[PEN-L:8696] Re: Re: (Fwd) Review of *Hegel and Marx After the Fallof Communism*

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

They don't call it the EnLIGHTenment for nothin'.


Charles Brown

Black is beautiful and intelligent.

>>> Mathew Forstater <forstate@xxxxxxxx> 06/30/99 04:14PM >>>
Hugh MacDougall, in his _Racial Myth in English History_ (1982, Harvest House),
writes that "Hegel led the way in identifying the process of universal history
with Germanic political thought and culture.  He asserted that the final stage of
history was reached with the development of Christian Europe and specifically
with the manifestation in his own time of the Germanic spirit." (p. 90).  "The
German spirit is the spirit of the new world." (Hegel, quoted in MacDougall, p.
90).

(For a discussion, see Marimba Ani, _Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of
European Cultural Thought and Behavior_, 1994, Africa World Press.)

But Hegel was not alone.  Racism abounds among all the major figures of the
european "enlightenment":

"It is impossible for us to suppose that these beings (Black people) should be
men; because if we supposed them to be men, one would begin to believe we
ourselves were not Christians." -Montesquieu, _Spirit of the Laws_

"The Negro race is a species of men as different from ours as the breed of
spaniels is from that of greyhounds.  The mucous membrane, or network, which
nature has spread between the muscles and the skin, is white in us and black or
copper-colored in them...If their understanding is not of a different nature from
ours, it is at least greatly inferior.  They are not capable of any great
application or association of ideas, and seemed formed neither for the advantages
nor the abuses of philosophy. -Voltaire, "The People of America"

"I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men
(for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the
whites.  There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white,
nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation.  No ingeno8us
manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences." -Hume, "Of National
Characteristics"

"Comparing them [Black people] by their faculties of memory, reason, and
imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in
reason much inferior...and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless and
anomolous...Never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the
level of plain naration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or
sculpture." -Jefferson, _Notes on Virginia_

"So fundamental is the difference between the two races of man, and it appears to
be as great in regard to mental capacities as in color." -Kant, _Observations on
the Feeling od the Beautiful and Sublime_

(quotes from _Prophecy Deliverance!_ by Cornel West)


Mat


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

>  I for one think that
> Hegel's view of freedom and history is not just an idealist but a
> nationalist and racialized one, despite the proclamation of universalism
> and 'our common nature.'