From savages and barbarians to primitives: Africa, social typologies, and history in eighteenth-century french philosophy

History and Theory

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 190-215

  Carlos Jacques, T ^a  

^a AL AKHAWAYN UNIVERSITY   (Morocco)

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EID: 0039299569     PISSN: 00182656     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0018-2656.00010     Document Type: Article

References (251)

1. For extensive comments on earlier versions of this paper I am grateful to Richard Dancy, Lorraine Code, and an anonymous referee for History and Theory. And I thank Valentin Mudimbe for continuing support for my research. Work on this essay was made possible by a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
2. An operating assumption underlying this investigation is a kind of epistemic relativism, one developed in the work of Ian Hacking. Cf. Ian Hacking, "Language, Truth and Reason," in Rationality and Relativism, ed. Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes (Cambridge, Mass., 1982)
3. I have chosen to rely on his statement of the position because it is a particularly felicitous way to express what is often a misunderstood view, and it provides a fruitful starting point for dealing with a number of issues surrounding the nature of knowledge and epistemic evaluation. Mine is not, of course, an essay strictly in epistemology. But a confession of one's theoretical premises can only be of assistance to my argument. Basic to Hacking's relativism is that any belief that is a candidate for being either true or false, and for which a reasoned argument is required to demonstrate its truth, possesses this quality only in light of a "style of reasoning." Criteria of epistemic justification identify the evidence that can be appealed to, to substantiate a belief. Hence epistemic criteria determine in large part how that substantiation can be rationally established, i.e., they constitute a part of a style of reasoning that must be followed if one is to claim that a belief is epistemically warranted. Independent of a style of reasoning, a belief that demands a justificatory argument for its confirmation cannot enter the discussion that would enable it to be judged true or false. Styles of reasoning, therefore, fix what can be said about certain kinds of things in the world, if what is said is to be of epistemic merit. Furthermore, styles of reasoning are historically contingent. What can be affirmed of something may accordingly vary over time. This is not to say that what is true on one occasion may be false on another, but rather that whether a belief can be a candidate for evaluation as true or false depends on a style of reasoning that may be historically variable. In other words, styles of reasoning limit what can be affirmed of a thing, with what is affirmed being either true or false. They do not dictate what is true. Styles of reasoning may depend on, and may result from, a number of different causes, not all of which may be considered epistemic. For instance, a belief can be excluded from epistemic deliberation for political reasons. These political reasons need not operate directly on epistemic practices (e.g. by means of government censorship), for they may indirectly shape the epistemic criteria themselves. The relationship between epistemic and non-epistemic factors in the determination of what statements are to count as possible instances of knowledge is difficult to set out. (The sociology of knowledge has often come to grief in offering little more than broad causal descriptions of how specific beliefs have come to be held as true.) This difficulty is often compounded by the accompanying effort to search for the origins of beliefs, a task subject to interminable debate. It is more practical and rewarding, I believe, to examine how specific local beliefs became objects of epistemic dispute, and how the dispute was tied to various interests, both epistemic and nonepistemic. (Two paradigmatic examples of such an analysis of epistemic dispute and resolution are: Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, transl. Alan Sheridan [New York, 1979]
4. and Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France, transl. Alan Sheridan and John Law [Cambridge, Mass., 1988]). This essay is guided by such an ideal of epistemic analysis
5. Hacking's and Foucault's languages are obviously different, and I have avoided Foucault's terminology largely because of a number of questions that surround the conceptual tools of his discourse analysis. Both writers, however, are in the end concerned with describing the conditions of possibility for affirming true or false statements. What I borrow from Foucault are the historical details of the two epistemes mentioned, as analyzed in Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York, 1973)
6. When I speak of European knowledge, or of Africa as Europe's "Other," these terms are not to be seen as substantive concepts. They are rather convenient geographical markers which help to refer to the relationship between European and African societies. To properly understand this relationship, the mechanics of it in all its detail (what Foucault calls the microphysics of power) must be elucidated. In this paper, I focus on but one facet of that relationship (on a specific epistemological relationship between Europe and Africa), and then, on only one side of that facet, namely, Europe's conceptualization of Africa. How Africans responded to this European knowledge of themselves, and how the relationship between the societies of these two continents was played out both in different domains of activity, and between these domains, I leave for future examination
7. Sébastien Mercier, Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred, transl. W. Hooper [1771] (New York, 1974), 62-63. I will, when it is possible, cite English translations of the primary texts discussed. Otherwise, my references will be to French editions
8. Margaret T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology In the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1964), 114
9. "Cabinet d'histoire naturelle," Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des metiers (Geneva, 1778), V, 658
10. I will employ the term "Man" on occasion, for its surface inclusiveness and implicit exclusive-ness captures admirably the ambiguity in Enlightenment discussions of human nature
11. "Cabinet d'histoire naturelle," 658
12. Mercier, Memoirs, 68
13. For a discussion of this society, see Joseph-Marie de Gérando, The Observations of Savage Peoples, transl. F. C. T. Moore [1800] (London, 1969), preface and translator's introduction; George W. Stocking, Jr., "French Anthropology in 1800," Isis 55 (1964), 134-150
14. De Gérando, Observations of Savage Peoples, 100-101
15. their beloved remains, conserved subsequently by the genius of science and the demand f a fresh sensibility, would figure in our Museum, amidst the objects proper to their country of which they would complete the tableau." (This translation, along with those to follow of quotations from French texts, are mine). Louis-François Jauffret, "Mémoire sur l'établissement d'un muséum anthropologique," [1800] Aux origines de I anthropologie française: les mémoires de la société des observateurs de I'homme en Tan VIII, ed. Jean Copans and Jean Jamin (Paris, 1978), 191
16. For an analysis of the concept of knowledge and power accumulation cycles, see Bruno Latour, Science In Action (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), chapter 6
17. Throughout this paper, I take Foucault's reading of the classical episteme as definitive of the Enlightenment
18. Descartes, "Discourse on Method" [1637], The Philosophical Works of Descartes, transl. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge, Eng., 1931), I, 92
19. Francis Bacon, "The New Organon" [1620], Selected Writings of Francis Bacon, ed. Hugh G. Dick (New York, 1955), aphorism CII, 518
20. Cassirer makes the same observation. See Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, transl. Fritz C. A. Koelln and James P. Pettegrove (Princeton, 1951), 12
21. Foucault, The Order of Things, 71-72
22. Foucault distinguishes between two kinds of order in classical knowledge. The first, based on quantitative analysis, he terms mathesis. The second, concerned with ordering complex entities as they occur in nature, he calls taxonomia (cf. The Order of Things, 72). It is the latter that I will attend to. My discussion of Foucault's analysis of the classical episteme, and later, of the modern episteme, is indebted to Gary Gutting, Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason (Cambridge, Eng., 1989)
23. Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular [1748-1804], volume 2, 2d ed. (London, 1785)
24. "TheNatural History of Man-Of the Nature of Man," 355; Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular, volume 3, 2d ed. (London, 1785), "A Dissertation on the Nature of Animals," 208
25. Helvétius, De L 'Esprit or Essays on the Mind and its Several Faculties [1758] (New York, 1970), 7-8
26. Rousseau, Essai sur I'origine des langues [1781] (Paris, 1990), 92-93
27. D'Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot [1751], transl. Richard N. Schwab, with the collaboration of Walter E. Rex (New York, 1963), 25
28. Condillac, "Treatise on Systems" [1749], Philosophical Writings of Etienne Bonnot, Abbe de Condillac, volume 1, transl. Franklin Philip, with the collaboration of Harlan Lane (Hillsdale, N.J., 1982), 132
29. Condillac, "Logic, or the First Developments of Thinking" [1792], Ibid., 351-353
30. Condillac, "Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge" [1746], Philosophical Writings of Etienne Bonnot, Abbe de Condillac, volume 2, transl. Franklin Philip (Hillsdale, N.J., 1987), 467
31. D'Alembert, Preliminary Discourse, 52
32. Diderot, "Articles de Diderot dans l'Encyclopédie- Animal" [1751-1765], Oeuvres complètes de Diderot (Paris, 1976), V, 388-389, 390-391
33. iderot, "Articles de Diderot dans I'Encyclopédie- Encyclopédic," Oeuvres complètes de Diderot, VII, 174
34. "In reducing to the form of a dictionary all that concerns the sciences and the arts, there is as well the interest to make one sensitive to the mutual succor that these concerns lend each other; to use these succors to render principles more certain and their consequences clearer; to indicate the distant and close relationships of the beings that comprise nature, and which occupy men; to show by the interrelationship of their roots and their branches, the impossibility of knowing well any part of this whole, without ascending or descending to many other parts; to form a general table of the efforts of the human spirit in all of its activities and in all centuries." Diderot, "Prospectus de l'Encyclopédie" [1750], Oeuvres complète;tes de Diderot, V, 87
35. Voltaire is a notable exception to the almost universal belief in a chain of being among eighteenth-century French philosophers. See Voltaire, "Dictionnaire philosophique-chaine des étres créé s" [1764], Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire (Paris, 1878), XVIII
36. Condillac, "Treatise on Systems," 139
37. D'Alembert, Preliminary Discourse, 6-7, 31
38. Diderot, "Pensees sur l'interpretation de la nature" [1754], Oeuvres complètes de Diderot, II, 18
39. Helvétius, De L 'Esprit, 6-7
40. D'Holbach, Système de la nature [1770] (Hildesheim, 1966), 6
41. Maupertuis, "Systeme de la nature" [1751], Oeuvres (Hildesheim, 1965), II, 175-177
42. Montesquieu, "Mes pensees" [1899-1901], Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1949), I, 1182, 1537-1538
43. Saint-Lambert, "Principes des moeurs chez toutes les nations; ou catéchisme universel" [1797], Oeuvres philosophiques de Saint-Lambert (Paris, 1801), I, 53
44. Voltaire, "Dictionnaire philosophique-idée," Oeuvres completes de Voltaire, XIX, 394-395
45. Voltaire, "Traitéde métaphysique" [1734], Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XXII, 201
46. Helvetius, De L'Esprit, 27-28
47. D'Holbach, Systeme de la nature, 1-2
48. Voltaire, "Dictionnaire philosophique-métaphysique," Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XX, 76
49. "When one wants to study men, one must look to what is close to oneself; but to study man, one must learn to carry one's view far away; one must first observe the differences to discover the properties." Rousseau, Essai sur I'origine des langues, 89-90
50. William B. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks 1530-1880 (Bloomington, Ind., 1980), 73ff.
51. Michèle Duchet, Anthropologic et histoire au siècle des lumlères (Paris, 1977), "Introduction"
52. Norman Hampson, 77ze Enlightenment (Harmondsworth, Eng., 1968), 19-27
53. Hodgen, Early Anthropology
54. Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (New York, 1968), 216ft
55. Georges Gusdorf, "Ethnologic et métaphysique: L'Unité des sciences humaines," Ethnologic générate, ed. Jean Poirer (Bruges, 1968), 1774
56. "The challenge brought on by the New Worlds to traditional doctrines unmasked a conceptual emptiness impossible to fill at the time. For the intellectuals of the time, it was a first experience of the death of God." Ibid., 1775
57. Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind [1797], transl. June Barraclough (London, 1955), 103-105
58. Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Geneva, 1780), I, 1-2
59. From Diderot's contribution to Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Geneva, 1780), VIII, 73-74. To identify Diderot's passages in Raynal's work, I employed the following guide
60. Miche|̀le Duchet, Diderot et I'histoire des deux Indes ou Tecriture fragmentaire (Paris, 1978)
61. "We can say that it is the ignorance of the savages which enlightened, in some sense, the civilized peoples." From Diderot's contribution to Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique, VIII, 74. It may be suggested that given my explicit reliance on Foucault for the interpretation of knowledge in the eighteenth century, I cannot affirm that it was at this time that a science of Man appeared, for Foucault claims that the category "man" as an object of knowledge is the invention of the modern episteme. Contrary to what this statement suggests, there is no tension or contradiction here. When Foucault speaks of "man" in the context of the modern episteme he refers to man as a being who is capable of consciously representing the world outside consciousness. "Man" the "representer" is not an object of knowledge within the classical episteme because representation defines knowledge and cannot itself be represented. There was nevertheless a science of Man, with Man simply viewed as an object of knowledge
62. For general discussions of the European image of Africa in the eighteenth and later centuries, see Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans
63. Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850 (Madison, Wise, 1964)
64. Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow, The Myth of Africa (New York, 1971)
65. Léon-François Hoffmann, Le Nègre romantique: Personage littéraire et obsession collective (Paris, 1973)
66. Jordan, White Over Black; Charles H. Lyons, To Wash an Aethiop White: British Ideas about Black African Educability 1530-1960 (New York, 1975)
67. Roger Mercier, L'afrique noir dans la littérature frangaise (Dakar, 1962)
68. Maupertuis, "Lettre sur le progrès des sciences'' [1752], Oeuvres, II, 395
69. Montesquieu, The Persian Letters [1721], transl. George R. Healy (Indianapolis, 1964), letter CXII, 187, letter CXVIII, 198
70. "Afrique" (géogr. anc. & mod.), Encyclopédie, I, 596
71. "Guiné," Encyclopédic, XVI, 829
72. Mercier, L'afrique noire, 28
73. Hammond and Jablow, The Myth of Africa, 19
74. For a discussion of the early, predominantly economic contact with Africa, see Urs Bitterli, Cultures in Conflict: Encounters Between European and Non-European Cultures, ]492-1800
75. transl. Ritchie Robertson (Cambridge, Eng., 1989), Introduction, chapters one and two
76. Basil Davidson, A History of West Africa 1000-1800 (Essex, 1977), 210-212
77. Basil Davidson, The Search for Africa: History, Culture, Politics (New York, 1994), 42-78
78. Roland Oliver and J.D.Fage./l Short History of Africa (Harmondsworth, Eng., 1988), 104-115
79. G. V. Scammell, The First Imperial Age: European Overseas Expansion c. 1400-1715 (London, 1989)
80. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (New York, 1992), chapter one. The following statement, which summarizes admirably the nature of the early Portuguese contact with Africa, captures well all early European relations with the continent until the end of the eighteenth century: "le but avoué des Portugais fut mercantile; leur demande fut a la fois plus empirique et systématique, moins scientifique et intellectuellement moins curieuse que celle des Arabes⋯ les Portugais découvrirent des terres, des ports, des produits, des marchés, des routes commerciales, mais ac-cessoirement des hommes." ("the avowed goal of the Portuguese was mercantile; their demand was at once more empirical and systematic, less scientific and intellectually less curious than that of the Arabs⋯ the Portuguese discovered lands, ports, products, markets, commercial routes, but accessorily men.")
81. La découverte de I'Afrique, ed. Catherine Coquery (Paris, 1965), 85-86
82. Duchet, Anthropologic et Histoire au Siècle des Lumières, 38
83. P. J. Marshall and Glyndwr Williams, The Great Map of Mankind: British Perceptions of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (London, 1982), 227
84. For examples of early Portuguese reports and descriptions of Africans, which reduce them to the status of goods of exchange
85. see Europeans in West Africa, 1450-1560, volume I (2d ser., no. 86), transl. and ed. John William Blake (London, 1942), 18, 23, 27, 31, 35, 48, 87-88, 88
86. Gomes Eannes de Azurara, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, volume I (1st ser., no. 95), transl. Charles Raymond Beazley and Edgar Prestage (London, 1906), 236; ]
87. Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo de Situ Orhis (2d ser., no. 79), transl. George H. T. Kimble (London, 1937), 72-73
88. Louis Sala-Molins, "Le Code Noir," Le Code Noir ou le calvalre de Canaan (Paris, 1987), articles 44-54
89. "Angola," Encyclopédie, II, 659
90. "Congo," Encyclopédie, VIII, 916
91. "Nègres" (Commerce), Encyclopedie, XXII, 842
92. For a discussion of the role of travel literature in the formation of the European image of Africa, see Duchet, Anthropologic et histoire au siècle des lumières, chapter two
93. Buffon, Oeuvres complètes de Buffon, Volume 2 (Paris, 1855), "Addition à l'article qui a pour titre: Variétés dans l'espèce humaine," 254
94. Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, 170-171
95. Diderot, "Supplement to the Voyage of Bouganville" [1796], Political Writings, transl. and ed. John Hope Mason and Robert Wokler (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), 39
96. Pierre Poivre, Les Mémolres d'un voyageur [1747], (Paris, 1968), 19-20
97. Rousseau, "Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men" [1755], The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Volume 3: Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (Second. Discourse), Polemics, and Political Economy, ed. Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, transl. Judith R. Bush, Roger D. Masters, Christopher Kelly, and Terence Marshall (Hanover, N.H., 1992), 84-86, note 8
98. Saint-Pierre, Voyage à l'l̂le de France [1773] (Paris, 1983), 251
99. For example, Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular, Volume 2, "The Natural History of Man-Of Puberty," 407
100. Volume 3, "The Natural History of Man-Of the Varieties of the Human Species," 133-162; Diderot, "Articles de Diderot dans l'Encyclopédie-Benin," Oeuvres completes, VI, 176
101. Diderot, "Articles de Diderot dans l'Encyclopédie-Humaine Espèce (Hist, nat.), Oeuvres complètes, VII, 431-442
102. Fontenelle, "Digression sur les anciennes et les modernes" [1688], Oeuvres de Monsieur Fontenelle (Paris, 1766), IV, 173
103. Helvétius, A Treatise on Man [1773], transl. W. Hooper (New York, 1969), I, 136, note, 406
104. Labat, Voyage aux îles de l'Amérique [1693-1705] (Paris, 1979), 205-208
105. Montesquieu, The Persian Letters, letter CXVIII, 198
106. Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws [1748], transl. Thomas Nugent (New York, 1900), bk. XVII, ch. 7,269, bk. XXI,ch. 2, 332
107. Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique, VI, 80-104
108. Robinet, Vue philosophique de la gradation naturelle des formes de l'être (Amsterdam, 1768), 168-169
109. Rousseau, Émile [1762], transl. Barbara Foxley (London, 1911), 19
110. Saint-Pierre, Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe [1713] (Paris, 1986), 23-24
111. Voltaire, "Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations" [1756], Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XI, 6
112. Voltaire, Ibid., Oeuvres completes de Voltaire, XIII, 177-178
113. Voltaire, "Lettres d'Amabed" [1769], Oeuvres completes de Voltaire, XXI, 462
114. Voltaire, "Traité de métaphysique," 189-192; "Afrique" (géogr. anc. & mod.), Encyclopedie, 1, 597-598
115. "Guinée," Encyclopédie, XVI, 829
116. "Mozambique," Encyclopédie, XXII, 496
117. "Senegal, Le Royaume de," Encyclopedie, XXX, 733
118. Demanet, Nouvelle histoire de l'frique française (Paris, 1767), I, vi-vii
119. Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, bk. XXI, ch. 2, 332. The above comments refer presumably only to the Africa that was known. Beyond that, Africa remained what Bouganville called the "mother of monsters." (Louis de Bouganville, A Voyage Round the World [1771], transl. John Forster [Amsterdam, 1967], 463)
120. See, for example, Button's account of the Acridophagi, or Locust-Eaters of Ethiopia: Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular, Volume 3, "The Natural History of Man-Of the Varieties of the Human Species," 135-136
121. Maupertuis, "Venus Physique," 125-128
122. Adanson, A Voyage to Senegal, The Isle of Goree, and the River Gambia [1756] (London, 1759), 54
123. Saint-Lambert, "Ziméo" [1769], Contes de Saint-Lambert (Paris, 1883), 54-55
124. Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular, Volume 2, "The Natural History of Man-Of Manhood," 469
125. Saint-Lambert, "Ziméo," 70-71
126. Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular, Volume 2, "The Natural History of Man Of the Varieties of the Human Species," 152
127. Voltaire, "Lettres d'Amabed," 462
128. Rousseau, "Discourse on Inequality," 84, note 8
129. "The African appears to be a machine, wound and unwound by springs, similar to soft wax, which can be made to take on any figure one wishes." Demanet, Nouvelle histoire de l'Afrique française, II, 1
130. Gusdorf, "Ethnologie et Métaphysique," 1783ff.; Duchet, Anthropologic et Histoire au Siècle des Lumières, "Introduction"
131. Christopher L, Miller, Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French (Chicago, 1985), "Introduction."
132. "Final Reply" (reply to Charles Bordes's "Discourse on the Advantages of the Sciences and Arts") [1752], The Collected Works of Rousseau, II, ed. Masters and Kelly, 125
133. Descartes, "Discourse on Method," 81
134. Button, Natural History, General and Particular, Volume 2, "The Natural History of Man Of Puberty," 422
135. D'Holbach, Essai sur les préjugés, 382-383
136. Saint-Lambert, "Ziméo," 71
137. Voltaire, "Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations," Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XIII, 183
138. Curtin, The Image of Africa, 37-39
139. Pol-P. Gossiaux, "Anthropologic des Lumières (Culture 'naturelle' et racisme rituel)," L'homme des lumières et la decouverte de l'autre (Brussels, 1985)
140. Jordan, White Over Black, 226-228
141. Charles Linné, A General System of Nature [1735], transl. William Turton (London, 1802), I, 9
142. Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, 243. Racial theories began to appear towards the end of the eighteenth century (e.g. Georges Cuvier, The Animal Kingdom, arranged According to its Organization [1797] [London, 1854], 49
143. Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View [1798] [The Hague, 1974], 181
144. Saint-Pierre, Voyage à l'l̂le de France, 212), and are more properly seen to be a part of the modern style of reasoning
145. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government [1690] (Cambridge, Eng., 1960), ch. 5, sec. 49, 319
146. William Robertson, "The History of America" [1777], The Works of William Robertson (London, 1824), VI, 271-285
147. John Millar, "The Origins of the Distinction of Ranks" [1771], John Millar of Glasgow 1735-1801: His Life and Thought and His Contributions to Sociological Analysis, ed. William C. Lehmann (Cambridge, Eng., 1960), 175-180
148. Robertson, "The History of America," 271-285
149. Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society [1767] (New Brunswick, N.J., 198(1), 74-75
150. Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, and P. G. Stein (Oxford, 1978), Report 1762-(27-32), 14-16
151. Fontenelle, "De l'origine des fables" [1724], Oeuvres de Monsieur de Fontenelle (Paris, 1776), III
152. Charles de Brasses, Du Culte des dieux fétiches ou parallèle de l'ancienne religion de l'Egypt avec la religion actuelle de Nigrite [1760] (Paris, 1988)
153. Diderot, "Plan d'une Université pour le gouvernementde Russie oud' une éducation publique dans toutes les sciences" [1813-1814], Oeuvres complètes de Diderot, III, 429
154. Helvétius, "De L'Es-prit," 97, 212
155. D'Holbach, Système de la Nature, 4
156. Maupertuis, "Discours Académiques-Harangue prononcée parM. de Maupertuis dans l'Académie Françoise, le jour de sa reception" [1743], Oeuvres, III, 269
157. Voltaire, "Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations," Oeuvres completes de Voltaire, XI, 28-30. In contrast to the general tendency of the philosophes, Rousseau would develop a stadial theory of society along the lines of the Scottish model, but with an inversion of the ranking of societies
158. Voltaire, "Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations," Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XI, 371
159. Diderot, "Articles de Diderot dans l'Encyclopédie-Art," Oeuvres completes, V, 495
160. Condillac, "Histoire Ancienne" [1775], Oeuvres complètes de Condillac, VII, 28
161. Raynal,Histoire philosophique et politique, V, 18
162. Saint-Lambert, "Principes des moeurs chez toutes les nations; ou catéchisme universel," 100-101
163. "Histoire ancienne," 31
164. Diderot, "Observations sur le Nakaz" [1767], Political Writings, 123-124
165. Rousseau, "Discourse on Inequality," 27, 71, note 5
166. Rousseau, Essai sur l'origine des langues, 99
167. Saint-Lambert, "Principes des moeurs chez toutes les nations," 113-114
168. Rousseau, "On the Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right," The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Volume 4: Social Contract, Discourse on the Virtue most necessary for a hero, Political Fragments, Geneva Manuscript, ed. Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, transl. Judith R. Bush, Roger D. Masters, and Christopher Kelly (Hanover, N.H., 1994), 181-182
169. From Diderot's contribution to Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique, X, 469
170. Fontenelle, "Digression sur les anciens et les modernes," 175; Voltaire, "Dictionnaire philosophique-Climat," Oeuvres completes de Voltaire, XVIII, 200
171. Mably, "De l'étude de l'histoire" [1775], De l'étude de I'histoire suivi de De la maniére d'écrire l'histoire (Paris, 1988), 8
172. Adanson, A Voyage to Senegal, 254
173. Diderot, "Plan d'une université pour le gouvernement de Russie ou d'une éducation publique dans toutes les sciences," 429, from Diderot's contribution to Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique, X, 23
174. Fontenelle, "Sur I'histoire" [1724], Oeuvres de Monsieur Fontenelle, IX, 400-401
175. Voltaire, "Lettres d'Amabed," 4. The inclusion of Voltaire in this reference may be questioned on the grounds of his advocacy of human polygenesis. But what this reference points to is that polygenesis did not necessarily imply racism. This is not to ignore Voltaire's ethnocentric and Eurocentric comments. It is, however, important to understand that polygenesis was a theory about the origin of the human species, and not a theory of racial hierarchy. Kames, in Scotland, also developed a polygenetic theory, and yet he did not deny that Africans could progress
176. See Kames, Sketches of the History of Man [1774] (Edinburgh, 1807), I, 140
177. The classic statement of this position was made by David Hume. See Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding [1748] (Indianapolis, 1977), 55-60
178. My discussion of the stadial theory of society is indebted to Gérard Leclerc, Anthropologie et Colonialisme: Essai sur l'histoire de l'africanisme (Paris, 1972), 223-234
179. Ronald L. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge, Eng., 1976)
180. Jean Bodin, Method for the Easy Comprehension of History, transl. Beatrice Reynolds (New York, 1945), 9-13
181. Diderot, "Prospectus-système des connaissances humaines," Oeuvres complètes, V, 105-108, 116
182. Montesquieu, "Mes pensées," 1339
183. Volney, "Leçons d'histoire prononcées à l'École Normale" [1795], Oeuvres (Paris, 1989), 1, 509
184. Mably, "De l'étude de l'histoire," 8
185. Rousseau, "Discourse on Inequality," 42, 48
186. There was one exception to this claim of the philosophers of the Enlightenment. An exhaustive knowledge of human nature would make possible the explanation and prediction of human behavior under any given circumstances (this assuming, in addition, an exhaustive knowledge of the circumstances). (D'Alembert, "Essai sur les éléments de philosophie, ou sur les principes des connaissance humaines" [1759], Oeuvres complètes de D'Alembert, Volume 1 (Paris, 1821), 127
187. Fontenelle, "Sur l'histoire," 405-7
188. Mably, "De l'étude de l'histoire," 19-20). This is not
189. D'Alembert, "Essai sur les élélments de philosophie," 127
190. D'Alembert, "Reflexions sur l'histoire, et sur les différents manières de l'écrire" [1753], Oeuvr complètes de D'Alembert, XlI,3-4
191. Condillac, "Histoiremoderne" [1775], Oeuvres complètes de Condillac, XII, 409
192. Mably, "De la maniere d'ecrire l'histoire" [1783], De l'étude de l'histoire, suivi de De la manière d'écrire l'histoire, 274
193. Saint-Pierre, Les Rêves d'un homme de bien, qui peuvent être réalisés (Paris, 1775), 328
194. Volney, "Leçons d'histoire prononcées à l'École Normale," 541-548
195. "The object of history is not simply to enlighten the spirit. It proposes as well to guide the heart and to dispose it to love the good." Mably, "De la manière d'écrire l'histoire," 287
196. Voltaire, "Dictionnaire philosophique-histoire," Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XIX, 358-361
197. Voltaire, "Histoire de Charles XII" [1731], Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XVI, 125
198. Voltaire, "Remarques pour servir de supplèment à L'Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations" [1763], Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XXIV, 547
199. Voltaire, "Le Siècle de Louis XIV" [1751], Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XIV, 155
200. Voltaire, "Le Siècle de Louis XIV," 243
201. Voltaire, "Le Siècle de Louis XIV," 402
202. Voltaire, "Dictionnaire philosophique-histoire," 346, 358
203. Voltaire, "Fragment sur l'histoire générale" [1773], Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XXIX, 248
204. Voltaire, "Remarques pour servir de supplément à l'essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations," 548
205. Voltaire, "Essaisur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations," XI, 160
206. Voltaire, "Histoire de L'empire de Russie sous Pierre Le Grand" [1759-1763], Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XVI, 441
207. Voltaire, "Annales de L'empire depuis Charlemagne" [1753-1754], Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XIII, 612
208. Voltaire, "Correspondance-À M. Le Maréchal Due de Richelieu" [1752], Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XXXVII, 437
209. Voltaire, "Dialogues d'évhémére" [1777], Oeuvres completes de Voltaire, XXX, 488
210. Voltaire, "Dictionnaire philosophique-destin," Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, XVIII, 349
211. Voltaire, "essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations," XI, 286
212. Voltaire, "essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations," XIII, 182
213. Voltaire, "L'Ingénu" [1767], Zadig/lngénu, transl. John Butt (Harmondsworth, eng., 1964), 146
214. Contrary to what many commentators have maintained
215. See, for example, John Baker, The Superhistorians: Makers of our Past (New York, 1982), 90
216. Harry elmer Barnes, A History of Historical Writing, 2nd ed. (New York, 1962), 148-150, 174
217. Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven, 1932), 139
218. Simone Goyard-Fabre, La Philosophic' des Lumières en France (Paris, 1972), 236-243
219. Nelly Noémie Schargo, History in the "encyclopedia" (New York, 1970), 192
220. D'Alembert, "Éloge de Montesquieu" [1751], Oeuvres complètes de D'AIembert, III, 448
221. Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular, Volume 2, "The Natural History of Man-Of Old Age and Death," 470
222. Diderot, "Plan d'une université pour le gouvernement de Russie ou d'une education publique dans toutes les sciences," 429
223. Diderot's contribution to Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique, VI, 72-73
224. Montesquieu, "Discours prononcé a la rentrée de l'academie de Bordeaux" [1717], Oeuvres complètes, I, 7
225. See Peter Gay, The Party of Humanity: essays in the French enlightenment (New York, 1964), 270-273
226. My discussion of Voltaire is indebted to the following: J. H. Brumfitt, Voltaire, Historian (Westport, Conn., 1985)
227. Giovanni Gullace, "Voltaire's Idea of Progress and Candide's Conclusion," Personalist 48 (1967), 167-185
228. Jerome Rosenthal, "Voltaire's Philosophy of History," Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (1955), 151-178
229. W. H. Dray, "Philosophy of History," in The encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul edwards (New York, 1967), VI, 247-248
230. William H. Dray, Philosophy of History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964), 1-3
231. For key texts in the debate, see John Baillie, The Belief in Progress (London, 1950)
232. Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, transl. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, Mass., 1983)
233. J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (London, 1928)
234. csiècle (Paris, 1910)
235. Ludwig Edelstein, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (Baltimore, 1967)
236. Karl Löwith, Meaning and History (Chicago, 1949)
237. My examination of the historicization of knowledge and reality under the modern style of reasoning is indebted to the following (in addition to Foucault's The Order of Things): Bertrand Binoche, Les trois sources des philosophies de l'histoire (1764-1798) (Paris, 1994), 11-77
238. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), 76-86
239. Benedetto Croce, Theory and History of Historiography, transl. Douglas Ainslie (London, 1921), 244-281
240. Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, 201. In discussing the emergence of a progressive theory or philosophy of history, I have focused on Condorcet, whereas Turgot is often credited with being the first to have developed such a theory.(Charles Frankel, The Faith of Reason: The Idea of Progress in the French enlightenment [NewYork, 1948], 122-126
241. Frank e. Manuel, The Prophets of Paris [Cambridge, Mass., 1962], 13-14
242. Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress [New York, 1980], 180
243. R. V. Sampson, Progress in the Age of Reason: The Seventeenth Century to the Present Day [London, 1956], 163-168)
244. I cannot fully comment on this claim, except to say that Turgot, I believe, still adheres to a stadial theory of society, in which progress remains conditioned by contingent events. (Turgot, "On Universal History" [1750], Turgot on Progress, Sociology and economics, transl. and ed. Ronald L. Meek [Cambridge, eng., 1973], 63-64)
245. Similar remarks apply to the work of Adam Ferguson (Ferguson, An essay on the History of Civil Society) and John Millar (John Millar, "The Origins of the Distinction of Ranks"). For texts that signalled the advent outside France of the modern style of reasoning in social theory
246. see Hugh Murray, enquiries Historical and Moral Respecting the Character of Nations, and the Progress of Society (edinburgh, 1808)
247. J. G. Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man [1784-1791], transl. T. Churchill (London, 1800)
248. Immanuel Kant, "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" [1784], Political Writings, 2nd ed., ed. Hans Reiss, transl. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge, eng., 1991)
249. De Gerando, The Observations of Savage Peoples, 65-70
250. C. B. Wadstrom, An essay on Colonization [1794] (New York, 1968), 19. For Wadstrom, Africans could in principle progress, but, and in contrast to enlightenment stadial theory, such progress was possible only by means of the european colonization of Africa, Condorcet was also among those who advocated an enlightened colonialism in Africa
251. I have tried, in an earlier paper, to show how the conceptual opposition between tradition and modernity, as applied to Africa, has defined the controversy surrounding African philosophy. See T. Carlos Jacques, " 'Is There an African Philosophy?' The Politics of a Question," Centennial Review 39 (1995), 231-264