M.H. Hoffheimer - Hegel, Race, Genocide

The Southern Journal of Philosophy (200]) Vol.
XXXIX
Hegel, Race, Genocide

Michael H. Hoftbeimerl
The University ofMississippi
Hegel proclaimed that the end of history was the state" and
that the idea of the state achieved actuality through world
history," But as Andreas Grossmann has observed, a problem is
posed by "the 'borders'-i.e., the lands and peoples that Hegel
means to exclude from his world historical consideration as not
significant. "4
During the years in Heidelberg and Berlin when Hegel first
recognized the state and its history as normative, he grappled
with the experiences of non-European peoples. Excluded from
both his systematic exposition of Right and his programmatic
presentation of history, he treated these peoples in lectures on
the Philosophy of Nature, lectures on natural consciousness,
and lectures on geography." Race played an increasingly leading
role in Hegel's efforts to understand these peoples and to fit
them into his philosophical system. After long neglect by
scholars," Robert Bernasconi has argued that Hegel's attitude
towards race colored his treatment of Africa and influenced
significantly his treatment of the transition to European
history,"
In this paper I suggest that America offers the most extreme
example of Hegel's effort to ground world history on a racial
hierarchy. His exclusion of American Indians from history was
more complete than any other racial group. His convictions
about the inferiority of American Indians led him to reject
contemporary scientific research on race. And his explanations
for the elimination of American Indians yielded race-based
descriptions that can be read as ambivalent rationalizations for
European colonial genocide."
Hegel treated both America and sub-Saharan Africa in his
lectures on geography. The sequence of his presentation
expressed (I think) a ranking. He considered America first,
distinguishing it from the ground (Boden) of world history that
lay in the Old World. Then he considered Old World geography
in the order of Africa, Asia, and Europe.
The largest leap in this sequence was from Africa to Asia, for
Hegel amalgamated America and Africa in locating both
entirely outside history," Nevertheless, Hegel portrayed America
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Michael H. Hoftheimer
very differently from Africa. He described Africa as the victim of

an excessively powerful nature that retarded its social
format.ion.!" Assisted by a terrain that prevented penetration,
exploration, and settlement, Africa resisted European domination.!' To be sure, his depictions of Africans were so damning,
they were quoted at length in support of slavery during congressional debates in 1860. 12 But despite Hegel's emphasis on
cannibalism, violence, and slavery in Africa, his choice of
characterizations and anecdotes depicted Africans as "industrious" in peace, if easily roused to the most intense passions."
America was the opposite. Insufficiency, weakness, and
impotence dominated American nature.
America has always shown itself physically and spiritually
impotent, and it does so to this day. For after the Europeans had
landed there, the natives were gradually destroyed by the breath
of European activity. Even the animals show the same inferiority
as the human beings. The fauna of America includes lions, tigers,
and crocodiles, but although they are otherwise similar to their
equivalents in the Old World, they are in every respect smaller,
weaker, and less powerful. We are even assured that the animals
are not as nourishing as the food which the Old World provides."
To this Hegel added the coup de grace: "And although America

has huge herds of cattle, European beef is still regarded
[there] as a delicacy."15 Hegel's words conjured up the image of
America as a feeble, sexually immature body-with feminine
features. Even the alleged preference for European beef
connoted male sexual strength, beef being identified, then as
now, with virility."
Ambiguous as to whether the New World was really newer
in origin, he believed firmly in its "absolute" natural immaturity
and weakness, and he maintained this revealed a "necessity"
associated with the division of the earth into continents.F
His conviction extended to the native humans. Where he had
characterized Africans as manifesting a strong will, he believed
American Indians lacked vigor.?" Despite his low opinion of
Negroes, he described Negroes in America in far more positive
terms than those in Africa-in order to contrast them all the
more pointedly to American Indians." He maintained repeatedly
that "the negroes are far more susceptible to European culture
than the Indians."!" Like Africans he called American Indians
"unenlightened children," but he elaborated in contrast on the
"weakness of [American Indians'] human physique."21 As
evidence of their impotence he shared with students an
anecdote about a priest in South America who "used to ring a
bell at midnight to remind [American Indians] to perform their
matrimonial duties, for it would otherwise never have occurred
to them to do SO."22 As ultimate testimony to their inherent
36
natural weakness, Hegel remarked that seven million American

Indians died suddenly as a result of European conquest. He
explained this mass extinction and "degeneration" of native
tribes as the natural erosion of "culturally inferior nations" by
more advanced cultures."
Whatever Hegel meant by calling America the "land of the
future," this future did not include American Indians. He
contrasted native culture unfavorably with the culture introduced by European settlers in North America and took pains to
claim that citizens of the "independent states of North America
are all of European descent" and to assert that the original
inhabitants were "unable to amalgamate with them."24 In sum,
Hegel dismissed American Indians as "obviously unintelligent
individuals with little capacity for education," and he insisted
that their inferiority in all respects, even in stature, could be
seen "in every particular.'?"
Hegel's treatment of Africa has been criticized as a rationalization for European colonial practices." His imposition of a
racial hierarchy on the colonial experience in America raises
the question of whether he meant to offer a philosophical justification for the subjugation, displacement, and genocide of
American Indians. He viewed the elimination of American
Indians as the result of the natural superiority of European
colonists and catalogued this extinction as prime evidence for
the claim that America had "always" been physically and
spiritually impotent.
For after the Europeans landed in America the natives gradually
perished (sind untergegangen) at the whiff (Hauch) of European
activity. 27
The phrase employed one of Hegel's favorite equivocating

verbs untergehen (literally "to go under"}-which could mean
to go underneath, sink, be shipwrecked, go to ruin, perish, be
lost or destroyed. In Hegel's metaphysics, the subject that
"went down" was not necessarily obliterated. But in the vernacular the term denoted extinct animals (untergegange
Tiere). Accordingly, his words might have meant something
more than Sibree's translation (that the natives "vanished")
or something less than Nisbet's (that they were "destroyed")."
The phrase removed any European responsibility for this
extinction or submersion. European activity was not the subject
of the phrase, nor was responsibility ascribed by means of the
passive voice. Rather European agency was located in a
prepositional phrase in the circumlocutory expression-the
natives perished "at the whiff of European activity." Indeed, the
noun Hauch ("whiff" or "breath") entailed neither act nor
physical contact by the European colonists. (Deployed long
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Michael H. HotTheimer
before germ theories of contagion, his words could not have

invoked the airborne spread of infectious disease.)
Hegel's historical account of Spanish colonial practices
further emphasized the lack of European responsibility for the
death of American Indians in North America." He remarked
that natives suffered "greater violence" and "degradations"
under Spanish colonial rule yet emphasized that more South
American Indians survived. 30 Consistent with his conviction that
American Indians were a weak, dying race, his words emphasized the flickering weakness and impotence of human life in
the New World, removed the contact required for the extinction
of American Indians, and obscured the responsibility of
Europeans for the death and displacement of American Indians.
As for North American Indians, he observed without regret that
few were left."
There can be no question that Hegel regarded ancestry, not
environment, as the principal vehicle for the transmission of
racial characteristics. Hence Negroes (even in America)
remained "more susceptible to European culture" than American Indians, and hence European immigrants were capable of
transplanting their culture and displacing American Indians
without themselves degenerating in stature or mental ability.
At the same time, he viewed race as plastic in that offspring of
mixed-race parents shared features of both. Because American
Indians ranked lowest in Hegel's estimate, he repeatedly
offered examples where racial mixing improved the attributes
of their mixed-race offspring. He claimed Creoles were the only
people in South America who attained a "higher degree of selfawareness," felt "the need for independence," and supported
political independence.P This claim in turn supported the
assertion that pure-race South American Indians were
incapable of resisting colonial subjugation." Hegel's selective
use of historical sources to maintain such claims both revealed
the force of his convictions and demonstrated that he was not
simply the passive conduit of inaccurate narratives. 34
Aware of the manipulation of race mixing by colonial powers,
Hegel concealed his own attitude towards race mixing behind
descriptive observation. He remarked that the English sought
to prohibit a mixed race in India in order to prevent the
emergence of a group with greater aspirations for political
liberty." His remark could be understood as ironic-an expression of Hegel's contempt for the British fear of permitting the
conditions of political freedom among their subjects. But it
might also be understood as an expression of approval for a
policy that prevented the emergence of mixed races suitable
neither as servants nor capable of acting as self-governing
citizens-a group like the rabble (Fabel) in Europe that Hegel
believed remained ever dissatisfied with the status quo and
formed a permanent source of civil unrest."
38
The idea of America as a weaker counterpart of the Old

World had gained currency in the mid-eighteenth century from
the writings of the French naturalist Georges Louis Leclerc de
Buffon (1707-1788).J7Buffon had concluded there were few
large quadrupeds in America, that species common to the Old
and New Worlds were smaller in America, and that European
domestic stock introduced into America had decreased in size.
Buffon speculated that smaller animals resulted from the cooler
and more humid climate in America."
Buffon's anatomical generalizations had morphological
implications because of his theory of animal growth and sexual
reproduction. Buffon conjectured that living organisms were the
combination of microscopic organic particles. Organisms grew
and matured by assimilating and consolidating these microscopic particles through an organizing impulse unique to each
animal, and animals continued to assimilate organic particles
until sexual maturity when they channeled excess organic
particles to reservoirs in their sex organs where the particles
constituted the vital ingredient of male and female seminal
fluids that combined in sexual raproducbion.s" This meant
smaller animals were less mature sexually and had less potent
seminal fluid than larger individuals of the same species-and
bigger species had more potent impulses that controlled their
growth.
Consequently, Buffon inferred that New World animals were
less sexually potent. Moreover, he extended the claim to
American Indians even though he acknowledged that data did
not indicate that American Indians were in fact smaller.
Undeterred, he insisted they possessed reduced sexual potency,
had smaller sex organs, exhibited a weaker sex drive in their
behavior, and produced fewer offspring. From their supposed
lack of "sexual capacity," Buffon in turn derived negative
behavioral traits such as indolence, lack of passion and family
feeling, and anti-social predisposition.
The idea of America's sexual impotence appealed to the
European imagination and became so widely disseminated by
the late 1700s by popular writers and polemicists" that it is
hard to identify Hegel's specific sources. One source was
probably Cornelius Pauw who promoted an extreme form of
Buffon's theaia.!' Pauw asserted, for example, that American
Indians were shorter than Europeanav-s-a claim Buffon had
questioned but that Hegel would repeat. Pauw characterized
American Indians as a "degenerated species,"43 and he argued
they were uneducable." lacked the natural capacity for moral
perfectibility, and were more like animals than men." Though
his reputation was declining by the end of the century, Pauw
continued to influence European attitudes through William
Robertson's History ofAmerica (1777)-a work Hegel may have
known through Schiller's translation."
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Michael H. HofTheimer
For Hegel, Buffon's theories would have acquired further

authority by virtue of the fact that Kant wrote approvingly of
them and even admired some of Pauw's more polemical
writings." Kant did not classify American Indians as one of the
original races 48but reasoned that they evolved under the influence of the cold dry climate through which they migrated
into a distinct race. He called them "a still not perfectly formed
Hunnish race"-the Huns being his term for original East
Asians.:" He characterized them as displaying a "half extinguished life force/"? He explained that the inherent weakness of
American Indians rendered them unfit as slaves for field work
for which Negroes were used." In Metaphysics of Ethics (1797),
Kant portrayed Americans as lazy, unproductive, and thinly
scattered in the "deserts of America" because of their lack of a
political state and the concomitant lack of legal organization."
Hegel studied this work soon after its publication, and it
exerted a particularly profound influence on his general philosophical development. 53
Buffon's claims had proved controversial from the start."
and the idea of the impotence of nature in America was in
decline by the 1820s. Hegel was probably its last major
champion. Fossil records from widely different areas provided
accumulating evidence of the existence of giant mammals, of
mass extinctions of species, and of the progressive emergence
over time of increasingly complex animal and plant forms.
Research was engendering a sea change in natural history that
was abandoning forever Buffon's broad geographical generalizations and the quest for mechanistic explanations for phenomena
like animal size.
Nevertheless, in the face of such developments, Hegel
advocated a particularly extreme form of the thesis. He insisted
that America had always shown itself physically and spiritually
impotent. 55 This advanced an absolute claim that was not
necessary for his immediate purpose of dismissing America
from history. It was, moreover, a provocative claim by the 1820s,
since fossil skeletons of American mammoths had been touring
Europe for decades. 56
Critics have occasionally derided Hegel for bad science."? In
hindsight his resort in the 1820s to the ideas of Buffon, Pauw,
and Kant looks like the act of a fifty-year-old relying on his own
dated scientific education. But what is striking is that Hegel
was not ignorant of scientific developments: he championed the
thesis of American impotence despite being aware of mounting
evidence incompatible with Buffon's ideas. He knew, for
example, that Alexander von Humboldt had discovered fossils of
giant prehistoric mammals in America." Faced with evidence of
dramatic changes in geography, climate, and life, Hegel's strategy was simply to dismiss the question of change over time as
a "matter of history"-a mere empirical fact "not the concern of
40
philosophy."59 He insisted that philosophy look for something

structural and more profound in the sequence of natural forms,
protesting that nature had no history and that manifestations
of different levels of nature could not physically evolve into
others."
The significance and spirit of the process is the intrinsic
connection or necessary relation of these formations, and here
succession in time plays no part. The universal law of this
sequence of formations may be understood without reference to
its historical form, and this law is the essence of the sequence. It
is only rationality with is of interest to the Notion [Begriff], and
at this juncture this consists of understanding the dispositions of
the Notion within the law,"
His indifference to physical causes explains why, unlike

Buffon and Kant, he felt no need to provide an explanation
for the impotence of nature in America. He neither derived it
from mechanistic biology nor traced it to the enervating
effects of climate. Rather he linked it directly-but without
any attempt at further causal explanation-to the physical
land mass."
The American land mass was defective in that its features
failed to satisfy the normative requirements of the philosophy
of nature. In contrast to the threefold division of the Old World,
America manifested an "incomplete division like that of the
magnet" into two parts. He contrasted its irrational features to
those of the Old World whose "continents are not contingent, for
as divisions they are not a matter of convenience, but embody
essential differences.?"
Hegel linked these essential natural differences to race, but
for him race was important above all for its influence on the
human mind. Accordingly, he treated racial difference as part of
"natural mind" (Seele) in the first edition of his Encyclopedia
(1817).
The universal planetary life of the natural spirit 2) particularizes itself in the concrete differences of the earth and falls
into particular natural spirits. These natural spirits express the
geographical division of the world within the whole of nature and
they make up diversity of races iRacenuerehiedenheitr/"
(Later editions retained the account with only a minor

change.) This section presented races as the physical and
spiritual manifestation of significant ("universal qualitative")
subdivisions of humanity." The short, cryptic section made no
discursive claims about the effects of race on consciousness,
history, or law, but it presented race as determining on consciousness as was evident from its place in the structure: the
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Michael H. Hoftheimer
natural mind treated in Anthropology was part of "subjective

spirit.'?"
The Encyclopedia section offered little clue as to Hegel's
positions on the big issues of the day-the origin of races and
their taxonomic classification. But an important key to his
positions is provided by the manuscript entitled "Diversity of
Races" (1822?)-part of an unfinished textbook on philosophy of
spirit." There he grappled with the integrity of the category of
race and confronted the issue of its relationship to individual
consciousness and social development. In the manuscript, Hegel
more visibly derived race from-or associated it with-geographical distribution and climate, referring obliquely to the
"universal" natural processes of the solar system. These engendered the earth's qualitatively undifferentiated land masses:
"the physical division of this ground of humans through its
universal nature coming into existence makes up in the form of
anthropological particularization what is called the diversity of
raceeI''"
The 1822 text remained abstract, naming no particular
races. Moreover, it avoided any explicit discussion of the big
issues of the reality, limitation, or fixity of races. This omission
is curious, for Hegel was no doubt aware that the reality of
racial categories had been the central issue in Herder's public
dispute with Kant. Herder had been a decisive influence in
Hegel's youth. 69 When Herder had questioned the use of the
term "race" for different peoples and specifically rejected Kant's
theory of race," Kant had forcefully replied." Hegel's failure to
address this controversy in 1822 may reflect his own ambivalence
on the issue. For all the transcendental importance ascribed to
race, the 1822 manuscript also expressed a reluctance to employ
the term, referring at one point to so-called races. Yet Hegel's
sustained discussions of racial difference and his insertion of
racial diversity as an integral category in his system signaled
his commitment to the reality of race, and lectures from the
early 1820s reveal unmistakably his embrace of Kant's hierarchy of races.
Hegel more successfully avoided endorsing any competing
theories of the origin of races. He addressed this issue directly
but refused to speculate about the origins of race and dismissed
the question from philosophy. His treatment of this issue
paralleled his strategy for evading evidence of evolution:
"Whether all human races have proceeded from one couple or
from more than one is entirely meaningless to us in Philosophy."?
Instead, he devoted about half the manuscript to arguing that
philosophy must avoid any chronological explanation of the
causes of race, proclaiming it "of no philosophic interest to us."
He insisted that a genetic account would be unable to explain
how race inhered within nature and spirit; that the search for
historical cause was a function of understanding (as opposed to
42
the superior faculty of reason); and that such a search would be

futile because it would overreach available empirical information."
In dismissing the question of the origin of race, Hegel
appreciated that the theory of special or multiple creations was
employed as a biological justification for slavery. He discussed
this justification at some length-and in ambiguous terms. His
chief concern was to explore how race both did and did not
qualify different races for rational life and freedom. He insisted
that races did not differ as regards rationality proper. Racial
differences provided "no basis for any original diversity in the
intuition of freedom and entitlement among the so-called
races.":" Yet he conceded that races differed in the manner in
which they objectively manifested rationality. While insisting
that diversity of races was not caused by an original dissimilarity in the intuition of freedom, he conceded, "the dissimilarity
is still great enough in that it affects the objectification of
rationality." Yet far from celebrating the abstract rationality
and access to freedom shared by all races as humans, Hegel
suggested that mere potential rationality meant little. What
mattered was the objective manifestation of rationality in the
world, "and all the huge tungeheuren) diversities among nations
and individuals are reducible solely to the sort and degree (Art
und Weise) of consciousness, i.e., of the objectification of reason,"?"
He was not concerned with providing a race-based argument
for enslavement of particular races, but neither did he
repudiate such arguments." In later lectures (published posthumously as Additions to his system), he elaborated on the consequences of natural differences among races for potential and
actual freedom. On the one hand, he distinguished all human
races from animals and insisted that as reasoning beings they
potentially enjoyed equal rights
A human is in itself rational. In that lies the possibility of the
legal equality of all humans, and the negation of a fixed
distinction between privileged (berechtigte) and unentitled
trechtloe) human species.
On the other hand, he qualified this critique of race-based

justifications for slavery.
Nevertheless, the differences among human races is a natural
difference, i.e., one that concerns above all the natural mind
tNaturseelei:"
Hegel spelled this out in lectures in 1825.

The question of racial variety bears upon the rights one ought
to accord to people; when there are various races, one will be
43
nobler and the other has to serve it. The relationship between
people determines itself in accordance with their reason. People
are what they are in that they are rational, and it is on account
of this that they have their rights, further variety being relevant
to subordinate relationships. Particular variety makes itself
evident everywhere, but such superiority confines itself solely to
particular relationships, not to what constitutes the truth and
dignity of man. Enquiry into it is therefore of no import or
intrinsic interest."
Although Hegel himself labored in this passage to maintain

unrelieved ambiguity, I do not think he meant to declare that
one race was nobler," Rather I think he meant to attribute such
an argument to those who hypothesized an "original diversity"
among races, and he may have meant to identify Kant in
particular, for Kant had used the term "noble" for the white
race. By rejecting all inquiry into origins, Hegel rejected all
chronological arguments for superiority just as he had
implicitly criticized Kant in questioning color-based argumerits;" Yet ambiguity survived: rejecting darkness as the
visible sign of inferiority did not subvert the racial hierarchy
but rather confirmed that American Indians could rank lower
than Negroes. Moreover, despite Hegel's bold theoretical claims
for reason, he carefully refused to reject the relevance of race
for freedom. Instead he relegated race to "subordinate relationships." By doing so he apparently reserved a natural, rational
ground for the dominance of one race over another in a manner
compatible with the right of all races to human status, potential
reason, and abstract freedom. Just as his abstract commitment
to potential legal equality of races did not rule out their actual
inequality, so his commitment to the "truth and dignity" of all
humans did not foreclose subordinate hierarchies based on race.
Though he would write repeatedly about the "absolute" injustice
of slavery, he would never unequivocally endorse the abolition of
slavery."
Two general themes emerged in Hegel's expansion of the
coverage of race in his lectures.P First, he gave his theory more
concrete content by imposing it on specific racea;" second, he
incorporated classifications from contemporary natural history
into his treatment of particular races. However, superimposing
these classifications onto the racial hierarchy that grounded his
theory of history resulted in incongruity.
Hegel's core racial hierarchy was fixed by the early 1820s.
It followed closely Kant's taxonomy. Kant had rejected a
continuum of racial types and insisted on a limited number of
races. By doing so he sought to explain the endurance of distinct racial groups over time. In order to explain the origin
and geographical distribution of races, Kant speculated that
races appeared when the original (white) race migrated into
44
different climates. To explain the permanence of races in his

day, he proposed that climate caused irreversible degenerations of the species giving rise to one of four preset racial
types."
Following Kant, Hegel ranked American Indians at the
bottom, Negroes on a higher level, and Europeans at the
summit. His grand divisions of history subdivided the world's
peoples into four main groups: Europeans, Orientals (including
North Africans), Africans, and American Indians
On top of these Kantian categories, in 1825 Hegel superimposed racial classifications derived from Johann Friedrich
Blumenbach. Blumenbach had sought to minimize his departure from Kant" but nonetheless radically reoriented race theory.
Like Kant, he speculated that all races stemmed from an
original white race-which he renamed "Caucasian" after a
particularly beautiful female skull found near the Caucasus
mountains. He added a fifth race and created a new hierarchy
whose terminology and distinguishing marks would dominate
modern race science." The content of Blumenbach's races corresponded generally with previous definitions. His "Caucasians"
included peoples in Europe (except Lapps and Finns), western
Asia, and north Africa, as well as the ancient Greeks and
Romans-peoples Hegel included in history."
Blumenbach deviated from established taxonomies in two
ways. First, even though he embraced Europeans as the paragon of racial excellence, he shifted this racial epitome from
central Europe to the Caucasus on the border of Asia and
Europe. Second, he rejected the prevailing hierarchy that
ranked American Indians at the nadir. Instead, he placed them
as an intermediary type between whites and Asians." According to his classification (which relied heavily on the configuration of certain features of the skull), the two races most far
removed from the stem white race were Ethiopians on one side
and Mongolians on the other. Because American Indians
provided a mediating type between Caucasians and Mongolians,
he added a fifth "Malaysian" race to serve as a comparable
bridge between whites and Ethiopians."
Caucasians
/~
Americans
Malaysians
Ethiopians
Mongolians
This taxonomy abandoned the chronological sequence implicit

in virtually all previous hierarchies."
45
In 1825 Hegel invoked Blumenbach as authority by name,

displayed familiarity with his details of his principles of racial
classification, paraphrased his theory, and adopted his
nomenclature-though he resumed using Neger after briefly
adopting Blumenbach's "Ethiopian" for Negro."! Hegel's attention to Blumenbach suggests that he wanted to enlist recognized authority from natural history to support his arguments
about race.t" In no way did Hegel explicitly criticize or otherwise distance himself from Blumenbach. Nevertheless, he
employed Blumenbach's five-fold schema only for the purpose of
cataloging the physical characteristics of race. And even then he
questioned the distinction between the Malaysian and American
races," concluding by 1827-28 there were only four races."
Hegel departed most radically from Blumenbach in his
treatment of the spiritual characteristics of race. There he
relied implicitly on Kant's scheme and ranking, rejecting any
mental or cultural implications of Blumenbach's hypothesis that
American Indians mediated between Europeans and Asians."
Instead he reasserted his old hierarchy, rating Negroes above
American Indians and remarking (again) that Negroes were
capable of surviving and adapting to the influence of European
culture. Because of this educability, he claimed that in the
African colonies, Africa was "in the process of acquiring a new
character."96 While borrowing Blumenbach's authority and
nomenclature, Hegel failed to appreciate Blumenbach's decisive
contribution and continued to root racial difference in geographical divisions of the eart.h."? Moreover, the ease with
which he alternated between Blumenbach's and Kant's schemes
suggests he remained unaware of fundamental differences
between the two.
In lectures on philosophy of history, Hegel presented Negroes
in Africa as the physical embodiment of the first stages of the
phenomenology of consciousness. He characterized their
consciousness as still not separated from nature-subjective
and unaware of the objective existence of God and law.
Thus, man as we find him in Africa has not progressed beyond
his immediate existence. As soon a man emerges as a human
being, he stands in opposition to nature, and it is this alone
which makes him a human being. But if he has merely made a
distinction between himself and nature, he is still at the first
stage of his development: he is dominated by passion, and is
nothing more than a savage. All our observations of African man
show him as living in a state of savagery and barbarism, and he
remains in this state to the present day.98
Accordingly, in lectures on philosophy of subjective spirit, he

presented Negroes, Mongolians, and Caucasians as a sequence
that revealed the increasingly objective freedom of spirit. He
46
characterized Negroes as childish-a race that expressed

contempt for freedom in allowing themselves to be bought and
sold. He described Mongolians as rising above such childish
simplicity-a race in which spirit began to separate itself from
nature. Among Caucasians in Christian Europe, the progress of
spirit reached its climax in a race who achieved freedom through
the rational institutions of the state."
Hegel omitted American Indians from this survey of the
spiritual progress of races. The structure of his racial hierarchy
suggests the omission was not accidental. If Negroes in their
passions and slavery manifested the most primitive stage of
human consciousness, the first level of human separation from
nature, then American Indians threatened to fall outside the
pale of humanity altogether. In Griesheim's transcription of
Hegel's lectures from 1825, Hegel employed terminology that
accentuated the biological difference of American Indianscalling them a different species: "On the whole, the American
race turns out to be a weaker species (Geschlecht) that has
achieved high culture only through the Europeans."lOO
In this context, Hegel repeated disparaging characterizations of American Indians and referred to their supposed
physical weakness and the disappearance of their race. North
American Indians were almost annihilated (gleichsam uernichtet)
by European immigrants; the few that remained were
"something unsignificant" (etwas Unbedeutendes). Omitted from
the progress of races towards freedom, Hegel considered American Indians only at the end-an afterthought to be dismissed as
"a disappearing, weak species (Geschlecht)."lOl
Notes
1 This paper is an extension of ongoing work that has benefitted
from spirited discussions with members of the University of Georgia
law faculty. I thank Mary Terry Berthelot and Lillian Nash for
research assistance, and Michael Baur, Robert Bernasconi, Luanne
Buchanan, Ardis B. Collins, Markus Dubber, Cinzia Ferrini, Michael
Lynch, Robert Richards, Kenneth R. Westphal, and Allen W. Wood for
critical responses to drafts.
2 Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H. B. Nisbet
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 19 (first draft 1822/
28).
3 Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans.
H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 259,
281.
4 "Hegel oder 'Hegel'," in Hegels Vorlesungen tiber der Weltgeschichte, ed. Elisabeth Weisser-Lohmann and Dietmar Kohler, HegelStudien Beiheft 38 (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1998), 67. Grossmann
further argues that such conceptual inconsistencies demonstrate that
Hegel's view of history was not a coherent, closed system.
S The locus of these treatments did not indicate the lack of their
importance for Hegel. On the contrary, despite the prominence of The
47
Philosophy of Right in Hegel scholarship, Hegel himself stopped

lecturing on that topic after 1825-resuming the course only briefly
before his death.
6 Terry Pinkard writes, "As explicitly as he could, he rejected all
doctrines of racial superiority flowing around Europe at the time"
(Hegel: A Biography [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000],
493). Stephen Houlgate remarks, "Hegel is not concerned with given
racial differences between people because in his view human selfconsciousness is what determines a civilization's character, and this
self-consciousness can be changed through education" (Stephen
Houlgate, Freedom, Truth and History: An Introduction to Hegel's
Philosophy [London: Routledge, 1991], 36). The Cambridge Companion
to Hegel refers to Hegel's "ethnocentrism" as nothing more than "the
standpoint of modern Western individualism" (Frederick C. Beiser,
"Hegel's Historicism," in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed.
Frederick C. Beiser [Cambridge University Press, 1993], 287). W. H.
Walsh similarly writes, "Hegel was not any kind of a racist. It is true
of course that he had a poor opinion of the abilities of the American
Indians, and that the picture he offers of Negro society in Africa is far
from attractive" ("Principle and Prejudice in Hegel's Philosophy of
History," in Z. A. Pelczynski, Hegel's Political Philosophy: Problems and
Perspectives: A Collection of New Essays [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1971], 192).
Olufemi Taiwo blames Hegel's false ethnocentric universalism for
the absence of Africa as a topic in Philosophy ("Exorcising Hegel's
Ghost: Africa's Challenge to Philosophy," African Studies Quarterly:
The Online Journal of African Studies [web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/vl/4/
2.htm]).
7 See Robert Bernasconi, "With What Must the Philosophy of
World History Begin? On the Racial Bias of Hegel's Eurocentrism,"
Nineteenth-Century Contexts 22 (2000): 171-201; "Hegel at the Court
of the Ashanti," in Hegel After Derrida, ed. Stuart Barnett (London:
Routledge, 1998), 41-63. Passages on race and colonialism from
Hegel's lectures on world history and Philosophy of Right are included
in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze ed., Race and the Enlightenment: A
Reader (London: Blackwell, 1997), 110-153. There is resistance to
recognizing race as a significant criterion for Hegel. See Noel Malcom's
review of ibid., "Irrational About Racism," Sunday Telegraph, February
22, 1997 (available online), which denies that Hegel's disparaging
historical treatment of Africa was related to any systematic view of
race.
8 Barck decried Hegel's rationalizing characterization of the
genocide of the Indians as a historical "necessity." See Karlheinz
Barck, "Amerika in Hegels Geschichtsphilosophie," Weimarer Beitriige
38 (1992): 274-278. Ortega wrote with sarcasm of "the peculiar
weakness and aptitude of American Indians for evaporating or
disappearing" and ridiculed with Hegelian jargon the way that Indians
sought "refuge in not-being" (Jose Ortega y Gasset, "Hegel and
America," trans. Luanne Buchanan and Michael H. Hoffheirner, Clio 25
[1995]: 76).
9 For this reason, part of what he said about Africa applied equally
to America: "What we understand as Africa proper [his term for subSaharan Africa] is that unhistorical and undeveloped land which is
still enmeshed in the natural spirit, and which had to be mentioned
48

here before we cross the threshold of world history itself" (Lectures on
the Philosophy of World History, 190).
10 "The frost which grips the inhabitants of Lapland and the fiery
heat of Africa are forces of too powerful a nature for man to resist ... "
(Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 155).
11 Ibid., 175.
12 See my "Does Hegel Justify Slavery?," Owl of Minerva 25 (1993):
118-119.
13 E.g., Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 176, 180, 187.
14 Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 163. Students
recorded a shorter variant of the argument in 1822-23. Vorlesungen
tiber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte Berlin 1822/23: Nachechriften
von Karl Gustav Julius von Griesheim, Heinrich Gustav Hotho, und
Friedrich Carl Hermann Victor von Kehler, ed. Karl Heinz Ilting, Karl
Brehmer, and Hoo Nam Seelmann, Vorlesungen: Ausgewiihlte Nachschrifte und Manuskripte (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1996), 12:93.
15 Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 163. I have been
unable to trace the source of this anecdote, which Alexander von
Humboldt would ridicule (Letter to Varnhagen, July 1, 1837, in Letters
ofAlexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense from 1827 to 1858,
trans. Friedrich Kapp [New York: Rudd & Carleton, 1860], 60). See
also letter of April 28, 1841 (ibid., 101-102). In the latter, Humboldt
was probably ridiculing more generally the sorts of claims about
American geography that Hegel had been making in his lectures on
the Philosophy of Nature. Though not yet published, Humboldt would
certainly have known of their general content. Cf. the lecture note
excerpted by Michelet and published in 1847 in Hegel's Philosophy of
Nature, trans. Michael John Petry, 3 vols. (London: George Allen and
Unwin Ltd., 1970),3: 24. Hegel was making almost identical claims in
lectures on the system of philosophy. See System der Philosophie:
Dritter Teil: Die Philosophie des Geistes, Siimtliche Werke, ed. Hermann
Glockner, 20 vols. (Stuttgart: Fr. Frommanns Verlag, 1958), 10: 71;
Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, trans. and ed. M. J. Petry, 3
vols., corrected ed. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1978),2: 6165.
16 The pervasive Western identification of roast beef with
masculine power is depicted graphically in Hogarth's The Gate of
Calais, or 0 the Roast Beef of Old England, painting 1748 (Tate
Gallery, London). English beef eaters are portrayed in full vigor in
contrast to effeminate and weak French men, who look with envy on
the ample rib roast. The sexually predacious male in the film "The
Knack ... and How to Get It" (England 1965) instructs his disciple to
eat various cuts of beef.
17 Hegel saw the New World as essentially different from the old
and characterized it as "absolutely" newer, but he refrained from
making any claim about its geological age (Lectures on the Philosophy
of World History, 162; Philosophy of Nature, 3: 24; Hegel's Philosophy of
Subjective Spirit, 2: 49 ("There is a necessity governing these divisions
of the individuality of the Earth").
18 Hegel discussed the manifestation of will in Africa (Lectures on
the Philosophy of World Spirit, 187).
19
An Englishman who lived for ten or twelve years in Brazil,
where he owned estates and of which he has a very good
knowledge, in an interesting account he has given of his
49
residence there, says that there are quite a number of Negro
physicians, artists, clergymen and craftsmen, that Negroes
show themselves to be capable of acquiring European skills.
One does not hear this of the Indians however. One became a
clergyman, but he died young, and there are very few
examples of their having shown an aptitude for anything.
(Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 3: 63, Griesheim
manuscript, Petry translation)
In other lectures, Hegel apparently embellished these stories. He
acknowledged in theory that natives learned various European arts,
but the only one he mentioned was "brandy drinking" (Lectures on
the Philosophy of World History, 164). He recounted the story of an
American Indian who received a higher education and became a
clergyman but added that he died of drink almost immediately
(Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 165).
20 Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 165.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid. He recalled reading this story. Its source, like many of
Hegel's anecdotes about Africa and America, remains unknown. While
I do not rule out the possibility that he fabricated the stories, such
anecdotes were widespread, and he probably encountered them in
periodical literature or oral conversations-perhaps altered by memory
or embellished for effect.
23 Ibid., 163.
24 Ibid., 164.
25 Ibid.
26 Mario Casalla, America en el pensamiento de Hegel: Admiracion y
rechazo (Buenos Aires: Catalogos, 1992), 71; Bernasconi, "Hegel at the
Court of the Ashanti," 58-63. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze writes that
Hegel's "political philosophy transformed the European historical
perspectives into concrete projects of international politics and
economics (imperialism, colonialism, and the trans-national
corporation)" (Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader, 7-8). See also
ibid., 149: Hegel "considered the imperial and colonial projects carried
out by European nations outside of Europe as necessary and logical
consequences of the capitalist modernization of European societies."
Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay claims Hegel "saw Africa as a continent
inhabited by a population of people who were yet not ready for their
own freedom. It was the responsibility of the Europeans to educate
them" ("Historical Revelations: The International Scope of African
Germans Today and Beyond," in The African-German Experience:
Critical Essays, ed. Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay [Westport: Praeger,
1996], 98). Vimbai Gukwe Chivaura cites Hegel's anti-African racism
("European Culture in Africa as Business: Its Implications on the
Development of the Human Factor," Journal of Black Studies 29
[1998]:189-208). L. Keita identifies Hegel with recent efforts to reduce
behavior to race: "This amounted to the view held by Hume, Kant, and
Hegel that the different branches of humanity were distinguishable
not only phenotypically but also temperamentally and intellectually"
(Review of Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean
by Michael Levin, The Western Journal of Black Studies 23 [1999]: 6570).
27 Vorlesungen tiber die Philosophie der Geschichte, 1: 200; Lectures
50
on the Philosophy of World History, 163. He employed similar words in

lectures on the philosophy of subjective spirit to describe the mass
death of American Indians ("Die einheimischen Volker dieses
Welttheils gehen unter" [Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 2: 48,
Addition]).
28 The Philosophy of History, 81; Lectures on the Philosophy of
World History, 163.
29 Ortega and Casalla observe in Hegel's treatment of America an
anti-Hispanic bias and a preference for the English model of
colonialism that expressed his commitment to Protestantism
(Casalla, America en el pensamiento de Hegel, 131, 139).
31
The tribes of North America have in part disappeared, and in
part withdrawn from contact with the Europeans. Their
degeneration indicates that they do not have the strength to
join the independent North American states. Culturally
inferior nations such as these are gradually eroded through
contact with more advanced nations which have gone
through a more intensive cultural development. For the
citizens of the independent states of North America are all of
European descent, and the original inhabitants were unable
to amalgamate with them. (Ibid., 163-164)
Hegel's famous dictum that America was the "land of the future"
suggested that America had a potential future as a participant in
world history only because, freed from native culture, immigrant
European racial stock might eventually succeed in constructing
proper states. His attitude towards the demise of American Indian
communities contrasted with the regret he expressed elsewhere for
the decline of "great peoples"-ancient historical societies. "The World
Spirit has no consideration, no pity" (Vorlesungen iiber Naturrecht
und Staatswissenschaft, ed. C. Becker et al. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner
Verlag, 1983), 256; Lectures on Natural Right and Political Science:
The First Philosophy of Right, trans. J. Michael Stewart and Peter C.
Hodgson [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995],306).
32 Only the offspring resulting from mixes with other races
displayed any trace of culture or stirring towards freedom.
The peoples who are assuming independence in the Spanish
territories are the descendants of the Europeans, the Creoles,
those born of a European and an Indian wife or of an Indian
and a European wife. The Americans themselves are to be
regarded as a spiritually weak nation, which has more or
less had the fate of being unable to rise to European culture,
and on account of its having been unable to hold out against
and bear it, of having had to give way to it. (Griesheim
manuscript, ibid., 63-65, Petry's translation)
33 Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 164. Hegel had
made this observation as early as 1822 (Vorlesungen iiber die
Philosophie der Weltgeschichte Berlin 1822/23, 94). Petry points out
American Indians led movements for political independence, served
as the first presidents of independent Mexico and Colombia, and
rebelled against Creoles in Bolivia, Mexico, and Chile (Hegel's
Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 2: 457, editor's notes).
34 Lectures exposed Hegel's awareness of inconsistent evidence.
He acknowledged reports that some pure-race natives had supported
51
Michael H. Hoflheimer
South American independence movements. But his commitment to
behavior conforming to racial type led him to dismiss such reports
and to speculate gratuitously that probably "only a few native tribes
share their [Creoles'] attitude." For similar reasons, Hegel observed
that "free" citizens in South America were invariably the result of
mixed European, Asiatic, and American blood (Lectures on the
Philosophy of World History, 165). This observation has attracted no
attention, perhaps because it has been read simply to mean that the
Spanish denied native Indians the political rights of citizens. But in
context Hegel seemed to be making a stronger racial argument that
pure-race Indians were incapable of freedom.
Similar motives led him to minimize the participation of American Indians in the American Revolution. While acknowledging
evidence of American Indian support for independence, he distanced
himself from the evidence, referring to it not as fact but as "reports
of native peoples who have identified themselves with the recent
efforts of the American to create independent states." Though he did
not deny the reports, he again speculated that "it is probably that
very few of their members are of pure native origin" (ibi d., 164).
Bernasconi has argued that Hegel similarly manipulated available
sources to support his negative characterizations of Africans. "Hegel
at the Court of the Ashanti."
Hegel was selective in his use of sources. For example, he was
almost certainly familiar with Herder's depictions of American
Indians. Herder described in positive terms how the character of the
American Indians conformed to the "the great, free, beautiful land"
they peopled and characterized American Indians as a "bold, quick
people" (ldeen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit,
Herders Siimmtl iche Werke, ed. Berhard Suphan [Berlin:
Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1887], 13: 242-244).
35 Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 164. In this
observation Hegel entertained without hesitation the projection onto
India of exactly the same racial heritability of the urge for autonomy
and political liberty that he had constructed in South America.
36 Bernasconi observes that Hegel was ambivalent about the
mixing of different nationalities among Caucasians. Hegel saw the
Greeks and Romans as the result of such mixing but also limited the
diffusion of the Reformation to persons of pure German ancestry. See
"With What Must the Philosophy of History Begin? On the Racial
Basis of Hegel's Eurocentrism," 188.
37 Buffon's work was widely available. As a tutor in Switzerland
from 1793-96, Hegel had access to the 1750-67 edition of Buffon's
master work, Histoire naturelle, with 1774-82 supplements, and to
Buffon's work on birds. See "Der Versteigerungskatalog der
Bibliothek Steiger," reprinted in Helmut Schneider and Norbert
Waszek eds., Hegel in der Schweiz (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang,
1997), Hegeliana: Studien und Quellen zu Hegel und zum
Heglianismus, ed. Helmut Schneider 8 (1997): 328. Although Hegel
did not cite Buffon in his own Philosophy of Nature, M. J. Petry
concluded that several passages referred to Buffon. See editorial
annotations in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, 3: 220, 230. Hegel may
have recognized that Buffon was no longer an adequate authority as
a naturalist, or he may have preferred citing German authors.
38 Buffon, Historie naturelle, generale et particuliere (Paris, 1764),
52

xviii, 100-156.
It is ironic that Montesquieu had sought to explain the
prolieration of "savage nations" in America by the supposedly greater
fertility of the soil and resulting abundance of grazing animals (The
Complete Works of M. d Montesquieu, 4 vols. [London T. Evans, 1777],
bk. 18, ch. 9, 1: 364). Montesquieu viewed the large plains and lack of
natural divisions as conducive to the formation of empires and a
spirit of servility (ibid., bk. 17, ch. 6, 1: 356).
39 Buffon, Historie naturelle, generale et particuliere [third ed.
accent sic], avec la description du cabinet du roi, vol. 2 (Paris:
Imprimerie royale, 1749),58-59,327,328. For the history of Buffon's
theory of sexual reproduction, see my "Maupertuis and the
Eighteenth-Century Critique of Preexistence," Journal of the History
of Biology 15 (1982): 130-132.
40 There is no evidence Hegel was studying Buffon in the 1820s.
Buffon was not the source of Hegel's anecdotes, which probably
postdated Buffon, and Hegel's resort to these disparaging anecdotes
and his assertion of claims absent from Buffon indicate that his
immediate sources were probably writers like Pauw or oral stories in
circulation rather than Buffon.
4l No one has identified Hegel's immediate sources. But scholars
agree that he was probably drawing on Buffon and Pauw. See
Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World: The History of a
Polemic, 1750-1900, trans. Jeremy Moyle (University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1973) (originally published in 1955), 428; Minguet,
"L'Amerique et les lecons sur la philosophie de l'histoire," Les langues
neo-latines 54 (1960): 41.
Pauw presented memoirs to the Berlin Academy which he
published in 1768-69 and reprinted repeatedly through the early
nineteenth century, including in German editions. See Cornelius Pauw,
Philosophische Untersuchungen tiber die Amerikaner: oder Wichtige
Beytriige zu Geschichte des menschlichen Geschlects, 2 vols. (Berlin: G.
J. Decker und G. L. Winter, 1769). The French-language edition was
also published in Berlin and was widely available in Germany. The
work was even translated into English. It was reprinted as the first
three volumes of Pauw's Oevres philosophiques in 1795.
Pauw followed Buffon in claiming that America was devoid of any
large quadrupeds, see Mr. de P***, Recherches philosophiques sur les
Americains, our Memoires interessante pour servir a l'histoire de
l'espece humaine: avec une dissertation sur l'Amerique & les
Americains, par Don Pernety , 3 vols. (London [Berlin], 1770) (1968
reprint The Gregg Press, Upper Saddle River, NJ), 1: 1; that Old World
stock introduced into America became degraded (ibid., 1: 13,2: 80-81)
and that native Americans were weak, impotent, and lacking inner
force (ibid., 1: xiii). But he went still further in dismissing native
Americans as "a degenerated species" and comparing them to children
(ibid., 1: xiii) and orangutans (ibid., 1: 35). Gilbert Chinard discusses
Pauw in "America as Human Habitat," Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society, 91 (1947): 35.
42 Recherches phiiosophiques, 1: 35.
43 Ibid., 1: xiii.
44 Ibid., 3: 166-167.
46 Ibid., 2: 251. " ... the degeneration attacked their intelligence
(sens) as well as their organs: their spirit (ame [sic]) was lost in
53
proportion to their body" (ibid., 3: 153).
46 Schiller's translation appeared in 1777, a second edition in
1798-1801. Hegel had access in Bern to Robertson's Englishlanguage histories of Scotland and of Charles V. Waszek argues
convincingly that Hegel learned to read English during his residency
in Bern. See Waszek, The Scottish Enlightenment and Hegel's Account
of Civil Society, 98, 286. And Hegel's library at the time of his death
included pirated English-language editions of three of Robertson's
works published from 1787 and 1792 and which he probably bought
in Bern (ibid., 283). But it did not include the history of America nor
did his writings contain any citation to it.
Robertson claimed repeatedly that American Indians were
physically "feeble" (William Robertson, The History of America
[Albany: E. & E. Hosford, 1822] 1: 111, 156, 234). His fourth book of
volume one comprised a catalog of their debilities, including their
supposed lack of sexual passion (ibid., 1: 236). He contrasted the
fitness of Negroes and American Indians for slavery (Notes and
Illustrations, ibid., 1: 429).
47 Kant's editor identified a number of passages indebted to Pauw.
See the discussion and citation of sources in Gerbi, The Dispute of the
New World, 329, n.10. Gerbi concludes that "if we review what Kant
wrote about the Americans, de Pauw's influence seems undeniable"
(ibid., 329).
48 "Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen," Immanuel Kants
Werke, ed. Ernst Cassirer (Berlin: Verlegt bei Bruno Cassirer, 1922),
2:458. Kant defined race by color, arguing that four distinct races
evolved from an original stem race (white race with brownish skin).
The color morphs resulted from the effect of climate:
First race. Blond (northern Europe) by humid cold.
Second race. Copper red (America) by dry cold.
Third race. Black (Senegambia) by humid heat.
Fourth race. Olive yellow (Indians) by dry heat.
This precritical work was readily available to Hegel. Kant first
published it in 1775 and published an expanded version in 1777. It
was reprinted in at least three other collections of his writings up
through 1799. See editor's note, ibid., 487.
For a recent translation that renders this passage differently, see
"Of the Different Human Races," trans. Jon Mark Mikkelsen, in
Robert Bernasconi and Tommy L. Lott, The Idea of Race (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2000), 8-22.
49 Ibid., 449.
50 "Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen," 454.
51 "Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen," 454 n.1; "Of
the Different Human Races," 17 n.3. In unpublished writings, Kant
portrayed Americans as incapable of civilization due to their lack of
sex drive. In early unpublished drafts and notes for his
Menschenkunde (1798), he linked their lack of drive to sexual
weakness.
The American people are incapable of civilization. They have
no motive force; for they are without affection and passion.
They are not drawn to one another by love, and are thus
unfruitful too. They hardly speak at all, never caress one
another, care about nothing, and are lazy. (Menschenkunde
oder philosophische Anthropologie, ed. F. C. Starke Leipzig,
54

1831], 353, Translated in Gerbi, The Dispute of the New
World,330)
Though Hegel would not have known this writing, parts of Kant's
notes anticipated Hegel's later efforts to explain the genocide in
America as the reflection of the natural weakness of the Indians.
Kant had observed that Americans were incapable of governing
themselves and were destined for extermination (ibid., 878). See
Casalla, America en el pensamiento de Hegel, 93.
52 Die Metaphysik der Sitten 55, Kant's gesammelte Schriften, ed.
Prussian Academy of Sciences, div. 1: Kant's Werke (Berlin: Druck
und Verlag von Georg Reimer, 1907), 6: 345. Gerbi points out that
Kant's social explanation for the lack of an adequate food supply in
America constituted a shift from his argument in earlier writings
that the food shortage was caused by unproductive soil (Gerbi, 331).
Kant published his views in Physical Geography (which Hegel
may not have read and that contained a number of specific empirical
claims that Hegel would not repeat). There he presented American
natives as the lowest level of humanity. "Humanity is at its greatest
perfection in the race of whites. The yellow Indians have already less
talent. The Negroes are lower, and at the lowest stands a part of the
[native] American peoples" (Physische Geographie, ed. Royal Prussian
Academy of Sciences [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1923], div. 1
Werke, 9: 316). Kant also observed that there were no lions in
America (ibid., 336; Physical Geography, translated in Robert
Bernasconi in "Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Racism," 4). He
noted that the smallest kind of bird was American (Physische
Geographie, 353) but also remarked that there were many large
insects in South America (ibid., 430). See generally Gerbi, 331-332,
for a catalog of Kant's negative claims about America. For a probing
treatment of Kant's writings on race, see Robert Bernasconi, "Kant as
an Unfamiliar Source of Racism," in Philosophers on Race, ed. Julie
Ward and Tommy Lott (London: Blackwell), forthcoming.
53 "But until he took up Kant's Metaphysik der Sitten in August
1798, I suspect that the Old Testament, Josephus, and Herder
occupied more of his attention than any works of literature or
philosophy in the ordinary sense, either classical or modern" (H. S.
Harris, Hegel's Development: Toward the Sunlight 1770-1801 [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1972], 271-272).
54 See Antonello Gerbi, Viejas polemicas sobre el nuevo mundo
(Comentarios a una tesis de Hegel) (Lima: Banco de Credito de Peru,
1944); The Dispute of the New World. Diderot, Herder, and the
Romantics had questioned Buffon's rationalistic dismissal of the
primitive. See Gerbi 169, 286-287. Thomas Jefferson devoted much of
his scientific career to polemics that effectively identified flaws and
inconsistencies in Buffon's treatment of America and American
Indians. About one-third of Jefferson's only book, Notes on the State
of Virginia (1785), comprised a polemic against Buffon. Jefferson
printed the book privately in Paris in 1785 and delivered one of the
first two copies to Buffon. It was published in London in 1787.
55 Vorlesungen tiber die Philosophie der Geschichte, 1: 200.
William Robertson, promoting the thesis that American animals
were smaller, nevertheless acknowledged evidence that they had not
always been so (Notes and Illustrations, History ofAmerica, 1: 411).
This was not the only occasion when Hegel ignored contemporary
55
scientific knowledge in order to support philosophical speculations by
theories of nature that were being decisively repudiated. Hegel was
philosophically committed to a number of doctrines (such as the
spontaneous formation of fossils as an inorganic geological process
akin to crystal formation) that made him particularly inattentive to
important scientific developments in his day. See H. S. Harris, Hegel's
Development: Night Thoughts, 445-446; Hoffheimer, "Law, Fossils,
and the Configuring of Hegel's Philosophy of nature," Idealistic
Studies 25 (1995): 155-173. The idea of spontaneous formation of
fossils had been entertained by Voltaire and Jefferson to account for
fossil deposits in mountain locations. But reputable naturalists had
never applied the theory to explain fossil bones of large Pleistocene
mammals. While Hegel refused to read the fossil record as marking
change in time, Humboldt was demonstrating that while the fossil
record of invertebrate animals may have been inconclusive, the
layers of vertebrate fossils revealed unmistakable progressive
development from fish to reptiles to mammals (Alexander von
Humboldt, Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the
Universe, trans. E. C. Otte [London: Henry G. Bohn, 1849], 1: 275276). Humboldt ridiculed Hegel's views in his letter to Varnhagen,
noting that the discovery of frozen corpses of mammoths in Siberia
completely exploded Hegel's theory.
56 In 1801 Charles Wilson Peale excavated a fossil mammoth
skeleton in New York state; it was exhibited in Philadelphia, and his
brothers subsequently took a second one on tour in England. See
George Gaylord Simpson, "The Beginnings of Vertebrate Paleontology
in North America," Proceedings of the American philosophical Society
86 (1943): 159; Anthony J. Sutcliffe, On the Track of Ice Age Mammals
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 170.
It is possible Hegel later modified his commitment to the absolute
weakness of American plant life, but he would persist to the end in
asserting the absolute weakness of animal life and humans in
America. In lectures on philosophy of nature he repeated the claim
that American nature was fundamentally inferior:
... everything within it is new. As civilization has developed
there with neither the horse nor iron, it has lacked the
powerful instruments of positive difference. No continent of the
old world has been coerced by another, while America is merely
a part of Europe's booty. Its fauna is weaker than that of the
old world, although it possesses an exuberant flora.
(Philosophy of Nature, 3: 24)
57 Gilbert Chi nard charged Hegel with relying on outdated
science. "To a certain extent, the shortcomings of Hegel's theory may
be accounted for by the fact that he accepted without sufficient
verification the hasty observations of hurried travelers and the no
less hasty generalizations of philosophers and scientists of repute"
(Chinard, "America as a Human Habitat," 53). Mario Casalla wrote
also of the "contraposition" between Hegel's idealism and the natural
science of the day, especially in Humboldt.
58 Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, 3: 20.
59 Ibid., 3: 21.
60 E.g., ibid., 3: 22.
61 Ibid.
62 From this, Casalla concluded that land and its relationship to
56

water was the decisive factor for Hegel determining the relative
potence of nature (Casalla, America en el pensamiento de Hegel, 65).
But Hegel's treatment was equivocal: the sequence may suggest
causation, but nature as land mass may have provided nothing more
than ground in the sense of location for the animal and human
impotence he proceeded to catalog.
63 Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, 3: 24.
64 Encyklopiidie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse
[18171 312, Siimtliche Werke, 3: 234; Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective
Spirit, 2: 44-45. Cf. Eneyklopiidie [1827] 393, Gesammelte Werke, 19,
296. En.zyklopiidie [1830] 393, Gesammelte Werke, 20, 392. A. V.
Miller's translation of this section and the accompanying Addition are
reprinted in The Idea of Race, 38-44.
65 Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 2: 23.
66 Though the section may be short, the importance of race for
Hegel is further revealed by the fact that in 1817 he included no
treatment of the psychological difference between males and
females-a difference that was recognized and that Hegel would
address in later editions. See Petry's note, ibid., 2: 477.
67 Employing the 1822 manuscript to derive meaning from the
1817 text raises a problem of methodology that Leo Rauch aptly
summed up: "no reference to a later work can serve to establish
conclusively anything about the earlier work and therefore many of
the dark points must remain dark" (Preface, Hegel and the Human
Spirit: A Translation of the Jena Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit
[1805-61 with Commentary [Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
1983], 12). Hegel's often deliberately indeterminate or equivocal
meanings should not be authoritatively interpreted by Hegel's own
later adoption of more specific or restrictive denotations. Nevertheless, these two texts are closely contemporaneous, and Hegel
retained the earlier text in subsequent editions.
68 "Racenverschiedenheit," in "Fragment zur Philo sophie des
subjektiven Geistes," Gesammelte Werke, 15: 224; "A Fragment on the
Philosophy of Spirit (1822/25)," in Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective
Spirit, 1: 113-115. For the dating, see Petry, ibid., cxv; Gesammelte
Werke, 15: 301-303.
69 Hegel's reading of Herder in Stuttgart repeatedly influenced his
development. See Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography, 43, 59, 61. For the
controversy between Herder and Kant, see Robert T. Clark, Jr.,
Herder: His Life and Thought, 316-325. Clark refers more
questionably to the "Herderian origin of Hegel's philosophy of
history" (Herder: His Life and Thought, 329-330).
70
In short, there are neither four or five races, nor are there
exclusive varieties on earth. The colors run into one another;
the cultures serve the genetic character: and over all and in
the end everything is only a shade of one and the same great
portrait that extends across all the spaces and times of the
earth. (Johann Gottfried von Herder, Ideas on the Philosophy
of the History of Humankind, trans. Thomas Nenon in The
Idea of Race, 26; Herders Siimmtliche Werke, 13: 258)
Herder did not reject all aspects of race but rejected the limited
categories proposed by Kant; Herder rather viewed humanity as a
continuum of different family and national groups. He believed the
physical features of such groups should be explored in Natural
57
History rather than the physical-geographical history of humans
(ibid.). In that regard, Hegel's treatment of race as part of Anthropology expressed a decisive rejection of Herder.
71 See Bernasconi, "Who Invented the Concept of Race?," 32.
72 Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 2: 44, Addition. Petry
argues that Hegel believed that races devolved from the original white
race (ibid., 1: lviii; 2: 451). But Petry's source for this is Hegel's remark
that Caucasians descended from Turks coupled together with Hegel's
claim that white skin is objectively superior.
I think, on the contrary, that Hegel's explicit and repeated refusal
to speculate on the temporal origins of race manifested a deliberate
decision to avoid engaging in the ongoing debates about multiple
creations. Aware that more recent theories of racial classification
questioned the utility of skin color as a criterion, Hegel himself linked
skin color to environment, not race. "Blackness is the immediate
outcome of the climate, the descendants of the Portuguese being as
black as the native Negroes, although also on account of mixing" (ibid.,
2: 47). But he simultaneously expressed conflict in his attitude
towards skin color: "No colour has any superiority, it being simply a
matter of being used to it, although one can speak of the objective
superiority of the colour of the Caucasian race as against that of the
Negro" (ibid, 2: 47).
This passage is subject to serious misunderstanding if read with
the assumption that Hegel classified Negroes as the lowest race and
accordingly viewed blackness as the most inferior color. In fact, he
viewed American Indians as a lower race despite a lighter skin color.
His construction of the objective superiority (der objektive Vorzug) of
white skin proceeded not from racial hierarchy but from a naturalistic
argument that skin (and its color) were animal membranes. He
concluded that white skin was objectively superior only because it
made more "objective"-external and visible-what was internal and
spiritual. He was perhaps drawing on Blumenbach's observation that
white skin resulted from the absence of pigmentation and that visible
blood flow causing red cheeks was unique to it. See De Generis humani
(1795 text), translated in The Anthropological Treatises of Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach, 208-209. Hegel's conviction that visible facial
gestures connoted an objective superiority drew in turn on his claim
later in the same lectures that facial gestures exhibited human spirit
and physically distinguished humans from animals (ibid., 2: 415).
Hegel apparently meant nothing more than that certain emotional
responses involving blood flow like blushing were most visible in
whites and least in dark-skinned Negroes.
73 "Racenvershiedenheit," Gesammelte Werke, 15: 224-227; Hegel's
Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 1: 113. Hegel's preference for the white
race, his observations in lectures that "blackness" was the result of
climate, and his antipathy towards a progressive evolutionary scheme
combined to lead Petry to conclude that Hegel believed racial variety
resulted from the degeneration of the original white race under the
influence of different climates (ibid, 2: 450-451). This was, of course,
Kant's view, and it is consistent with what Hegel wrote about the
spiritual features of races after 1825. What is remarkable, however, is
that Hegel expressly refused to endorse the view.
74 Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 1: 112. Petry succumbed
to wishful thinking in rendering ursprtingliche Verschiedenheit in
58
Ansehung der Freyheit as "radical variety of freedom" (ibid., 113).

75 "Racenverschiedenheit," 225; Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective
Spirit, 1: 113.
76 This is the suggestion of Houlgate, interpreting passages from
the lectures on the philosophy of history (Freedom, Truth, and History,
87).
77 Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 2: 46.
78 Kehler's manuscript (ibid., 2: 47, Petry translation). Hegel's
discussion of black skin pigmentation and his construction of the
excellence or "objective superiority" of white skin immediately followed
this quotation. Its juxtaposition may support an inference that Hegel
meant to provide pseudoscientific foundation for the particular
superiority of whites over Negroes. This is Bernasconi's reading in
"With What Must the Philosophy of World History Begin? On the
Racial Basis of Hegel's Eurocentrism," 195, n.39.
79 It is possible to read the declarative phrase as an expression of
Hegel's own views, as Bernasconi does in "With What Must the
Philosophy of World History Begin? On the Racial Basis of Hegel's
Eurocentrism," 186.
80 See notes 49, 73, 79.
8! Other German contemporaries denounced slavery unambiguously, notably Blumenbach and Alexander von Humboldt.
Blumenbach himself protested against drawing political judgments
from his race science, "stoutly defended the mental and moral unity of
all peoples," and campaigned for the abolition of slavery (Stephen Jay
Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, rev. ed. [New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 1981], 408). Humboldt argued against any essential
distinction among races (Alexander von Humboldt, Cosmos: A Sketch
of a Physical Description of the Universe, trans. E. C. Otte [London:
Henry G. Bohn, 1849], 1: 361-362). From this he drew moral and
political conclusions: "Whilst we maintain the unity of the human
species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of
superior and inferior races of men" (ibid., 1: 368). He explicitly
repudiated the use of racial difference as a justification for slavery
(Cosmos, 1: 369 n. *).
82 He lectured on his system as a whole in Winter 1816-17,
Summer 1818, Winter 1818-19, Winter 1826-27. He lectured on
subjective spirit in Summer 1817, Summer 1820, Summer 1822,
Summer 1825, Winter 1827-28, and Winter 1829-30. See Hegel's
Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 1: cxiii. Boumann, Hegel's posthumous
editor, assembled the Additions from a variety of sources, including
Hegel's own notes for 1828 and 1830, Griesheim's notes from 1825, and
Mullach's from 1828. For relevant passages, see ibid., 1: 84; 2: 44-67.
83 Hegel's growing attention to racial classifications in 1825 was
marked by his increasing disassociation of race and national character.
He claimed, however, that national character was insignificant within
non-European races. From this Bernasconi argues that Hegel reduced
non-European races to a fundamental sameness as a projection of his
racial and Eurocentric biases ("With What Must the Philosophy of
World History Begin? On the Racial Basis of Hegel's Eurocentrism,"
188).
Separating national character from race freed Hegel's treatment of
European peoples and their stories from reduction to race. At their
highest level of development, these European national characters
59
formed the stuff of world history and became the proper subjects of
the philosophy of history (ibid., 2: 67, Addition). But Hegel's elimination of national character from (non-white) races may have merely
signified their exclusion from Hegelian history. Differences among
(non-white) races remained large, but they were rooted in race, not
national character. Hegel's comparison of American Indians and
Negroes suggests he viewed differences among non-Europeans as
greater than national differences among Europeans.
84 Bernasconi, "Who Invented the Concept of Race?," 24. His
explanation incorporated the ratiocination and commitment to
categories treated in the Critique of Pure Reason and revealed the
operation of the teleological judgment appropriate for complex organic
phenonomena treated in the Critique of Judgment. But the theory also
conveniently perpetuated Linnaeus's four races: Americans, Europeans, Asians, and Africans.
Because the degenerations could not be reversed, whites might
continue to metamorphose into other races but other races could not
return to the stem race. This, combined with Kant's conviction in the
superiority of the white race, provided a reasoned basis for his
opposition to race mixing. The opposition to race mixing was not
merely a result of Kant's theory. The depth of his passion on the
subject suggests strongly that he constructed the theory itself in order
to rationalize the conviction. Bernasconi observes that his deep fear of
race mixing was not just one theoretical consequence of his idea of
race; it "is at the heart of his racial theory" ("Kant as an Unfamiliar
Source of Racism," 23).
85 Blumenbach repeatedly acknowledged his debt to Kant's
definition of race (Letter of J. H. I. Lehmann to Kant, January 1, 1799,
in Briefwechsel, 3: 264. Cited in Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World,
332). See Robert Bernasconi, "Who Invented the Concept of Race?
Kant's Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race" (unpublished
manuscript).
86 De Generis humani (1795 ed.), in The Anthropological Treatises of
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, 264-276. See Stephen Jay Gould, The
Mismeasure of Man, 406-408. Gould credits Blumenbach with
inventing the modern scheme of racial classification because he turned
Linnaeus's four-part classification of races based on geography into a
five-part classification based on a hierarchy of superiority.
Blumenbach included this taxonomy in all his subsequent works,
including his standard textbook (Joh. Fr. Blumenbach, Handbuch der
Naturgeschichte, 5th ed. [Gottingen: Johann Christian Dieterich, 1797],
63).
87 It may be no accident, as Bernasconi remarks, that it "seems to
be an effect of Hegel's account of history that only Caucasians can be
said to belong to history proper" ("With What Must the Philosophy of
World History Begin? On the Racial Basis of Hegel's Eurocentrism,"
184). Bernasconi shows that Hegel's privileging of Caucasians led him
to differentiate Persians from Mongols (ibid., 184) and led to conflicts
in his treatment of Egyptians, whom he wished to amalgamate to
Europeans (because of the historical continuity of Greece and Rome)
but also-and increasingly in later lectures-to distinguish from
Europeans due to the unfree racial characteristics of Africans. This led
Hegel to characterize Egypt as embodying contradiction (ibid., 1815).
88 Though Blumenbach had initially assumed that Negroes were
60

inferior to whites in both intellect and capacity for culture, by the
late 1780s, he maintained Africans were not inherently inferior. See
Hans W. Debrunner, "Africa, Europe, and America: The Modern
Roots from a European Perspective," in David McBride, Leroy
Hopkins, and C. Aisha Blackshire-Belay eds., Crosscurrents: African
Americans, Africa, and Germany in the Modern World (Columbia,
SC: Camden House, 1998),7.
89 See Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 411-412.
90 Gould sees Blumenbach's abandonment of a geographically based
model as a decisive theoretical shift that marks the start of modern
racial classification (The Mismeasure of Man, 403). He views the shift
as decisive because he sees previous geographical models as lacking an
explicit criterion of ranking. But such a criterion is plausibly provided
by distance. The races farthest from the stem (white) race traveled
farthest and degenerated most completely under the impact of distant
environments. Blumenbach's hierarchy not only challenged the
classifications but the rankings behind them, substituting other more
familiar rankings.
Caucasians would not have passed through America en route to
degenerating into Mongolians. (Blumenbach, like Herder and
Jefferson, suspected that American Indians stemmed from East
Asians.) Nor, of course, would Caucasians have passed through
Malaysia en route to Africa.
91 Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 2: 46-47, 50-51, Kehler
manuscript; ibid., 48-59, Addition. Hegel's description of Blumenbach's
views of racial classification by means of the angles of certain features
of skulls (ibid., 2: 51, Kehler manuscript, Petry translation) supports
Petry's conclusion that Hegel was referring to Blumenbach's De
Generis Humani Varietate Nativa (Gottirigen, 1775), ibid., 1: c. But
Hegel's reference to the fifth Malaysian race and his paraphrase of
Blumenbach's polemic against Camper leave no doubt that he had
used the third edition that appeared in 1795.
For the texts of both editions, see Johann Friedrich Blumenbach,
The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, trans.
Thomas Bendyshe (London: For the Anthropological Society by
Longman, Green, Roberts, & Green, 1865), reprinted as On the
Natural Varieties of Mankind (New York: Bergman Publishers, 1969).
Important material from the translation of the 1795 edition is
included in The Idea of Race, 27-37.
92 The only other scientific author whose views on race Hegel
discussed was Petrus Camper (1722-1789). Hegel's Philosophy of
Subjective Spirit, 2: 50-51, Kehler manuscript). From this Petry
identified Petrus as a source. See ibid., 1: xcix. But Hegel paraphrased
Blumenbach's critique of Camper and attributed nothing to Camper
that was not present in Blumenbach's critique. See The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, 235-237 (1795 text).
Camper's views only became widely known in Germany at about the
time Blumenbach questioned them. See Miriam Claude Meijer, Race
and Aesthetics in the Anthropology of Petrus Camper (1722-1789)
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 167-177.
93 "The Malaysian and the American races are less sharply
distinguished in their physical formation that the races just described.
The skin of the Malaysian is brown, that of the American copper
colored" (Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 2: 53, Addition, Petry's
61
translation). This remark suggests how much Hegel remained
committed to a Kantian approach to race for which color was a
defining criterion. Hegel also remarked that the Malaysian and the
American races "formed more an aggregate of infinitely diverse
particularities rather than a sharply distinguished race" (ibid., 2: 50).
94 Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophie des Geistes, Vorlesungen vol. 13
(Hamburg: Felix Miner, 1994), 39. Bernasconi points out Hegel's
inconsistent treatment of the number of races ("With What Must the
Philosophy of World History Begin? The Racial Basis for Hegel's
Eurocentrism," 195, n.40).
95 Ibid., 2: 53-63. Hegel repeated his negative judgment of
American Indians and concluded, "The Americans are thus obviously
not in a position to maintain themselves against the Europeans. The
Europeans will begin a new culture on the land conquered from them"
(Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 2: 62, Addition).
97 Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 2: 47-49.
99 Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 3: 56-57, Addition.
Application of Hegel's doctrines thus repeated-ironically but
unintentionally-Linnaeus's ninety-year-old claim that the white race
was unique in being governed by laws. See Carl von Linne, The GodGiven Order of Nature (1735), excerpted in Eze ed., Race and the
Enlightenment, 13.
100 "1m Ganzen zeigt sich die amerikanische Race als ein
schwacherea Geschlecht, das durch die Europaer erst hohe Bildung
erreicht hat" (Griesheim manuscript, Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective
Spirit, trans. and ed. M. J. Petry [Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing
Company, 1979], 2: 62). The meaning of Geschlecht is problematic.
Hegel did not class American Indians as a distinct biological species
tGattung), and he may have deployed Geschlecht in a nontechnical
sense, but he apparently mean to suggest a fundamental natural
difference greater than race.
101 Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 2: 60, Addition). Eze
claims that Hegel argued that non-Europeans were "less human than
Europeans because, to varying degrees, they are not fully aware of
themselves as conscious, historical beings" (The Enlightenment: A
Reader, 109). Hegel himself never characterized any race as nonhuman, but his characterization of American Indians came closest to
signaling a fundamental biological difference.
62

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The Southern Journal of Philosophy (200]) Vol.

Hegel, Race, Genocide

very differently from Africa. He described Africa as the victim of

To this Hegel added the coup de grace: "And although America

Hegel, Race, Genocide

natural weakness, Hegel remarked that seven million American

The phrase employed one of Hegel's favorite equivocating

before germ theories of contagion, his words could not have

Hegel, Race, Genocide

The idea of America as a weaker counterpart of the Old

For Hegel, Buffon's theories would have acquired further

Hegel, Race, Genocide

philosophy."59 He insisted that philosophy look for something

His indifference to physical causes explains why, unlike

(Later editions retained the account with only a minor

natural mind treated in Anthropology was part of "subjective

Hegel, Race, Genocide

the superior faculty of reason); and that such a search would be

On the other hand, he qualified this critique of race-based

Hegel spelled this out in lectures in 1825.

Although Hegel himself labored in this passage to maintain

Hegel, Race, Genocide

different climates. To explain the permanence of races in his

This taxonomy abandoned the chronological sequence implicit

In 1825 Hegel invoked Blumenbach as authority by name,

Accordingly, in lectures on philosophy of subjective spirit, he

Hegel, Race, Genocide

characterized Negroes as childish-a race that expressed

Philosophy of Right in Hegel scholarship, Hegel himself stopped

Hegel, Race, Genocide

Hegel, Race, Genocide

on the Philosophy of World History, 163. He employed similar words in

Hegel, Race, Genocide

Hegel, Race, Genocide

Hegel, Race, Genocide

Hegel, Race, Genocide

Ansehung der Freyheit as "radical variety of freedom" (ibid., 113).

Hegel, Race, Genocide

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