Philosophical anthropology on the eve of biological determinism: Immanuel Kant and Georg Forster on the moral qualities and biological characteristics of the human race

Central European History

Volumn 29, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 285-308

  Strack, T ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT   (United States)

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EID: 33751512095     PISSN: 00089389     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0008938900013650     Document Type: Review

References (72)

1. Karl-Heinz Kohl, Entzauberter Blick: Das Bild vom Guten Wilden und die Erfahrung der Zivilisation (Frankfurt am Main, 1983)
2. See Sergio Moravia on the emergence of anthropology as a modern science in Paris, especially in the context of the Societé des Observateurs de l'Homme (Beobachtende Vernunft (Frankfurt am Main, 1989; see below)
3. See Wolf Lepenies, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte (Munich, 1976). I feel especially indebted to Steve Gilbert for the many hours he spent discussing the subject with me, and forcing me to be a lot clearer about the issues than I would have been without his continuous criticism
4. Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, London, 1982), 2
5. See also Tzvetan Todorov, Die Eroberung Amerikas: Das Problem des Anderen (Frankfurt am Main, 1985)
6. and most recently and more comprehensively Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven, 1993)
7. Wolfgang Neuber's Fremde Welt im europäischen Horizont: Zur Topik der deutschen Amerika-Reiseberichte der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, Bielefeld, and Munich, 1991) is still the best source for the German context. Todorov and Neuber, not unlike Pagden (especially Pagden European Encounters, 117-40), argue that the structure of knowledge and language itself determined perceptions, consequent interpretations, and consequent actions. Both authors agree that in the history of anthropology there is no natural affinity between facts and interpretation, only a history of removing inconsistencies within interpretive frameworks and the continuous replacement of one interpretive grid with another
8. Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man, 9
9. See Peter Brenner, Der Reisebericht in der deutschen Literatur, ein Forschungsüberblick als Vorstudie zu einer Gattungsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1990), for a very detailed and well researched history of the genre of travel reports
10. Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, "Naturrecht," 587
11. Cf. Thomas Strack, "From Fools to Explorers: Seventeenth-Century Revisions of the Christian View on Travel," Colloquia Germanica 27, no. 3 (1994): 205-24
12. See Wilhelm Mühlmann, Geschichte der Anthropologie 2d. ed., (Frankfurt am Main and Bonn, 1968), 41 on Pierre Bayle, Lahontan, and Montesquieu and their respective instrumental usage of Non-Europeans for their political goals. Their "invention" of the original state of man and the politicial implementation of the philosophy of natural law at the time of the debate between Kant and Forster can be exemplified by Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem, published in 1783. Mendelssohn makes a powerful plea for the separation of church and state, touching issues such as politics and theology, natural versus ecclesiastic law, reason and revelation, tolerance and civil equality
13. Mühlmann, Geschichte der Anthropologie, 40
14. See Justin Stagl, "Die Methodisierung des Reisens im 16. Jahrhundert," in Der Reisebericht ed. Peter Brenner (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), 140-77
15. and Stagl, "Der wohl unterwiesene Passagier. Reisekunst und Gesellschaftsbeschreibung vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert," in Reise und Reisebeschreibungen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert als Quellen der Kulturbeziehungsforschung ed. B.I. Kasnobaev (Berlin, 1980). 353-84
16. Bernhard McGrane in his Beyond Anthropology: Society and the Other (New York, 1989) reduces travel reports of the period and anthropology at large to an illustration of this rather theoretical notion. Gérard Leclerc in his Anthropologie und Kolonialismus (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, and Vienna, 1976) rejects the term "anthropological period" for the second half of the eighteenth century, especially targeting such constructions, as he finds Enlightenment hommes des lettres using primitive societies merely to produce "eine Typologie der möglichen Tätigkeiten des menschlichen Geistes" (p. 144)
17. See Moravia, Beobachtende Vernunft, 251 on Degérando's "Considérations sur les méthodes à suivre dans l'observation des peuples sauvages." See also Lepenies, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte, 131-60
18. Thomas Strack, Exotische Erfahrung und Intersubjektivität: Reiseberichte im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Paderborn, 1994)
19. See Werner Krauss, Zur Anthropologie des 18. Jahrhunderts: Die Frühgeschichte der Menschheit im Blickpunkt der Aufklärung (Munich, 1979), 103-18
20. Quoted in Krauss, Zur Anthropologie des 18. Jahrhunderts, 110
21. Weingarten takes a different track in his analysis of the Kant-Forster debate. He focuses on "die beiden unterschiedlichen Ansätze zur Erfassung geschichtlicher Prozesse in der Natur." Weingarten considers the Forster-Kant debate a continuation of the Herder-Kant debate - and rightfully so, when he says that "die Beurteilung der Geschichtsphilosophie Forsters und Herders sich wohl voll und ganz nur dann durchführen lässt, wenn die Naturphilosophie beider Autoren als Voraussetzung ihrer Geschichtsphilosophie verstanden wird." Michael Weingarten, "Menschenarten und Menschenrassen. Die Kontroverse zwischen Georg Forster und Immanuel Kant," in Georg Forster in seiner Epoche, ed. Gerhart Pickerodt (Berlin, 1982), 118. My essay, however, focuses on the debate as an important episode in the history of epistemology and the scientific endeavor
22. Here the analysis follows Weingarten's advice to stop trying to accuse Kant or Forster of racism; Weingarten describes this reductionism with regard to the historical circumstances as usually resulting in the rather dubious insight, "dass entweder Kants Ansichten Rassismus und kolonialer Unterdrückung Vorschub leisten sollen, oder umgekehrt eben dieser Vorwurf Forster gemacht wird." Weingarten, "Menschenarten und Menschenrassen," 117
23. Christoph Meiners, Grundriss der Geschichte der Menschheit (1785), (rpt. Königstein, Taunus, 1981)
24. Samuel Thomas Soemmerring, Über die körperliche Verschiedenheit des Mohren vom Europäer, published in Mainz in 1784
25. 2d. ed. entitled Über die körperliche Verschiedenheit des Negers vom Europäer (Frankfurt am Main, 1785)
26. "Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht," Kant's gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königlich preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1917), vol. 7, 120 (this edition of Kant will henceforth be quoted by title of essay, volume, and page number only). For an excellent introduction to Kant's anthropology, its function within Kant's oeuvre, and its political impetus "im Dienst des Prozesses der Selbstverständigung eines nach Bildung und aufgeklärtem Selbstverständnis strebenden Publikums," see Wolfgang Becker's "Einleitung: Kants pragmatische Anthropologie," in Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Stuttgart, 1983), 11
27. Forster had no doubts that his report was being read "von den verschiedensten Klassen des Publikums mit einer allgemeinen Aufmerksamkeit" (p. 278)
28. Forster described the European effort to acquire vast knowledge of non-European peoples to which he deemed himself a major contributor. This endeavor, he believed, "liefert zur Kenntniss des Menschengeschlechts die wichtigsten Beyträge, welches also durch unzählige neue Erfahrungswahrheiten den Verstand erleuchtet und bereichert, die schwankenden Begriffe bestimmt, und eine Last verjährter Vorurtheile von unseren müden Schultern hebt." Forster, "Cook, der Entdecker," in Kleine Schriften zur Völker- und Länderkunde, vol. 5 of Georg Forsters Werke: Sämtliche Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe (Berlin, 1985), 183
29. Citations from Georg Forsters Werke: Sämtliche Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe (Berlin, 1965- ) henceforth as Forster, title of essay, volume, and page
30. See François Bernier, "Nouvelle division de la terre, par les différentes espèces ou races d'hommes qui l'habitent," Journal des Sçavans 12 (1685). Since the thirteenth century, the French term race had been used to designate people of the aristocracy, people "de bonne race." The term became increasingly important in sixteenth-century France in the context of the struggle between "la noblesse d'épée" and "la noblesse de robe." In this context, the term race took on a broader meaning; it could be applied to any political or social formation. By the end of the seventeenth century, one finds the synonymous usage of the terms human race and race. In the dictionary of the French academy of 1694, one reads of "la race mortelle, pour dire, le genre humain."
31. Quoted in "Rasse," Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, (Stuttgart, 1984), 137-41
32. Quoted in "Rasse," Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 142
33. Carl von Linné applied as a means of classification "Hautfarbe, Körpergestalt und Temperamentsunterschiede." Yet the problem of the origin of the human race still remained. As Mühlmann in his Geschichte der Anthropologie points out, "die unmittelbare Beobachtung schien den Botanikern und Zoologen eine Konstanz der Arten zu beweisen. Linné glaubte an eine Fortbildung aus einer begrenzten Anzahl von Urformen; zusammengesetzte Formen sollten sich durch Kreuzung bilden" (p. 48). At the time of the debate over the scientific potential of a biological concept of race and its application to mankind, people either held that physical differences between nations were mere varieties, entirely susceptible to environmental changes, and thus believed in the monogenesis of humankind (frequently a religiously motivated point of view). Or they sided with the polygenesists, as Thomas Jefferson did: "I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the whites in the endowment both of body and of mind." Quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York and London, 1981), 32
34. "Von den Verschiedenen Racen der Menschen", vol. 2, 434
35. "Nachlass," vol. 15, part 2, 785
36. See Forster, "Cook, der Entdecker," vol. 5
37. Ernst Cassirer, Kants Leben und Lehre (Berlin, 1918), 236-37
38. Manfred Riedel, "Einleitung" to Kant's Schriften zur Geschichtsphilosophie (Stuttgart, 1974), 8-9
39. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2d. ed. (1787) vol. 3, 144
40. Kant speaks of a rhapsody of sensations, which he believes man organizes according to a priori principles rooted in the structure, of our faculty of reason. See Cassirer, Kants Leben und Lehre, 289-384, which is still one of the best introductions to these concepts of Kantian philosophy. Kant's essay "Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der Philosophie" of 1788, vol. 8, 157-84, shows that he was highly aware of the methodological issues at stake in his debate with Forster, and that he saw the relevance of his rather theoretical deliberations on the empirical study of nature. In this essay, he explicitly responds to Georg Forster's rejection of his earlier essay on the "Menschenracen" and tries to reconcile their views
41. An even more elaborate discussion of the subject one finds in the Kritik der Urteilskraft, vol. 5, esp. § 75
42. "Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht," vol. 8, 27
43. "Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, Nachlass," vol. 15, part 2, 650
44. The categorical imperative implies exactly this: "Nun sage ich: Der Mensch und überhaupt jedes vernünftige Wesen ... existirt als Zweck an sich selbst, nicht bloss als Mittel zum beliebigen Gebrauche" (p. 428). Kant continues: "Handele so, dass du die Menschheit sowohl in deiner Person als auch in der Person eines jedes andern jederzeit als Zweck, niemals bloss als Mittel brauchst" ("Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten," vol. 4, 429)
45. See "Vom ewigen Frieden," vol. 8, esp. 341
46. In "Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace," vol. 8, 102, Kant explains his procedure as follows: "Thiere, deren Verschiedenheit so gross ist, dass zu deren Existenz eben so viel verschiedene Erschaffungen nöthig wären, können wohl zu einer Nominalgattung (um sie nach gewissen Ähnlichkeiten zu klassificiren), aber niemals zu einer Realgattung, als zu welcher durchaus wenigstens die Möglichkeit der Abstammung von einem einigen Paar erfordert wird, gehören."
47. See Erich Adickes, Kant als Naturforscher, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1925), vol. 1, 407-8
48. "Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht," vol. 7, 322
49. "Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschheit," vol. 2, 431
50. See Eberhard Berg, Zwischen den Welten: Über die Anthropologie der Aufklärung und ihr Verhältnis zu Entdeckungsreise und Welterfahrung mit besonderem Blick auf die Werke G. Forsters (Berlin, 1979), who holds exactly this position
51. For a detailed critique of this simplistic interpretation of Forster's travelogue, cf. Strack, Exotische Erfahrung, 22
52. Forster's Reise um die Welt (Frankfurt am Main, 1983) already foreshadowed the consequent development of his thought
53. See also Thomas Strack, "Zur kulturellen Dimension individueller Fremderfahrung: Georg Forsters Reise um die Welt als Kommentar zum kognitiv-kommunikativen Potential des Reiseberichts," Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 114. no. 2 (1995): 161-81; this article reviews some of the most important secondary literature on Forster to date
54. Forster, "Vom Brodbaum," in Kleine Schriften zur Naturgeschichte, Länder- und Völkerkunde, vol. 2 of Werke in vier Bänden, ed. Gerhard Steiner (Frankfurt am Main, 1969), 37-70
55. After the collapse of the Mainz republic, Forster died impoverished in French exile. On Forster's political ambitions see Thomas P. Saine, Georg Forster (New York, 1972)
56. and Helmut Peitsch, Georg Forsters 'Ansichten vom Niederrhein': Zum Problem des Übergangs vom bürgerlichen Humanismus zum revolutionären Demokratismus (Frankfurt am Main, Bern, and Las Vegas, 1978)
57. Georg Forster's original critique of Kant's writings on the subject of race was published in 1786 under the title "Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen" (vol. 8, 130-57). In a letter to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Forster explains his problems with Kant's entire philosophical approach: "Aus Mangel an philosophischen Vorkenntnissen und fast noch eigentlicher, weil ich den philosophischen Jargon nicht verstand, gerieth ich mit Kant in Streit... Allein im Grunde sind es doch nur Klopffechterstreiche, und er wird mich durch alle Winkelzüge nicht bereden können, dass er in der Sache von den Menschenracen recht habe" (vol. 15, 208)
58. "Briefe," vol. 14, 663
59. Forster was always critical of any simple materialism. He followed in his father's footsteps, as he used materialist arguments, yet Georg never intended materialism to be the single means of interpretation, as Wolf Lepenies claims it to be the case in Georg's Reise um die Welt. See Lepenies, "Eine vergessene Tradition der deutschen Anthropologie - Wissenschaft vom Menschen und Politik bei Georg Forster," Saec 24 (1973): 50-78
60. "Cook der Entdecker," vol. 5, 234
61. Georg Forster had translated Herm Büffons Naturgeschichte der vierfüssigen Thiere (1780). Buffon's (1707-88) anatomically informed Historie naturelle describes how the originally homogeneous human race diversified through climate, nutrition, and way of life into different varieties. Buffon applies as a means of categorization the color of skin, physical size, and ethnic characteristics. Buffon does not, however, discuss races as biological units, but rather looks at peoples as "propagative communities" (the "Fortpflanzungsgemeinschaften")
62. Soemmerring, Über die körperliche Verschiedenheit des Mohren vom Europäer, 24
63. The anthropologist Blumenbach criticized, for its simple determinism, his contemporary Soemmerring's overemphasis of the connection between intellectual capabilities and anatomical properties. For details, see Frank W. P. Dougherty, "Johann Friedrich Blumenbach und Samuel Thomas Soemmering: Eine Auseinandersetzung in anthropologischer Hinsicht?", in Samuel Thomas Soemmerring und die Gelehrten der Goethezeit, ed. Gunter Mann et al. (Stuttgart and New York, 1985), 53. Georg Forster shared this criticism as he developed his own program of comparative ethnography. As Dougherty explains: "Für Blumenbach sind die Manifestationen der höheren Fakultäten - Sitten, Sprache, Kunst, die durch Reisebeschreibungen, durch gesammelte Artefakten und Kunstwerke und durch die vergleichende Philosophie erläutert werden können - für die Bestimmung des Menschen ebenso wichtig wie die vergleichende Anatomie und Physiologie, aber von ganz anderer Art" (p. 54)
64. See Forster's philosophy of nature in his programmatic essay "Ein Blick ins Ganze der Natur," vol. 8, 77-97
65. Adelbert von Chamisso, Reise um die Welt mit der Romanzoffischen Entdeckungs-Expedition in den Jahren 1815-1818, vol. 2 of Sämtliche Werke (Munich, 1975), 14
66. Forster, Reise um die Welt, 850
67. See Klaus Mross, "Ernst Gottfried Baldinger, gelehrter Arzt der Aufklärungszeit, und sein Schüler Samuel Thomas Soemmerring," in Samuel Thomas Soemmerring und die Gelehrten der Goethezeit, 259
68. Soemmerring, Über die körperliche Verschiedenheit des Mohren vom Europäer, 4
69. "Briefe," 1 November 1789, vol. 14
70. "Leitfaden zu einer künftigen Geschichte der Menschheit," vol. 8, 193
71. A continuation of my investigation can be found in Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (rpt. 1996)
72. He outlines the fallacies of the scientific classification of humankind in the age of positivism, especially of American craniology of the nineteenth century. For Gould, critically reviewing craniometry for its biological determinism does not mean denigrating the sciences. Rather, he points out that the particular method of reducing the intellectual potential of races to the average size or weight of their brains, without realizing how cultural biases tainted the results, reassured the white European males of their dominance in the age of colonialism. In these studies, the Caucasians always came out on top in any comparison of cranial capacity. Gould has exposed the "prevalence of unconscious finagling" (p. 55) in the majority of these studies. Gould points out that it had by no means been his intention to "contrast evil determinists who stray from the path of scientific objectivity with enlightened antideterminists who approach data with an open mind and therefore see truth." Gould criticizes "the myth that science itself is an objective enterprise, done properly when scientists can shuck the con-straints of their culture and view the world as it really is" (p. 21). Gould sees the scientific endeavor as a "gutsy, human enterprise," yet he insists that theories are "not inexorable inductions from facts... The most creative theories are often imaginative visions imposed upon facts" (p. 22). This enterprise, he believes, is always hampered by the "twin myths of objectivity and inexorable march towards truth" (p. 23) that becomes apparent in "two deep fallacies," namely reification on the one hand, and the ranking of "complex variation as a gradual ascending scale" (p. 24) on the other