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Post by rmarks1 on Feb 27, 2019 8:52:48 GMT -5
Another good article from Aero.
Bob
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2019 7:01:57 GMT -5
That article makes a pretty big mistake right from the start. The claim is not that the Enlightenment invented racism, but that it invented "scientific" racism, i.e. racism supported by scientific or pseudo-scientific claims and worldviews.
Second of all, the author makes a very problematic argument: That even though many Enlightenment figures are on the record of being racist or even outright endorsing slavery to some degree or another, it does not follow that "the Enlightenment" was doing any of this, because the ideas of the Enlightenment are to be seen as distinct as separate from the thoughts and deeds of any factually existing Enlightenment figure.
This argument is based on an unspoken, very specific philosophical assumption: That the Enlightenment, as an intellectual movement, exists apart from, and independently of, any particular figure or thinker that has been categorized as part of the "Enlightenment".
Why is this a problem? Because the logical conclusion is that we can maintain certain positions as "of the Enlightenment" regardless of how many, or how few, actual Enlightenment figures were actually espousing said position. Which, in turn, means that we can attach any position we want on "the Enlightenment" regardless of how many of its supposed members supported such a position, or even regardless of whether any of them supported it!
It renders the entire debate completely absurd, and the article's long list of examples irrelevant; if we buy into the author's argument, then doesn't matter what Jefferson or Kant or any other figure said or did - "the Enlightenment" means whatever we want it to mean!
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Post by rmarks1 on Feb 28, 2019 18:03:34 GMT -5
That article makes a pretty big mistake right from the start. The claim is not that the Enlightenment invented racism, but that it invented "scientific" racism, i.e. racism supported by scientific or pseudo-scientific claims and worldviews. Actually, the author does claim that "scientific" racism existed before the Enlightenment: "We can also find early attempts to categorize humanity into racial groups. Certain aspects of human physiognomy, associated with specific races in reality or imagination, are frequently reviled. Writing in the ninth century, Ibn Qutayba says that blacks “are ugly and misshapen, because they live in a hot country. The heat overcooks them in the womb, and curls their hair.” This racial theory was undergirded by pseudo-scientific reasoning: a temperate climate was thought to be optimal, whereas cold causes whites to be “undercooked” and excessive heat “overcooks” blacks. Said al-Andalusi similarly dismisses both Northerners and Southerners as people “who are more like beasts than like men.” Another author, Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadani, praises the Iraqi people for being neither too white nor too black: “nor are they overdone in the womb until they are burned, so the child comes out something between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions, such as the Zanj, the Ethiopians, and other blacks who resemble them [emphasis mine].” Where does the author do that?I re-read the article and I can't find that argument. What I did find are places where the author mentions several Enlightenment figures who were anti-slavery (Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, and Adam Smith). And this: "When Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary of the English Language in 1755, there was no entry for abolition. Abolitionism was a novelty that the Enlightenment introduced, not an inheritance from earlier centuries." I couldn't find that argument anywhere. What the author did write is that there was a noticeable increase in anti-slavery attitudes during the early Enlightenment. Do you have any specific examples of where the author made that claim? I couldn't find any. What I did find were those above quotes and the claim that the Abolition movement had its beginnings in the Enlightenment. Bob
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2019 0:11:14 GMT -5
"the Abolition movement had its beginnings in the Enlightenment" - what does that mean? Does it refer to any particular indivudual that happens to be part of the Enlightenment? If so, which individual? Why isn't the author naming names?
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Post by rmarks1 on Mar 1, 2019 21:05:23 GMT -5
"the Abolition movement had its beginnings in the Enlightenment" - what does that mean? Does it refer to any particular indivudual that happens to be part of the Enlightenment? If so, which individual? Why isn't the author naming names? "The abolitionist movement only started in the late 18th century, however, when English and American Quakers began to question the morality of slavery. James Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery, banning it in the Province of Georgia on humanitarian grounds, and arguing against it in Parliament, and eventually encouraging his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to vigorously pursue the cause. Soon after his death in 1785, Sharp and More united with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect.[1]The Somersett Case in 1772, in which a fugitive slave was freed with the judgement that slavery did not exist under English common law, helped launch the British movement to abolish slavery. Though anti-slavery sentiments were widespread by the late 18th century, the colonies and emerging nations that used slave labour continued to do so: Dutch, French, British, Spanish and Portuguese territories in the West Indies, South America, and the Southern United States. After the American Revolution established the United States, northern states, beginning with Pennsylvania in 1780, passed legislation during the next two decades abolishing slavery, sometimes by gradual emancipation. Massachusetts ratified a constitution that declared all men equal; freedom suits challenging slavery based on this principle brought an end to slavery in the state. Vermont, which existed as an unrecognized state from 1777 to 1791, abolished adult slavery in 1777." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbolitionismBob
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2019 15:18:11 GMT -5
Quakers are a religion, not a rational philosophy, so how a religious movement be part of "the Enlightenment"?
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Post by rmarks1 on Mar 2, 2019 16:47:46 GMT -5
Quakers are a religion, not a rational philosophy, so how a religious movement be part of "the Enlightenment"?
I gave plenty of other examples that did not involve Quakers. I take it that you had no objection to them as examples.
Religions have been around for thousands of years. Don't you find it interesting that they only started to be seriously opposed to slavery during the Enlightenment?
Bob
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2019 22:48:43 GMT -5
Quakers are a religion, not a rational philosophy, so how a religious movement be part of "the Enlightenment"? I gave plenty of other examples that did not involve Quakers. I take it that you had no objection to them as examples.
Religions have been around for thousands of years. Don't you find it interesting that they only started to be seriously opposed to slavery during the Enlightenment? Bob
That's a complex question fallacy. You have not demonstrated that religions only started opposing slavery during the Enlightenment. The Kingdom of France outlawed slavery in the early 14th century, but re-introduced it 300 years later when slave labor in the Americas became profitable during the early Enlightenment. As for America, the King of Spain forbade the enslavement of Native Americans in 1542, at the urges of Dominican missionaries who were appalled by conditions in the early colonies. The enslavement of Africans, of course, picked up after that.
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Post by rmarks1 on Mar 5, 2019 14:46:36 GMT -5
I gave plenty of other examples that did not involve Quakers. I take it that you had no objection to them as examples. Religions have been around for thousands of years. Don't you find it interesting that they only started to be seriously opposed to slavery during the Enlightenment? That's a complex question fallacy. You have not demonstrated that religions only started opposing slavery during the Enlightenment. The Kingdom of France outlawed slavery in the early 14th century, but re-introduced it 300 years later when slave labor in the Americas became profitable during the early Enlightenment. It's not a fallacy. And the "Kingdom" of France is not a religion. Which means that slavery wasn't effectively abolished, doesn't it? Before the 18th century, no effort to abolish slavery had permanent success. By contrast, the anti-slavery movement in the 18th century was no flash-in-the-pan. Within about 150 years, slavery was abolished in Britain, France,Russia (the Russian serfs were no better than slaves; they could be bought and sold), and the USA. Bob
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2019 0:54:32 GMT -5
You're asking me to answer a complex question with a simple yes/no answer. Catholic Christianity is definitely a religion. You're shifting goalposts. You were originally claiming that religions "only started to be seriously opposed to slavery during the Enlightenment", which I refuted with evidence to the contrary. So far, your only examples of "the Enlightenment" have been religious fundamentalists. Are you claiming that "the Enlightenment" was made up of religious fundamentalists and the numerous slavers and slaveholders (such as Locke, Jefferson etc.) were not 'true' Enlightenment thinkers?
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Post by rmarks1 on Mar 6, 2019 16:28:47 GMT -5
You're asking me to answer a complex question with a simple yes/no answer. The question was: "Religions have been around for thousands of years. Don't you find it interesting that they only started to be seriously opposed to slavery during the Enlightenment?" Where did I say that you had to give a simple yes or no answer? I didn't. But let's rephrase it as a statement: "It is interesting that religions only started to be seriously opposed to slavery during the Enlightenment." Yes. But the Kingdom of France is not and never was a religion. And it is different from the Catholic Church. The evidence you offered consisted of a few half-hearted attempts that ended after a few years. The effects of the Enlightenment to end slavery were permanent for the first time in history. Fair enough. Here is another example from Steven Pinker: "As the historian Katie Kelaidis put it in The Enlightenment’s Cynical Critics, “Millennia of great moral teachers sought to come to terms with slavery and to mitigate its inhumanity, but no one—not Jesus, not Buddha, not Muhammad, not Socrates—considered the complete liberation of all slaves prior to the Enlightenment. … The Enlightenment was not the inventor of slavery, but it was the inventor of the notion that no one should be held as a slave.”
Here is a link to the article that Pinker quoted:
Bob
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2019 18:18:10 GMT -5
The evidence you offered consisted of a few half-hearted attempts that ended after a few years. The effects of the Enlightenment to end slavery were permanent for the first time in history. The United Kingdom, one of the first countries to permanently abolish slavery, didn't actually do so until 1833. France abolished slavery permamently in 1848. Most European countries ended slavery later than that. So even if the permanent abolition of slavery had been an effect of "the Enlightenment" (which you haven't shown to be the case by the way), that didn't actually come to pass until the Age of Enlightenment was already over. And after the abolition of slavery, both Europe and America still employed corvée (a form of forced labor) in their colonies and overseas dependencies, so the Enlightenment clearly had no effect on the general sentiment towards forced labor.
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Post by rmarks1 on Mar 6, 2019 23:06:47 GMT -5
The evidence you offered consisted of a few half-hearted attempts that ended after a few years. The effects of the Enlightenment to end slavery were permanent for the first time in history. The United Kingdom, one of the first countries to permanently abolish slavery, didn't actually do so until 1833. France abolished slavery permamently in 1848. Most European countries ended slavery later than that. So even if the permanent abolition of slavery had been an effect of "the Enlightenment" (which you haven't shown to be the case by the way), that didn't actually come to pass until the Age of Enlightenment was already over. You present two false arguments here. First you assume that for an idea to have an effect on society, the idea must take root immediately, or in a short period of time. But the Enlightenment was not the Age of the Internet. There was no Facebook or Twitter back then. Ideas took time to spread through societies and be adopted. The fact still remains that there was no banning of slavery until after Enlightenment ideas of freedom had spread. Your second mistake is to simply declare that I haven't shown that to be the case without giving any supporting argument. I could simply reply that you haven't shown that I haven't shown that. Were those forced laborers ever considered to be the permanent property of someone? Bob
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2019 12:35:31 GMT -5
Your second mistake is to simply declare that I haven't shown that to be the case without giving any supporting argument. I could simply reply that you haven't shown that I haven't shown that. That's like asking me for evidence that an invisible teacup isn't orbiting Earth right at this moment. You are asking me for evidence of absence, i.e. for a positive proof of a negative claim. The proper way to reply to my claim would be to give supporting evidence that you did, in fact demonstrate what you claim you demonstrated. I try to come up with support in favor of my claims whenever I can. You really don't expect me to come up with evidence for your claims as well, do you?
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Post by rmarks1 on Mar 8, 2019 17:58:46 GMT -5
Your second mistake is to simply declare that I haven't shown that to be the case without giving any supporting argument. I could simply reply that you haven't shown that I haven't shown that. That's like asking me for evidence that an invisible teacup isn't orbiting Earth right at this moment. You are asking me for evidence of absence, i.e. for a positive proof of a negative claim. The proper way to reply to my claim would be to give supporting evidence that you did, in fact demonstrate what you claim you demonstrated. I try to come up with support in favor of my claims whenever I can. You really don't expect me to come up with evidence for your claims as well, do you?
Red Herring.
You still haven't presented any evidence that my point isn't valid. All we have is your unsupported claim.
And you said nothing about the other two points I raised.
Bob
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ppnl
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Post by ppnl on Apr 10, 2019 1:22:42 GMT -5
mcans,
The invention of scientific racism was a good thing. In ancient history, racism was so ingrained and instinctive that it was invisible. You could not effectively fight something that was so instinctive as to be invisible.
The enlightenment was not itself pro or anti-slavery. It is only a set of tools that made slavery visible. It was a flashlight. Now that slavery could be seen it had to be defended with science and reason. As bad and even evil as those defenses were they only served to make racism and slavery more visible and more vulnerable to the tools of the enlightenment. It was a long process but it could not have happened without those enlightenment tools.
I don't think the enlightenment was so much a political or philosophical movement as a phase change that happened once knowledge and wealth reached a critical mass.
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Post by rmarks1 on Apr 12, 2019 13:23:07 GMT -5
mcans, The invention of scientific racism was a good thing. In ancient history, racism was so ingrained and instinctive that it was invisible. You could not effectively fight something that was so instinctive as to be invisible. The enlightenment was not itself pro or anti-slavery. It is only a set of tools that made slavery visible. It was a flashlight. Now that slavery could be seen it had to be defended with science and reason. As bad and even evil as those defenses were they only served to make racism and slavery more visible and more vulnerable to the tools of the enlightenment. It was a long process but it could not have happened without those enlightenment tools. I don't think the enlightenment was so much a political or philosophical movement as a phase change that happened once knowledge and wealth reached a critical mass.
Interesting argument. I like it.
Bob
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