Monday, January 21, 2013

On Hegel's "Anthropology"


Following from Kant and Bernier, Hegel establishes categorical differences between races consequent from the varied geographical locations where the aforementioned races inhabit. He goes into quite some detail articulating generalized caricatures, or physiognomies, of each race in order to establish a clear picture of these differences. (Importantly for Hegel, these differences are necessary rather than contingent.) Unlike Kant, Hegel has no interest in arguing in favor of either the Polygenesis or Monogenesis theory; According to his "Anthropology," all human beings are unequivocally rational beings; therefore, no person ought to be under the dominion of any other person--no matter what race. The debate surrounding these two theories, at its basis, stems from a political, sociological, and economic need to justify, legitimize, and ordain the enslavement of one person to another. That being said, Hegel nonetheless goes on to cast the Negro race as essentially child-like, which becomes an unambiguous declaration of necessary paternalism: "Negroes are to be regarded as a race of children who remain immersed in their state of uninterested naivete"(40). Hegel declares that the entire continent of Africa, with the exception of the Arab populations on the Mediterranean (who just happen to look more European), is a homogenous entity, despite the differences in language, epistemology, metaphysics, and ontologies from one African population to the next. Within a semiotic diametric, Hegel defines caucasians positively against a negatively defined Negro race. Whereas Negroes are devoid of rationality, culture, and intellectual ambition, Caucasians are essentially a thinking population. Similarly, the Mongols, for example, engage in aimless expansion, which is destructive rather than constructive. This small clarification is necessary, because the Caucasian population also engages in expansion, but with a purpose--colonization; In fact, it is the white man's moral obligation to colonize. The more despotic the population, the more in need they are for the word of God. Furthermore, Hegel goes to great length to elaborate upon the Metaphysics of each group. The Negroes find their gods in material objects in the world, implying a communion with the natural world. Whites, on the other hand, have transcended this "limited" perspective in favor of an Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent God, not grounded in the material: "The European mind strives to make manifest the unity between itself and the outer world. It subdues the outer world to its ends with an energy which has ensured for it the mastery of the world"(43). Hegel embraces the Baconian empirical dictum, "knowledge is power." Within this Manichean dogmatism, Whites have the privilege and divine responsibility to hold dominion over the Earth. By occluding multiplicity, he effectively underscores the necessary racial Hierarchy that he initially seemed to undermine.

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