Thanks Lou for the information. You are always on target.
   
  Similarly, Paul Gilroy of Yale University exposed Hegel, Hume, Kant and other Enlightenment scholars' crude racism. See his "Against Race: Imaging Political Culture Beyond the Color Line", especially chapter 2, pp.54 b- 68.
   
  Best wishes,
   
  Moses

Louis Proyect <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
  Phil Gasper wrote:
> I obviously haven't had a chance to read Hind's book yet, and it 
> certainly looks interesting, but unless the publisher's blurb is 
> misleading (certainly quite possible), it seems to greatly oversimplify 
> the complex legacies of the Enlightenment. Just two quick points.
> 
> (1) While I would agree that people like Hitchens and Amis violate the 
> values of much Enlightenment thought, some major Enlightenment figures 
> defended slavery and colonialism.
> 

Selection from Kant's writings in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, "Race and the 
Enlightenment: A Reader", pp. 58-64:

1. From Eze's preface to the selection:

While Kant himself edited for publication his lectures in anthropology 
(Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View), he wrote, concerning his 
lectures in geography, "it will not be possible, considering my age, to 
produce a compendium from my manuscript." The following excerpts are 
taken therefore from a posthumous edition of Kant's lectures, Political 
Geography, in volumes 2 and 8 of Kant's Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: 
Reimer, 1900-66). In addition to insightful observations about Africa, 
Kant's opinions on the geographical distribution of peoples ("the 
tallest and most beautiful people…are on the parallel which runs through 
Germany") and his hierarchically arranged "innate" characteristics of 
the races ("The inhabitant of the temperate parts of the world, above 
all the central part, has a more beautiful body, works harder, is more 
jocular, more controlled in his passions, more intelligent than any 
other race of people in the world" or "Humanity is at its greatest 
perfection in the race of the whites") remain the same as in the 
Observations.

—-

2. The selection drawn from "FROM PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY; ON COUNTRIES THAT 
ARE KNOWN AND UNKNOWN TO EUROPEANS; AFRICA":

Another object which interests the archeologists would be a more precise 
knowledge of Egypt. Besides, Africa deserves the most careful 
investigation, and it seems to have been better known by the ancients in 
its interior than by us, because they traveled more by land. Even many 
of the coastlines of this continent are still unknown today to the 
Europeans, and the center of the continent completely eludes our gaze. 
It is only Egypt that we know somewhat more exactly, but even here what 
we know is extremely little.

We have reason to assume the existence of a significant lake in Africa 
into which the eastern, and not as otherwise believed the western, 
branch of the Niger river flows. Incidentally, we also come across the 
largest and most beautiful animals on this continent as well as the best 
plants. According to some accounts, timid Portuguese believed the most 
beautiful interior parts of Africa to be peopled with [African] 
cannibals who even fattened humans up for slaughter. However, we should 
not attach credibility to such fables so easily because experience has 
taught us that these people only slaughter their prisoners of war whom 
they capture while still alive, and then with great ceremony. . . 
Whenever [Europeans] did not know much about the country, someone would 
say that it was inhabited by cannibals, despite the fact that there are 
very few of these kinds of people or even more correctly, none at all.

The number of names of countries and towns on the map of Africa is quite 
considerable; but one would be much mistaken if one were to believe that 
wherever there is a name there are inhabitants. . . The reason that the 
interior of Africa is so unknown to us, as if they were countries of the 
moon, lies far more with us Europeans than with the Africans, in that we 
have made ourselves suspects through slave trade. The coast of Africa 
is, in fact, visited by Europeans; but these journeys are very violent 
because Europeans carry away each year between 60,000 and 000 Negroes to 
America. Thus it has come to pass that even until modern times hardly 30 
miles from the coast into the of this continent is known to Europeans…

full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/03/29/enlightenment-racism/


       
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