How to Teach About Race in Modern Philosophy

This post is part of a two-part series on including race in early modern philosophy curricula. This first part introduces ways to incorporate discussions of race into one’s curriculum. The second installment discusses various reasons one might believe it is important to include such discussions in a modern philosophy course.

It was only recently—in the past 4-5 years or so—that I started to view race as an essential topic to cover in my (early) Modern Philosophy course, a class that surveys 17th and 18th Century European Philosophy. I didn’t have any particular reason for not previously including a discussion of race in the curriculum, but we tend to teach what we know. When I began teaching this course, I didn’t know there was anything to say about it (cue rueful grimace). Race wasn’t covered in any of my undergraduate or graduate courses in early modern philosophy, nor was it included in the various texts and anthologies I initially reviewed for the course. I also don’t think that my experience is particularly unique in this regard. For many years, modern philosophy had a pretty robust canon, which still looms large in discussions about how to teach this class. That canon does not include a discussion of race among the main philosophical ideas, themes, and developments in this period.

I now view a discussion of race as an important part of the course. However, my goal in this post is not to defend that view, but to offer some ideas for how a discussion of race might fit within a modern philosophy course. I will offer my own account of why I think it is important to teach about race in the second post of this two-part series. My main reason for taking things in this order, which may strike some as working at things the wrong way around, is that the resources I explore here are compatible with a variety of reasons for including a discussion of race in the curriculum. There’s no need to assume any particular pedagogical approach to teaching the history of philosophy in order to explore how a discussion of race might fit into the curriculum.

My main focus, then, is on how a discussion race might fit in a modern philosophy course. In particular, I identify four themes that one might follow in a class discussion, with some ideas about how these themes interact with other common course topics. I include some suggestions for instructor background reading and for student readings, with an eye to what can reasonably be covered in one or two class sessions.

One final preliminary: These resources are hardly comprehensive, and can no doubt be extended in many fruitful ways. The goal here is to offer some ideas to instructors who are open to adding a discussion of race to their modern philosophy courses, but who might not be sure where to start. It is also for those who may already include a discussion of race in their courses, but who are interested in exploring further possibilities.

I. Background reading/research

It may be helpful to begin by saying a bit more about what I mean by the topic of race in modern philosophy. I am thinking in particular about the idea that there is some kind of scientifically grounded, non-trivial way in which human beings can be sorted into distinct racial categories. The notion that race is a meaningful biological category begins in the early modern period, with the classification of human beings into categories on the basis of phenotypes (physical characteristics), which were also thought to be intertwined with psychological and moral capacities. These physical, psychological, and moral capacities were also often tied to particular geographic locations, which played an explanatory role in accounts of the development of these abilities (e.g., climate was thought to influence both physical and psychological characteristics). These categorizations were also hierarchical, locating white Europeans as superior in most intellectually and morally relevant categories, and the idea of a natural racial hierarchy was significant in justifications of slavery and colonization.

The development of a biological concept of race in the modern period is a complex story, and I don’t attempt to address it fully. My primary aim is to introduce students to some key questions and to situate a discussion of race within the context of other philosophical conversations occurring during that time.  

For background reading in the philosophy of race and specifically race in modern philosophy, I highly recommend the following resources:

• Bernasconi, Robert, and Tommy Lee Lott, eds. The Idea of Race. Hackett Readings in Philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co, 2000.
• Eze, Emmanuel. “The Color of Reason: The Idea of ’Race’ In Kant’s Anthropology.” In Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader, edited by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, 103–40. Blackwell, 1997.
• Müller-Wille, Staffan. “Linnaeus and the Four Corners of the World.” In The Cultural Politics of Blood, 1500–1900, edited by Kimberly Anne Coles, Ralph Bauer, Zita Nunes, and Carla L. Peterson, 191–209. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137338211_10.
• Smith, Justin E. H. Nature, Human Nature, & Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy. First paperback printing. Princeton Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017.
• Valls, Andrew, ed. Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 2005.
• Zack, Naomi. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, 2019.

II. Setting up the Class Discussion:

Starting Note: The content is designed for what could reasonably be covered in one 75-minute lecture/active discussion class. The length can be shortened or expanded as needed.  

Student Reading: I generally assign Ch. 8: “Anton Wilhelm Amo” of Smith’s book Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (2017). There is a good deal that is interesting about Amo’s life and philosophical work: for instance, he defends a strong version of a broadly Cartesian dualism, but he rejects Descartes’ view that the mind and body interact. His work can also be explored as Africana philosophy in the Early Modern Period. As I am specifically interested in the development of the concept of race in the early modern period, I stick pretty closely to the framing that Smith develops in his chapter on Amo, which focuses on the development of the idea of race.

Framing: The discussion is set up as a problem focused on the work and life of Amo. Amo was born at the beginning of the 18^th century in or near present-day Ghana, and was enslaved, taken to Amsterdam, and sold in the slave market at the age of 3. As Smith recounts, Amo’s fate is wrapped up in the center of the enlightenment spirit, a proposed empirical vindication, perhaps, of the claim that education (not innate capacity) accounts for the great variety of human achievement. Amo is educated, freed, and eventually teaches at universities in Jena, Halle, and Wittenberg. His thesis title was “On the Right of Moors in Europe,” and it was a defense of freedom and equality of “Moors” (black Africans) on the basis of his reading of Roman law and history. In Amo’s “The Impassivity of the Human Mind”, he defends dualism, but criticizes Descartes for inconsistency. He argues that all sensations are bodily, and thus there are no passions or affections of the soul. Smith notes that in 1734, Johannes Gottfried Kraus, rector of the University of Wittenberg, praises Anton Wilhelm Amo as having the “natural genius” of Africa, remarks on his “inestimable contribution to the knowledge of human affairs” and of “divine things,” and places Amo in a lineage with other classical Latin authors from North Africa, including Tertullian, Terence, and Augustine.

III. Four Themes

This brief historical introduction to Amo and to his work provides the basis for a variety of themes that could provide an interesting starting point for class discussion. Although there are no doubt a variety of ways to organize this material, I have found four themes to be useful ways of thinking about how a discussion of race interacts with other course topics. After sketching each theme, I offer some discussion questions.

First Theme: The Enlightenment

The notion of an ‘enlightenment’ employs a metaphor of shining light into darkness, and in the Enlightenment human reason is purportedly a light shining into a dark world, mired in superstition and confusion. The enlightenment project is ostensibly one of human development and advancement: discovering new and useful knowledge about the world (rather than an emphasis on abstract, first principles); efforts to integrate physics, psychology, and politics to establish and implement rules for a flourishing society, etc. Characteristics of the enlightenment include optimism in human abilities, distrust of superstition and religion, an attitude of expansive exploration, and a preoccupation with human progress. Reason is thought to be a reliable guide to truth and essential to controlling the passions, and thus to living a virtuous life. The biography of Amo provides a basis from which to critically examine the idea of an enlightenment, particularly insofar as his education seems to have been an application of an emphasis on the potential for education to transform individuals and society.

Furthermore, any discussion of race in the 17th and 18th centuries must acknowledge the flourishing trans-Atlantic slave trade, from which some philosophers drew great financial profit (Locke, for instance, despite his arguments against slavery). While the institution of slavery pre-existed the modern era by millennia, in the ancient world, slavery was generally tied to national identity & political power, not racial difference. However, in the modern period, slavery becomes closely intertwined with the idea of a racial hierarchy. The enlightenment ideals of universal human reason and human equality are the source of a new pressure to provide philosophical (and religious) justifications for slavery, perhaps in part because the ownership of human persons and the barbaric treatment enslaved persons endured was so manifestly at odds with stated enlightenment values.

Discussion Questions: How are enlightenment ideals relevant to the trajectory of Amo’s life, and to the broader relationship between Europe and European colonies? Who and/or what is thought to be enlightened during this time period? Who and/or what is not, and why not? What is assumed about human nature, progress, and European culture in the enlightenment metaphor?

Second Thread: Mind/Body Interaction

Courses in modern philosophy often explore arguments about the relation between the mind and the body (Cartesian dualism, Leibnizian pre-established harmony, etc.) In his chapter on Amo, Smith examines the development of a lesser-known challenge to Leibnizian philosophy from Georg Ernst Stahl. Stahl advocated a version of pietism: a religious movement that emphasized moral Christian living and criticized excessive attention on theology and doctrine. Stahl “defends a radical view of the soul’s direct implication as the immediate cause of bodily states, as literally, a motor,” which includes the key idea that medicine and morality cannot be separated (the advice about how to avoid birth defects on p. 224 is particularly cringeworthy). This view is sometimes called vitalism, and it supports claims such as that women who have children with birth defects suffered from excess passions during pregnancy, and their disturbed souls marred their offspring, or that “If dark skin, for example, is implicitly or explicitly judged inferior to light skin, it follows on the Pietist line of thinking that the African is in the end guilty of some sort of moral failure that caused him to have the complexion he has” (Smith, 224).

In opposition to vitalism, Amo argues that the soul doesn’t experience passions at all. Rather, his dualist account directly rejects the idea that the condition of the soul can be read from the body. In addition to being interesting in its own right as a hybrid Cartesian/Leibnizian account, this view provides an occasion for exploring how seemingly abstract metaphysics—such as the relation between the mind and the body, reason vs. the passions, and the true essence of the self—provided philosophical foundations for addressing pressing questions about racial equality. (Similar arguments were made in relation to gender; for instance, François Poulain de la Barre and Mary Astell develop arguments for women’s equality and women’s education that are defended from a broadly Cartesian view).

Discussion Questions: What are the implications of mind/body dualism in arguments for human equality? What were these arguments, and what metaphysical views do they presuppose? What happens when a dubious metaphysical view supports an important ethical claim? Is there anything wrong with vitalism, and if so, what?   

Third Thread: Scientific Classification and Developing Science

By the early 1700s, many European countries had been aggressively colonizing for over two centuries. Decades of exploration had brought Europeans into contact with lands, animals, plants, and people that were strikingly different. It was quite common to have a naturalist accompany a voyage, or for educated sailors (e.g., captains, surgeons) to keep detailed logs of what they encountered and to publish these accounts when they returned. There was also an increasing desire to systematize the variety of plant and animal life in order to enable a more easy way to identify and catalog species, especially given regional variation in naming. In 1734, the Swedish botanist and physician Carl von Linne (Linnaeus) published his famous Systema Naturae, in which he proposed a solution to the problem of how to organize animal life: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. This work was followed by his Species Plantarum in 1753, which set out a classification system for plant life. The classification system he developed is a taxonomy in which living things are grouped according to phenotypes.

In a way that may be difficult to appreciate from our current historical position, it was for some an open question of how to understand the relation between “discovered” indigenous peoples and white Europeans, given the variation in phenotypes that were observed. Kant’s anthropological work, for instance, focused on questions about the classification of human beings into various sub-species, including the question of whether differences in phenotype were the result of an internal principle or of environmental variation, or some combination of the two (Eze, 1997).

Attention to race also complicates the story of the pro-science rise of empiricism, for empiricism raises new questions about what a human being is, as humans are characterized in terms of scientific classification and physical characteristics, in addition to (or in opposition to) earlier views that identified the essence of humans as a rational soul. The racial categorization that resulted has undergone various revisions and the biological concept of race has been largely rejected, but it nevertheless persevered for over two centuries as a “scientific” view.

Discussion Questions: What does it mean to group things according to phenotype, and how does this typology differ from other possible classification systems, such as a classification system that groups according to genetic similarity? What evidence supported conclusions about the supposed “different varieties” of human beings, and is this a good basis for the conclusions that were drawn? Why are racial distinctions in phenotypes entangled with psychological dispositions and moral status? Is the idea of racial hierarchy in tension with an enlightenment commitment to universal human reason?

Fourth Thread: Social Contract Theory, Property, and Racialized Defenses of Slavery

Social contract theory developed within a context where colonization and the trans-Atlantic slave trade were in full force. Philosophical accounts of the origin of property that could be used to justify colonization found an eager audience, and social contract theory cast many indigenous cultures as socially and politically undeveloped. A course that includes readings on Hobbes and Locke might also include an exploration of Charles Mills’ The Racial Contract. Many themes in Modern political philosophy can be examined by considering their relation to race, racial hierarchy, and slavery.

Furthermore, some philosophers have been struck by the absence of arguments decrying slavery from those who otherwise vigorously defended human equality. For example, Mills notes that David Brion Davis “observes in his book on slavery in Western culture: ‘[N]o protest against the traditional theory [of slavery) emerged from the great seventeenth-century authorities on law, or from such philosophers and men-of-letters as Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Pascal, Bayle, or Fontenelle…’ The inherent contradiction of human slavery had always generated dualisms in thought, but by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Europeans had arrived at the greatest dualism of all—the momentous division between an increasing devotion to liberty in Europe and an expanding mercantile system based on Negro [slave] labor in America. For a time most jurists and philosophers met this discrepancy simply by ignoring it.”

Mills and Davis are correct to call out this silence by many well-known thinkers of the period, but it is not as if no one noticed these contradictions at the time. The apparent silence is also a result of whose work has been selected as important to read and teach. For instance, the contradictions were certainly evident to Quobna Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano who argued passionately against slavery, along with many others. Thus, there is an occasion to reflect here on the development and influence of a philosophical canon, and especially its accuracy in reflecting the variety of philosophical work during a particular historical period.

Discussion Questions: To what extent does the social contract theory of the modern period depend on empirical claims about human nature, but also about indigenous cultures? Are any racial assumptions implicit or explicit in various versions of social contract theory? In what ways did the modern period create a new context for justifying slavery, and at the same time new resources for developing arguments against slavery?

IV. Final Thoughts

When I teach this material, I introduce students to all four threads, as each is a possible starting point for discussion and each offers different insights into understanding the development of the concept of race in the early modern period. However, I tend to focus on the second thread, given its relevance to other course themes I have chosen. By this time in the semester, we have already studied Descartes and Leibniz, and students are in a position to make connections between the mind/body problem, the relation between reason and the passions, and the development of the concept of race. I also tend to focus on the third thread, as the course already follows several other themes in the philosophy of science, and thus the connections with Linneaus, classification, travel narratives, and early anthropology and physical geography are of particular interest. We also often end up pursuing the ideas that are of most interest to the group of students in that particular class.

There are many other possibilities, of course. For instance, there is an easy fit between a discussion of race and a focus on the passions in early modern philosophy, especially given Amo’s work on the passions. A class that focuses on moral and political philosophy might take up the question of human nature more extensively, or might delve more deeply into Locke’s views (see Uzgalis, 2017). One might give further emphasis to the epistemology of race, focusing on the evidence for various claims about race (Julia Jorati suggested this approach to me when I presented a version of this material at the 2022 Central Division APA). Each thread could be developed as fits the course arc and emphasis, and there are no doubt other themes that may be explored.

But to a certain extent, the fact that all this is only a place to start is itself significant. Recognizing that there is, indeed, a lot to say about race in the modern period goes a long way toward recognizing that it has a place in the curriculum. In Part II, I’ll focus on why I think it is important to teach about race in modern philosophy from within the context of some broader pedagogical goals. 

Sharon Mason

Sharon Mason teaches at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), and her regular courses include Modern Philosophy, Theories of Knowledge, and Philosophy of Science. She is also a faculty associate in the STEM Residential College and a frequent collaborator with the Norbert O. Schedler Honors College. Her research focuses on questions concerning knowledge and perspective, such as reflection and the first-person perspective in virtue epistemology, ontological metaphors in the structuring of concepts of the first-person perspective, and the epistemology of climate science denial. Her most recent areas of interest include epistemologies of ignorance and philosophical pedagogy.