CCD international seminars: The Colour of Equality: Race and Common Humanity in Enlightenment Thought

Devin J. Vartija is assistant professor of history at Utrecht University and a former post-doctoral fellow at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. In his talk he will present his lates book on the concept of race in enlightenment thought (https://www.pennpress.org/9780812253191/the-color-of-equality/). Enlightenment thinkers used physical features to categorize humanity into novel "racial" groups in a discourse that was imbued with Eurocentric aesthetic and moral judgments. Simultaneously, however, these very same thinkers politicized equality by putting it to new uses, such as a vitriolic denunciation of slavery and inhumane treatment that was grounded in the nascent philosophy of human rights. Vartija contends that the tension between Enlightenment ideas of race and equality can best be explained by these thinkers' attempt to provide a naturalistic account of humanity, including both our physical and moral attributes. Enlightenment racial classification fits into the novel inclusion of humanity in histories of nature, while the search for the origins of morality in social experience alone lent equality a normative authority it had not previously possessed.

Zoom: https://ju-se.zoom.us/j/66396707646