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In The History of the Race Idea: From Ray to Carus, Eric Voegelin places the rise of the race idea in the context of the development of modern philosophy. The history of the race idea, according to Voegelin, begins with the postChristian orientation toward a natural system of living forms. In the late seventeenth century, philosophy set about a new task--to oppose the devaluation of man's physical nature. By the middle of the eighteenth century the effort of philosophy was to place man, with his variety of physical manifestations throughout the world, within a systemic order of nature. Voegelin perceives the problem of race as the epitome of the difficulties presented by this new theoretical approach.

Part I covers the development of race theories from the English naturalist John Ray to Blumenbach and Kant. Voegelin, anticipating fairly recent genetic insights, explains that human beings must be seen as one speciesdifferent races must not be interpreted as emerging from separate species. In Part II, Voegelin discusses the evolution of the concepts of the body, the organism, and the person. The finite image of the person as a body-mind unit in which body is equal to mind in value provides the basis for Carl Gustav Carus' theory of race, the first significant racial ideology, in Voegelin's estimation.

Voegelin's complex analysis levels a scathing critique at Nazi pretensions. He writes: "Compared to its classical form, the current condition of race theory is one of decay. . . . [T]hese men, with no eyes for the brilliance of the German spirit, want to interfere in human relations and ultimately presume to explicate the German nation to us and to the world--an undertaking with evil consequences. . . . [The] great thinkers of the past would have been orrified at somebody finding in himself all the traits of the Nordic race with the help of a book on anthropology and then imagining himself to be somebody special who does not have to do anything else.

"Let us now take a look at contemporary race theory--we will see an image of destruction. . . . It is a nightmare to think that we should recognize the people whom we follow and whom we allow to come near us not by their looks, their words, and their gestures, but by their cranial index." Ultimately, Voegelin dismisses any attempt to reduce the human being--his existence, appearance, or actionsto a lower level: "Man as mind-body and historical substance cannot be 1explained' by an element that is less than man himself."

About the Author

Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) was one of the most original and influential philosophers of our time. Born in Cologne, Germany, he studied at the University of Vienna, where he became a professor of political science in the Faculty of Law. In 1938, he and his wife, fleeing Hitler, emigrated to the United States. They became American citizens in 1944. Voegelin spent much of his career at Louisiana State University, the University of Munich, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. During his lifetime he published many books and more than one hundred articles. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin will make available in a uniform edition all of Voegelin's major writings.

About the Editor

Klaus Vondung is professor of German literature at the University of Siegen.

Editor's Introduction xi
Foreword 1
Introduction 3
§1. Primal Images and Primal Ways of Seeing 3
§2. Thought Images and Types 12
§3. History and the Present 18
PART 1
SPECIES AND RACE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
1. Exposition of the Species Problem 29
§1. Linnaeus' Concept of Species 29
§2. The Natural Method (Ray) 31
§3. Natural System and Scholastic System (Ray to Kant) 34
§4. The Essence (Ray to Goethe) 38
§5. Further Illumination of the Species Problem (Ray) 41
2. Man's Position in the System of Nature 44
§1. Buffon 45
§2. Linnaeus 50
3. Travelogues 54
4. The Classification of Races: Buffon 57
§1. Espèce and variété 57
§2. The Norm and the Exotic 58
§3. Race 60
§4. Causes of Differences Among the Races 61
§5. The Unified Nature of Man 63
5. The Classification of Races: Herder 66
6. The Classification of Races: Blumenbach and Kant 73
7. On the History of the Word Race 80
PART II
THE INTERNALIZATION OF BODY AND PERSON
A. THE INTERNALIZATION OF THE BODY
8. Preformation and Epigenesis 93
9. The Organism and the Animal in Itself: Wolff's Theoria Generationis 99
§ 1. Vis essentialis and solidescibilitas 99
§2. Conception as a Borderline Case of Nourishment 101
§3. The Word Organism in the Sense of Mechanism ;
Preliminaries for the Change in Meaning 102
§4. Preexistence of the Animal in Itself桵echanistic
and Animalistic Functions 103
§5. Summarizing Characterization 105
10. Reinterpretation of Mechanism as Organism 107
§1. Leibniz 107
§2. Oken 111
11. Infinite Series and Finitization 115
§1. Buffon 117
§2. Leibniz 119
12. Inner Form and Formative Drive 122
§1. Inner Form (Buffon) 122
§2. The Formative Drive (Blumenbach) 123
13. The Concept of the Organism in the Critique of Judgment 127
14. The Unfolding of the World of Organic Forms 131
§ 1. The Diversity of Living Forms as a Real Continuum
of Reason (Leibniz) 133
§2. The Diversity of Living Forms Under the Regulative
Idea of the Continuum (Kant) 135
§3. The Transcendent Factual Order of the Series
(Herder, Goethe) 137
§4. The Immanent Factual Order of the Series (Kant) 140
§5. Life as Primary Phenomenon 142
B. THE INTERNALIZATION OF THE PERSON
15. Immortality of the Person and Perfection of Generic Reason 147
16. The Problem of the Finite Person; Specialization by the
Division of Labor; the Elite and the Masses 154
17. The Person of Goethe as Ideal; Schiller's Letters
on the Aesthetic Education of Man 159
18. Wilhelm von Humboldt's Concept of Individuality;
The Force of Spirit 164
19. Goethe's Person in the Work of Carus;
The State of Being Well-Born 169
20. Carus' Race Theory 173
Index 181
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