, you´ve been lucky, in terms of climate, your starting conditions are good; you live in a region where cultural and scientific achievements have been made, and without them one will, after all, not be successful in the fight against those forces as being hostile to Enlightenment. You´ve been lucky, now make something of it. Control your desires, get cultivated. Do not become insensitive towards pain (like, allegedly, the indigenous peoples of North America). And do not worship mammon, and don´t be treacherous or selfish or dishonest etc.

That I read Kant this way is due to my own experience: even myself, some hundred years later, 800 km to the West, in the North German Plain, was brought up in similar ways, by sayings such as “an Indian doesn´t know what pain is” or “this looks like among the Hottentottens” (referring to a dubious state of my room). Both parents and children knew, at least intuitively, how to distinguish these clichés from the “real” world.

Can this „making use“ of the other, for the purpose of supporting one´s own, be proven as an action which can be morally appraised? I think this to be adequate if, in those days, the actors had to assume this: the real humans behind the clichés can hear or read the appropriate propositional contents. This, however, was unimaginable in those days; had one anticipated that in a not too far away future this would become possible, certain characterisations (in Kant and others) would possibly (and hopefully) have been presented in a friendlier tone.

8. Who is addressed by the Enlightenment philosophers´ call for self-emancipation?

Without doubt, and without any limitation, the utopia of emancipating from any kind of suppression as well as the fundamental trust in human reason was invented and meant for all humans in the world. All humans have the same rights, and all humans all over the world belong to one family.

In terms of rights: no discussion. However, Kant confronts the autonomous individual with a list of duties; and in terms of implementation this list as well as further requirements of self-reflection, Enlightenment and self-emancipation can actually NOT be connected to all humans in the world. For, the necessary strength this requires in reality cannot be found by everybody, by each individual; not if they are labouring in the mine all day, or at a hospital or, or. Enlightenment is an imposition which turns many things inside out. Furthermore, this “Dare making use of your own mind” is a kind of counterpoint to many cultures on the Globe. In Kant´s time this call, as it was well-known particularly in Europe, was opposed by suppression, exploitation, paternalism and the enslavement of humans all over the world, particularly in the colonies.

It would have been extremely inappropriate to tell the enslaved and kidnapped people that in such a situation they should kindly become emancipated enough to think for themselves. Of course there were slave rebellions, and of course the suppressed people had an interest in being free. Their liberation would have to be a political demand; that the Enlightenment philosophers did not state this in all clarity is something they may be accused of from today´s point of view. The idea of self-emancipation towards individual freedom and of thinking for oneself without guidance by others, however, which is at the heart of Enlightenment and which, in my opinion, must be distinguished from the liberation from the bonds of slavery, cannot easily be proposed to humans of whatever culture. Any kind of self-emancipation, which must by all means be imagined in the sense of autonomy, is not applicable to any human in the world, not in Kant´s time and not these days. For, as a matter of fact, NOT all humans/all cultures in the world ARE READY to join this radical process of emancipation.

In the context of Kantian philosophy, however, this “not being ready” cannot be a kind of being ready which is itself already due to a transcendental-philosophical kind of freedom and autonomy but must be attributed to those humans as interpreting themselves as being “physiological” and lifeworld. “Not being ready” is due to ways of life and cultures in the context of which one primarily understands and motivates oneself by origin and tradition. It is these cultures which Kant, as I believe, attempts to preserve by their validity and by this “NOT BEING READY”: nowhere does he clearly speak out for any culture interfering with any other or for any right to manipulate a culture. In the printed works some scattered, course phrases make sure that the appropriate ethnicities are somewhat safe from the impositions of Enlightenment; also in the lectures we find quite gruff characterisations. This is no final verdict on other peoples and their potential, but what the Enlightenment philosophers had in mind was something like this: We are going to take the lead, and you are going to follow, if then you feel like doing so. And where do they go? Towards their utopia, towards a world which is not yet existent in this way. The Enlightenment philosophers were utopian by their thought, and precisely in our time this must be strictly separated from those who were promoting the expansion of Europe and the invasion of other parts of the World for economic or religious reasons and who, driven by base motivations such as greed and hatred, committed crimes against mankind.

Thus, the utopian idea of an enlightened world of autonomous individuals, based on the universal meaning of the concept of liberty and reason, is connected, in terms of what man is able and supposed to make of him/herself as a human, that is as far as PRAGMATIC self-interpretation is concerned, to limitations. Each according to culture, the universally imagined utopia will have to be shaped differently.¹⁸³ For, dependent on the degree of intensity in which they oblige their members to a way of thinking and living – in Kant´s concept, this degree of intensity is declared to depend on the different climate zones and their constraints – some cultures do not provide sufficient leeway for achieving a pragmatic interpretation of one´s own I.

Summary

In the 18^th century the “science of man” is confronted with the urgency of being reorganised and of clarifying the methods and foundations of its own theorising. This, however, was not easy. In Europe one still has one foot in the thought of the religious age, religious patterns of thought are still powerful. Enlightenment was not able to have such a broad effect and did not command such a degree of support as, in hindsight, it may have been desirable. Individual authors strive for universal, universal-historical theories (Voltaire), however naturally these are, notwithstanding any joy of overcoming and polemics, dyed in the European grain.

Due to his mono-genetic yet strict classification of manifestations of human life in the different regions of the Globe, by way of which these could for once be protected against the impositions of Enlightenment, and as, according to the tradition of Enlightenment, he makes use of the view at the “foreign” to support and educate “one´s own”, as well as by way of philosophy as a whole, which was absolutely innovative in terms of epistemology, ethics, the philosophy of law and international law, Kant´s attitude towards other ethnicities and culture was indeed NOT chauvinist or paternalistic. And as a matter of fact, such an attitude is nowhere to be found in his philosophy, not in the form of covered views and not in the form of any secret ideological superstructure.

Rather, the problem seems to be that today some people are not sufficiently informed about the thought of the Age of Enlightenment, of the methods, rhetoric and the achievement of distancing from an age which was still much characterised by religion. Furthermore, it is absolutely impossible to judge on Enlightenment by starting out from the events and people of the 19^th century. It would be helpful to develop an awareness of the fact that the 19^th century was crucially different from this Age of Enlightenment. After all, the latter had failed in terms of contents and goals, however also of its methods; at about the turn of the century there happened a break and an absolute loss of trust, which was, among others, connected to the horrors of the French Revolution.

History is roughly sketched by Bertrand Russell like this: `Rationalism and anti-rationalism have existed side by side since the beginning of Greek civilisation, and each, when it has seemed likely to become completeley dominant, has always led, by reaction to a new outburst of its opposite. The modern revolt against reason differs in an important respect from most of its predessors. From the Orphics onwards, the usual aim in the past was salvation […]. The irrationalists of our time aim, not at salvation, but at power. They thus develop an ethic which is opposed to that of Christianity and of Buddhism; and through their lust of dominion they are of necessity involved in politics. Their genealogy among writers is Fichte, Carlyle, Mazzini, Nietzsche […].¹⁸⁴

In 1807, Russell goes on, Fichte `delivered his famous “Addresses to the German Nation”, in which, for the first time, the complete creed of nationalism was set out. Theses Addresses begin by explaining that the German is superior to all other moderns´.<sup>185</sup> The idea that man had to be ennobled and that `the “ignoble man” has no claims on his own account, is of the essence ot the modern attack on democracy. Christianity taught that every human being has an immortal soul, and that, in this respect, all men are equal; the “rights of man” was only a development of Christian doctrine. […]. But Fichte, like a sort of political Calvin, picked out certain men as the elect, and rejected all the rest as of no account. The difficulty, of course, is to know who are the elect. In a world in which Fichte´s doctrine was universally accepted, every man would think that he was “noble”, and would join some party of people sufficiently similar to himself to seem to share some of his nobility. These people might be his nation, as in Fichte´s case, or his class, as in that of a proletarian communist, or his family, as with Napoleon. There is no objective criterion of “nobility” except success in war; therefore war is the necessary outcome of this creed.´¹⁸⁶ And Russell comes to this conclusion: `for while reason, being impersonal, makes universal co-operation possible, unreason, since it represents private passions, makes strife inevitable.´¹⁸⁷

In my opinion it has as yet not been sufficiently understood that there are lightyears between Kant´s thought and Fichte´s thought. And after all this is because, among others, and no matter how simple it may sound, the ironic passages and the ambiguity in Kant were not understood or are still today not understood or that one does not want to understand them. Indeed, polemic of the ambiguous and ironic kind which at the same time remains subtle has indeed an equivalent by the demand that the people shall start thinking for themselves. For, only as an individual I will be able to recognize irony, and nobody could tell me to do so, in the sense of instructing me. After all, irony is the best remedy against peer pressure and immature thought.

However, in our days irony is no longer an element of philosophy, and even less of politics, of course. Probably some people find it hard to understand how, given the cruelness of certain events, the irony of the satire instead of unmistakeable affirmations and outrage could ever have been the suitable rhetoric means. Against this background, certainly one will say that e. g. Blumenbach´s deliberations¹⁸⁸, which were adopted for the entry on “race” in Krünitz¹⁸⁹ and where the various pig races are analysed in analogy to the various human phenotypes, are inadequate. I believe, however, that such demands for literalness will never do justice to the spirit of Enlightenment and those authors who also wrote satirically and ironically, such as Voltaire, Hume, Montesquieu, Montaigne, Erasmus, Bacon, Swift, and many more, indeed also Kant.

Conclusion – allowing for joy

Peace in the world, the end of suppression and exploitation as well as a human way of living together will lastingly only be made possible by the workings of individuals – not by political or religious groups which fundamentally negate the primacy of the individuality and autonomy of humans. All that such groups know is goals which again contradict the goals of other groups. This will not bring peace but conflict and war.

Individuals, on the other hand, do not identify other individuals as being `essentially alien´ but exactly as what they are themselves: as being indivisible and distinctive as well as, in case some individual does not count among those living beings which are by their nature incapable of suppression:

1. as being capable of thinking for him/herself, of reflecting, of defining purposes for him/herself

2. as being capable of considering him/herself to be the primary purpose/end in itself

3. as being capable of empathising with other individuals or, in other words: of seeing things from the perspective of others.

If there is anything which might be an end in itself/final end at all, it is man a) seen from his/her own perspective or b) seen from another human´s perspective, or c) a living being in the state of being absolutely incapable of making use of him/herself or of others just as a means to an end (i. e. suppressing him/herself or others). Thus, one is either an element of a peaceful world already by nature or one is capable of relativizing and abandoning any way of being used as a means by becoming independent oneself and, after all, by defining one´s own `self´ as the final goal of the number of personal goals. If one succeeds with this, then there develops an autonomous connection of the definiens and definiendum of one´s own intentions, desires and actions which is valid in and by itself.

In this context, however, the `self´ must not be understood as `ego´ but as a complex inner steering unit. The essence of this `self´ consists of realising or striving for non-suppression. This, and nothing else, is the basic idea.

In outside life, such as life in a society, everybody is obliged to keep the valid rules and to obey the valid law as well as, please, show the manners one has been taught as a child. In democracies, in this context the following is true: any individual is not just somebody being given instructions but, at least potentially, also an author of these instructions. Accordingly, reasoning and debating and arguing are crucial for life in democracies and under the rule of law – and this is a good thing indeed.

That, in the context of group-influenced expectations and conventions, the lives of individuals are frequently characterised and normed by being rooted in the past (namely the past of its collective), has in the considerations above been presented as something which must be rejected or, if one still clings to it, should be considered to be secondary in principle. Because first and foremost, each individual human or non-human life is an element of cosmos. Like above quoted Seneca, e. g. Montessori writes: `We can consider the existence of all living beings on this Earth under one united point of view. […] All living beings have a more or less purely cosmic mission on Earth.´¹⁹⁰

We may well connect the liferoot of any “cosmic” living being to the initially presented image of the, at first contemplatively imagined, satisfied resting-in-oneself and -with-oneself which has here been sketched out as kind of the heart of free individual existence. This heart neither needs language nor is it rooted in language or thought. It is inaccessible to any kind of generalisation or universalisation. Rather, it obliges to approach individuals as individuals, to approach one´s own self as such, and this in each case in ways which do without assessments derived from conventions of any kind.

Humans reject other humans, they feel misunderstood and repelled by them. On the other hand, they might as well enjoy each other. Rejection and being repelled frequently refer to certain general features and group affiliations. If, however, somebody enjoys somebody else, then this is precisely not because of general features. Enjoying somebody else comes from humans dealing at eye level with each other; from sharing their being human with each other, however indeed while doing so as individuals. This rules out any situation in which one human subdues, exploits, lies at any other human. Even intuitively, we would never connote such contexts with expressions of joy. Certainly we may also enjoy other things, sunrises, a good meal or our account balance. Then, however, joy does not refer to anyone else but to a need or desire being met. Humans can as well enjoy the achievements of others, e. g. when it comes to economy, sports, politics or culture. Also then, however, we rather enjoy a function within a certain context, figures, success stories, results.

In any case, enjoying each other is made impossible if people start classifying each other according to certain groups about which they then want to make certain statements. This begins with families or with attributing genders, via origins or religions, and it ends with political or other condemnations. If one wants to structure the world this way, if one wants to put the rights and needs of certain groups to the fore, and if only to topple existing powers, one continuously consolidates ways of thinking which come from group-thinking and thus the past. The idea of individual liberty is then precisely not recognized and appreciated by its radicalness – probably also because most people do not attribute any political impact to the individual. Starting out from the assumption that one will rather be heard as a member of a group, or that political stability and security will be supported this way, in my opinion one really works against stability and security, for what is supported is the impossibility of enjoying each other as well as fear, xenophobia, hatred and exclusion.

Respect, which in a globalised world may be the minimum demand when or before encountering known or unknown humans, should come from the ability sketched by the considerations above: I may understand somebody else or any other living being as an end in itself and not just as a means to achieve certain purposes. It would be even better if respect resulted from enjoying the other as a human or the living being as the living being it is. Then, joy is something like amazement. And amazement is a crucial aspect of past-free existence.

We may also enjoy ourselves, however also and precisely then we should have a closer look at what things are about: is it about satiation or about a desire being met, about delivering a performance which is demanded (by oneself or by others), or what is it about? Probably it is not very often that I really and truly just enjoy myself. Starting out from this consideration, I go back to the beginning of this paper: the core state of individual liberty sketched there makes us assume that in its each respective version it will produce deep satisfaction. Humans in such a state, as I believe it to be more than plausible, will neither betray others nor steal from others, neither will they encounter others with hatred nor will they want to wage war against them.

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Kant 1784 Immanuel Kant: `Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht´, in: Berlinische Monatsschrift. No. 11. (Nov): 385-411. – In: AA Vol. 8: 15-31. – English: Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose.

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