3.2 Geographical Basics of History

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use of the term “race” by Kant as “das unedle Wort.”12 German thinkers as recently as Leibniz were committed Sinophiles, viewing China as the oldest civilization, endowed with the original language of humanity.13 While Kant’s position would eventually become the mainstream consensus in the mid nineteenth century, biological determinism was still a fringe position in Hegel’s time. Given this context, it is implausible to assume Hegel was simply going with the flow on race. We must regard racism in his Encyclopedia Anthropology as an active choice.14

Another view, espoused by older Hegel scholars such as Peter Hodgson and Duncan Forbes,15, is to explain Hegel’s Encyclopedia Anthropology as culturally essentialist rather than biologically essentialist, and to then defend that cultural essentialism. This view is supported by the fact that, in Hegel, human beings are historical actors creating the Zeitgeist that in turn, acts on them.16 However, as scholar Jean-Yves Heurtebise points out “the Hegelian principle that natural origins matter less than cultural productions did not prevent Hegel from hierarchizing human cultures at the expense of non-European cultures.”17 Hegel’s philosophy was still, in a real sense, racist, even if he did not attribute cognitive inequality to biological race.

Because cultural essentialism is established prior to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, it is argued for explicitly in that text. Therefore, the analysis of this first issue will seek to trace its introduction and functional role in the early parts of the text, rather than finding its origins in the philosophy of objective spirit.

3.2 Geographical Basics of History

Hegel’s understanding of race is further clarified in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Most relevant is the section ‘The Geographical Basis of History’ where Hegel gives racial categories a geographical mirror. He is careful to avoid geographic determinism,18 but this section still gives a good impression of Hegel’s particular thoughts on each race. We shall now discus each of his proposed racial categories in

12. Heurtebise, "Hegel’s Orientalist Philosophy of History and its Kantian Anthropological Legacy." & (German) Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, trans. Carl Hanser (Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2002), 120. 13. Heurtebise, "Hegel’s Orientalist Philosophy of History and its Kantian Anthropological Legacy." 14. Eric Nelson, "Hegel, Difference, Multiplicity," Journal of Chinese Philosophy 44 (2019). 15. Chu, "Black Infinity: Slavery and Freedom in Hegel’s Africa." 16. Marina Bykova, The Cunning of Reason in Hegel’s Philosophy of History, 2021, Unpublished manuscript. Cited with the author’s permission. 10-11. 17. Heurtebise, "Hegel’s Orientalist Philosophy of History and its Kantian Anthropological Legacy." 18. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 79.

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isolation and identify aspects that can later be traced to his Philosophy of Right.

3.2.1 America

First, shortest, and most heinous is Hegel’s treatment of Native Americans and Pacific Aborigines. Here, Hegel begins by explicitly declaring “the inferiority of [Native Americans] in all respects, even in regard to size, is manifest.”19 While such outright derogatory comments are plentiful, the subtext is considerably more troubling. Hegel argues that indigenous people are not engaged in the Weltgeist in any respect, and crucially, that they are constitutionally incapable of joining world history ever in the future. They are merely “obstructive” to the conquest of the New World by Europeans.20 In Hegel’s philosophy, where participation in a cultural community is the goal of mankind, these claims are tantamount to a denial of even basic humanity.21 This reduction of Native people to mere objects without personality is what allows Hegel to merely brush aside their massacre, saying little more on the matter than, “the population, for the most part, has vanished.”22 Thus, the issue to be traced to the Philosophy of Right is genocide.

3.2.2 Africa

Less essentialist, but still extremely brief, is Hegel’s treatment of African peoples. While Hegel still asserts the inferiority of black people outright, he treats them as having some potential for development. According to his lectures, he believed “the Negroes are far more susceptible to European culture than the Indians,”23 and as a result, he gives sub-Saharan Africa a more careful, but no more accurate, historical analysis. Hegel sees African people and society as stuck at the lowest stage of development, abstract right, possessing an essentially selfish culture. Hegel holds that African folk religions “hold man as the highest power,”24 because God is expressed through a material fetish, which is the property of an individual who can use and destroy it. Similarly, political bonds are subject to the whim of the masses, as kings are deposed by their subjects relatively freely.25 The historical basis of these assertions is highly questionable, but more important for the present

19. Ibid., 81. 20. Ibid., 82-84. 21. Hoffheimer, "Hegel Race Genocide," 47. 22. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 81-82. 23. Ibid., 82. 24. Ibid., 91. 25. Ibid., 97.

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discussion is the systematic basis and implications of Hegel’s claims. In Hegel’s Philosophy of Right these personally mutable forms of religion and government belong to the domain of mere possession and use of property, where the subjective will is first made concrete.26

Hegel is particularly interested in the institution of Atlantic slavery, and this will be the issue most relevant to his Philosophy of Right. The reason for Hegel’s interest is that the existence of a slave caste on the fringes of European society is an apparent contradiction. As he states, “the Germanic world knows all are free,”27 in contrast to the Orient or Greco-Roman period. To overcome this, Hegel draws an analogy between slavery and serfdom, arguing that at “every intermediate grade between [a natural condition] and the realization of a rational state retains- as might be expected- elements and aspects of injustice.”28 Thus, it seems Hegel does not entirely defend slavery. The question then, will be how Hegel differentiates Atlantic slavery from ancient or feudal slavery on the basis of race.

3.2.3 Asia

Finally, there is Hegel’s treatment of the so-called ‘Orient’ which is the most sympathetic of all his non-Western histories. For Hegel, the East is within the domain of the Weltgeist, and the origin of self-consciousness.29 However, despite Hegel’s relative willingness to afford humanity to Asian people, his recognition is still limited. While the “sun of Self-Consciousness” may rise in the East, progress never proceeded beyond the stage of individual actualization. The Orient remains despotic and undeveloped, “it the Childhood of History.”30

Hegel’s vision of Asia fits snugly within cultural attitudes of his day, but his systematic rationalization is unique. Scholars like Eric Nelson and the above mentioned Jean-Yves Heurtebise recognize Hegel’s philosophical assessment of Asia as a part of broader nineteenth century Orientalism.31 Orientalism, in the context of philosophy, consists of two main assumptions: the East and West are wholly separate spheres with the West corresponding to freedom and the East to despotism, and that rationality and science are entirely products of the West.32 Therefore, the

26. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §40. 27. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 104. 28. Ibid., 99. 29. Ibid., 103. 30. Ibid., 105. 31. Nelson, "Hegel, Difference, Multiplicity." 32. Heurtebise, "Hegel’s Orientalist Philosophy of History and its Kantian Anthropological Legacy," §6.

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