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Race
This volume provides an introduction to the concept of race within philosophy. It gives an overview of the most important contributions by continental philosophers to the understanding or race (focusing on Kant, Du Bois, Senghor, Sartre and Schutz) as well as presenting a general review of recent philosophical discussions.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 29, 2001
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April 14, 2026
A COLLECTION OF ‘CLASSIC’ TEXTS, WITH ORIGINAL ESSAYS
Robert Bernasconi (b. 1950) is an American philosopher who teaches at Pennsylvania State University; he has previously taught at the University of Memphis, and the University of Essex.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 2001 book, “To date, the philosophical discussion of race in the English-speaking world has been largely dominated by Anglo-American philosophy… Many philosophers, determined to interrogate the concept of race and its continuing effects, have come to recognize that a broader approach is made possible by drawing on the resources offered not only by biology, but also, for example, by history, literature, anthropology and sociology. This broader approach has long been practiced by certain philosophers within the traditions of existential phenomenology, structuralism, and post-structuralism. The aim of the present anthology is to make some of these resources more readily available. Classic texts have been coupled with original essays offering commentary and discussion of those texts as to make the volume particularly suitable for class use. Some readers may find it helps to read the second text of each pair first.” (Pg. 1)
Bernasconi states in his opening paper, “I begin by identifying … the main concern that called for the specific concept of ‘race’ that Kant introduced. I find it in the revival of the theory of polygenesis in 17th century Europe as a response to the growing awareness of the diversity of peoples across the world. Even though polygenesis had relatively few proponents and tended not to be presented with scientific rigor, it represented such a clear challenge to the Biblical narrative that Kant could not ignore it… I show that the concept of race played a part in a decisive debate conducted in Germany during the final decades of the 18th century. It was during this debate that the reality of race was contested for the first time. Today, where there is once again a philosophical debate being conducted about the reality of race, it is worth recalling the outlines of that first debate, not least because philosophical debates have a habit of replacing themselves.” (Pg. 12)
He continues, “My claim about Kant’s place in the construction of the scientific concept of race is not new. In the 1920s Walter Scheidt maintained that … Kant was the originator of ‘the first theory of race which really merits the name.’ … Kant’s role in establishing the concept of race has been widely acknowledged by historians of the concept of race. It is only philosophers who have ignored it… a great deal more work needs to be done, both to establish the contexts of Kant’s theory of race that have been treated largely in isolation from each other.” (Pg. 15)
He reproduces Kant’s essay, ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’ (1788), in which Kant states, “In a little essay on the human races, I have tried to demonstrate a … need, to proceed from a teleological principle where theory forsakes us. However, both of these cases include a demand to which understanding submits only reluctantly, and one which can give rise to misunderstanding.” (Pg. 37) “In ...1786, Councilor Georg Forster presented objections … concerning my previously expressed opinion about the concept and origin on HUMAN RACES. These objections, it seems to me, arose simply from a misunderstanding of the principle from which I began… Let us return… to the subject of the … entirely rejected distinction between the description of nature and natural history. If by the latter one wanted to understand a narrative account of natural events to which human reason cannot extend, e.g., the first appearance of plants and animals, then… this would be a science for gods, who were … themselves the creators, and not one for human beings. A science of natural history would, by contrast, concern itself with investigating the connection between certain properties of the things of nature and their causes in an earlier time in accordance with causal events that we… derive from the forces of nature as they present themselves to us, pursued back… only so far as permitted by analogy… Forster’s conjecture concerning the origin of the ‘Negro’ certainly does not belong to the description of nature, but instead only to natural history. This distinction lies in the nature of things…” (Pg. 39)
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting explains in her essay, “one Francophone woman intellectual in particular, played a pivotal role in shaping the philosophical commitments, indeed, the evolution of this literary movement in the 1930s. Paulette Nardal, as editor of ‘La Revue du monde noir’ and hostess of weekly salons at her residence outside Paris, was the veritable conduit through which the negritude poets passed… Nardal literally provided a cultured space (her apartment) and literary space… for male intellectual coming-of-age, as it was within the pages of the review and Nadal’s apartment that Damas, Césaire, and Senghor read and mingled with Harlem Renaissance writers… Paulette Nardal’s landmark essay, ‘Awakening of race consciousness among Black students’… marked the inauguration of three major and lasting components of negritude thought, that is, pan-Africanism, the affirmation of peoples of the African diaspora and their cultural productions, and the validation of African civilizations…
“Born in 1896 to a rather affluent black family in Francois, Martinique, Paulette Nardal… perfected her English in the British West Indies… In 1931, Paris became a safe haven of sorts for the African-American community fleeing racial oppression in America…. 1931 was also the year of the Exposition Coloniale … where blackness was showcased, celebrated, and simultaneously exoticized… the Sunday salons… [hosted by] Paulette Nardal … [is where] the hosts and their guest danced and discussed interracial and colonial problems, racist injustices, current events, examined the precarious position of men and women of color in France, and reflected on the attention to things black generated by the Exposition Coloniale.” (Pg. 99-100)
He reprints Sartre’s essay, ‘Black Orpheus’ (1948), in which he stated, “I should like to show that this poetry---which seems racial at first---is actually a hymn by everyone for everyone. In a word, I am talking now to whites, and I should like to explain to them what blacks already know: why it is necessarily through a poetic experience that the black, in his present condition, must first become conscious of himself; and, inversely, why black poetry in the French language is, in our time, the only great revolutionary poetry.” (Pg. 117)
He continues, “Like the white worker, the negro is a victim of the capitalist structure of our society… the black is a victim of it insofar as he is black and by virtue of being a colonized native of a deported African. And since he is oppressed within the confines of his race and because of it, he must first of all become conscious of his race. He must compel those who… have vainly tried, because he was a negro, to reduce him to the status of a beast, to recognize that he is a man. On this point, there is no means of evasion… a Jew---a white man among white men—can deny that he is a Jew… The negro cannot deny that he is negro, nor can he claim that he is part of some abstract colorless humanity: he is black. Thus he has his back against the wall of authenticity… he draws himself erect and proudly proclaims himself as black, in the face of the white man.” (Pg. 118) He adds, “the negro’s tireless descent into himself makes me think of Orpheus going to claim Eurydice from Pluto.” (Pg. 121)
He goes on, “Negritude is a shimmer of Being and of an ought-to-be; it makes you and you make it: both oath and passion. But there is something more serious: the negro, we have said, creates for himself an anti-racist racism… he desires the abolition of ethnic privileges, wherever they come from; he asserts his solidarity with the oppressed of every color. After that, the subjective, existential, ethnic notion of negritude ‘passes’… into the objective, positive and precise, notion of the proletariat.” (Pg. 137)
Jeremy Weate argues, “Fanon’s most significant philosophical influence is often taken to be the existential phenomenology of Sartre. In particular, the connection has often been made that Fanon’s thought is closely connected to issues of authenticity and bad-faith and the power of being-for-others. While Sartre’s shadow is undoubtedly cast across many pages of a text such as ‘Black Skin, White Masks,' it is important to register that Fanon has also engaged in a dialogue with Merleau-Ponty. I will claim that Merleau-Ponty’s inclusive notion of ‘world’ is both the point of criticism for Fanon and the source of the construction of his ideal of ‘disalienation.’” (Pg. 170)
This book will appeal to the philosophically-minded person who is also concerned with such issues as race and ethnicity.
Robert Bernasconi (b. 1950) is an American philosopher who teaches at Pennsylvania State University; he has previously taught at the University of Memphis, and the University of Essex.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 2001 book, “To date, the philosophical discussion of race in the English-speaking world has been largely dominated by Anglo-American philosophy… Many philosophers, determined to interrogate the concept of race and its continuing effects, have come to recognize that a broader approach is made possible by drawing on the resources offered not only by biology, but also, for example, by history, literature, anthropology and sociology. This broader approach has long been practiced by certain philosophers within the traditions of existential phenomenology, structuralism, and post-structuralism. The aim of the present anthology is to make some of these resources more readily available. Classic texts have been coupled with original essays offering commentary and discussion of those texts as to make the volume particularly suitable for class use. Some readers may find it helps to read the second text of each pair first.” (Pg. 1)
Bernasconi states in his opening paper, “I begin by identifying … the main concern that called for the specific concept of ‘race’ that Kant introduced. I find it in the revival of the theory of polygenesis in 17th century Europe as a response to the growing awareness of the diversity of peoples across the world. Even though polygenesis had relatively few proponents and tended not to be presented with scientific rigor, it represented such a clear challenge to the Biblical narrative that Kant could not ignore it… I show that the concept of race played a part in a decisive debate conducted in Germany during the final decades of the 18th century. It was during this debate that the reality of race was contested for the first time. Today, where there is once again a philosophical debate being conducted about the reality of race, it is worth recalling the outlines of that first debate, not least because philosophical debates have a habit of replacing themselves.” (Pg. 12)
He continues, “My claim about Kant’s place in the construction of the scientific concept of race is not new. In the 1920s Walter Scheidt maintained that … Kant was the originator of ‘the first theory of race which really merits the name.’ … Kant’s role in establishing the concept of race has been widely acknowledged by historians of the concept of race. It is only philosophers who have ignored it… a great deal more work needs to be done, both to establish the contexts of Kant’s theory of race that have been treated largely in isolation from each other.” (Pg. 15)
He reproduces Kant’s essay, ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’ (1788), in which Kant states, “In a little essay on the human races, I have tried to demonstrate a … need, to proceed from a teleological principle where theory forsakes us. However, both of these cases include a demand to which understanding submits only reluctantly, and one which can give rise to misunderstanding.” (Pg. 37) “In ...1786, Councilor Georg Forster presented objections … concerning my previously expressed opinion about the concept and origin on HUMAN RACES. These objections, it seems to me, arose simply from a misunderstanding of the principle from which I began… Let us return… to the subject of the … entirely rejected distinction between the description of nature and natural history. If by the latter one wanted to understand a narrative account of natural events to which human reason cannot extend, e.g., the first appearance of plants and animals, then… this would be a science for gods, who were … themselves the creators, and not one for human beings. A science of natural history would, by contrast, concern itself with investigating the connection between certain properties of the things of nature and their causes in an earlier time in accordance with causal events that we… derive from the forces of nature as they present themselves to us, pursued back… only so far as permitted by analogy… Forster’s conjecture concerning the origin of the ‘Negro’ certainly does not belong to the description of nature, but instead only to natural history. This distinction lies in the nature of things…” (Pg. 39)
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting explains in her essay, “one Francophone woman intellectual in particular, played a pivotal role in shaping the philosophical commitments, indeed, the evolution of this literary movement in the 1930s. Paulette Nardal, as editor of ‘La Revue du monde noir’ and hostess of weekly salons at her residence outside Paris, was the veritable conduit through which the negritude poets passed… Nardal literally provided a cultured space (her apartment) and literary space… for male intellectual coming-of-age, as it was within the pages of the review and Nadal’s apartment that Damas, Césaire, and Senghor read and mingled with Harlem Renaissance writers… Paulette Nardal’s landmark essay, ‘Awakening of race consciousness among Black students’… marked the inauguration of three major and lasting components of negritude thought, that is, pan-Africanism, the affirmation of peoples of the African diaspora and their cultural productions, and the validation of African civilizations…
“Born in 1896 to a rather affluent black family in Francois, Martinique, Paulette Nardal… perfected her English in the British West Indies… In 1931, Paris became a safe haven of sorts for the African-American community fleeing racial oppression in America…. 1931 was also the year of the Exposition Coloniale … where blackness was showcased, celebrated, and simultaneously exoticized… the Sunday salons… [hosted by] Paulette Nardal … [is where] the hosts and their guest danced and discussed interracial and colonial problems, racist injustices, current events, examined the precarious position of men and women of color in France, and reflected on the attention to things black generated by the Exposition Coloniale.” (Pg. 99-100)
He reprints Sartre’s essay, ‘Black Orpheus’ (1948), in which he stated, “I should like to show that this poetry---which seems racial at first---is actually a hymn by everyone for everyone. In a word, I am talking now to whites, and I should like to explain to them what blacks already know: why it is necessarily through a poetic experience that the black, in his present condition, must first become conscious of himself; and, inversely, why black poetry in the French language is, in our time, the only great revolutionary poetry.” (Pg. 117)
He continues, “Like the white worker, the negro is a victim of the capitalist structure of our society… the black is a victim of it insofar as he is black and by virtue of being a colonized native of a deported African. And since he is oppressed within the confines of his race and because of it, he must first of all become conscious of his race. He must compel those who… have vainly tried, because he was a negro, to reduce him to the status of a beast, to recognize that he is a man. On this point, there is no means of evasion… a Jew---a white man among white men—can deny that he is a Jew… The negro cannot deny that he is negro, nor can he claim that he is part of some abstract colorless humanity: he is black. Thus he has his back against the wall of authenticity… he draws himself erect and proudly proclaims himself as black, in the face of the white man.” (Pg. 118) He adds, “the negro’s tireless descent into himself makes me think of Orpheus going to claim Eurydice from Pluto.” (Pg. 121)
He goes on, “Negritude is a shimmer of Being and of an ought-to-be; it makes you and you make it: both oath and passion. But there is something more serious: the negro, we have said, creates for himself an anti-racist racism… he desires the abolition of ethnic privileges, wherever they come from; he asserts his solidarity with the oppressed of every color. After that, the subjective, existential, ethnic notion of negritude ‘passes’… into the objective, positive and precise, notion of the proletariat.” (Pg. 137)
Jeremy Weate argues, “Fanon’s most significant philosophical influence is often taken to be the existential phenomenology of Sartre. In particular, the connection has often been made that Fanon’s thought is closely connected to issues of authenticity and bad-faith and the power of being-for-others. While Sartre’s shadow is undoubtedly cast across many pages of a text such as ‘Black Skin, White Masks,' it is important to register that Fanon has also engaged in a dialogue with Merleau-Ponty. I will claim that Merleau-Ponty’s inclusive notion of ‘world’ is both the point of criticism for Fanon and the source of the construction of his ideal of ‘disalienation.’” (Pg. 170)
This book will appeal to the philosophically-minded person who is also concerned with such issues as race and ethnicity.
August 20, 2007
A collection of essays from authors over a wide range--Kant, Fanon, Judith Bulter... The later essays are fairly instructive in getting a sense of how continental philosophy orients itself with this deeply painful and historically laden 'concept'. I especially like the last two (by Linda Martin Alcoff and bernasconi) which took on a phenomenoligical account of the continuing felt experience of race and it's manifestations in habitual perceptions and bodily interactions despite the awareness of its social constructedness and claims of 'one world' and human rights (sort of like, 'we know what we are doing, yet we are still doing it.'0 Still, something about the form of philosophical discussions of race feels... off. I was left wanting.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews