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Michael A. Rosenthal

‘The black, scabby Brazilian’

Some thoughts on race and early
modern philosophy

Abstract When Spinoza described his dream of a ‘black, scabby Brazilian’,

was the image indicative of a larger pattern of racial discrimination? Should
today’s readers regard racist comments and theories in the texts of 17th-
and 18th-century philosophers as reflecting the prejudices of their time or
as symptomatic of philosophical discourse? This article discusses whether
a critical discussion of race is itself a form of racism and whether supposedly
minor prejudices are evidence of a deeper social pathology. Given historical
hindsight, we may read such discussion of race in early modern philosophy
as a sign of the incipient struggle against prejudice, a sign that we can
recognize and use in the struggles of our own time.
Key words colonialism · the concept of haunting · essentialism ·
David Hume · Immanuel Kant · racism · Benedict Spinoza

Introduction
In 1664 Benedict Spinoza received a letter from his friend Pieter Balling,
in which the latter, who was grieving from the recent loss of his child,
reported that he had experienced strange premonitions of the little boy’s
death, such as hearing ‘groans such as he uttered when he was ill and
just before he died’, when the boy was still healthy (p. 125).1 Spinoza
replied that he doubted the groans were real and that it was possible to
imagine the groans ‘more effectively and vividly’ than to hear them in
fact. To illustrate the phenomenon, Spinoza recalls a dream he himself
had the previous winter:
When one morning just at dawn I awoke from a very deep dream, the images
which had come to me in the dream were present before my eyes as vividly

PHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL CRITICISM • vol 31 no 2 • pp. 211–221

PSC
Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/0191453705050608
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Philosophy & Social Criticism 31 (2)
as if they had been real things, in particular the image of a black, scabby
Brazilian [cujusdam nigri, & scabiosi Brasiliani] whom I had never seen
before. This image disappeared for the most part when, to make a diver-
sion, I fixed my gaze on a book or some other object; but as soon as I again
turned my eyes away from such an object while gazing at nothing in
particular, the same image of the same Ethiopian [Æthiopis]2 kept appear-
ing with the same vividness again and again until it gradually disappeared
from sight. (Letters, pp. 125–6)
Spinoza goes on to explain the differences between these two incidents.
While his friend’s image arose out of mental causes, specifically the
intense emotional identification with his son, Spinoza’s dream image had
corporeal causes, more specifically some sort of delirium. In the friend’s
case, then, it could be an omen, while his case it could not.
While I will return later to Spinoza’s explanation of the mechanism
of his dream, and dispute his interpretation of it, right now I want to
use it to highlight something of which apparently he was not aware: the
obvious racial aspect of the dream. He makes a point of adding the
adjective ‘black’ to his description of the man and, lest the reader think
he was indicating nationality with the term ‘Brazilian’, the second refer-
ence to ‘Ethiopian’ makes it clear that he is not. Moreover, the use of
‘scabby’ emphasizes the ugliness and sickness of the being that appears
to frighten him. Just as his friend’s auditory hallucinations of his now
dead child’s groans are obviously distressing so also is Spinoza’s visual
image of this diseased, black man.
Not much has been said of this image in the literature on Spinoza.
And that is perhaps not surprising. There does not seem to be much of
philosophical significance that rides on the content of the example
itself.3 However, recently there has developed a literature that is critical
of early modern philosophers and their ideas of race. These critics argue
that such apparently ad hoc examples are really symptomatic of a larger
pattern of racial discrimination. Some, such as Charles W. Mills in his
recent book The Racial Contract, go farther and claim that these texts
help produce the racial discrimination that they exemplify. So we arrive
at the question of this article: How do (and how ought) modern readers
make sense of racist comments and theories in the texts of 17th- and
18th-century philosophers? Some view them as reflecting prejudices of
the age, which are not central to the philosophical projects of the
thinkers in question. Others argue that they are symptomatic of a funda-
mental malady of philosophical discourse. I shall focus on the latter
claim and consider two related varieties of it, one that argues that the
absence of a critical discussion of race is itself a form of racism, and the
other that argues that supposedly minor prejudices are in fact evidence
of a racist theory. I shall evaluate these criticisms in light of their
historical and philosophical claims and suggest that another approach
to the texts is possible.
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Rosenthal: ‘The black, scabby Brazilian’
Part 1
Until now the dominant way of dealing with what we would now term
as racist views has been essentially to excuse them. They are minor and
do not impact on the philosophically significant works; they reflect
assumptions of the time to which everyone was subject. Moreover, the
work of the same philosophers has resources that would address these
very defects. This certainly could be (and has been) said about Spinoza,
but let me give two further examples to illustrate this point.
First, the philosopher David Hume added a note to his essay ‘Of
National Character’, which appeared in the second edition of his Essays:
Moral, Political and Literary (1754), which begins as follows: ‘I am apt
to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites. There
scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any
individual eminent either in action or speculation’ (p. 208).4 Those
willing to excuse Hume’s racism might point to the following consider-
ations. This essay, although Hume worked on it and revised it more
than once, seems to be the only place in Hume’s considerable work in
which he makes such a statement. And in the essay itself the racism that
Hume espouses is not based on a modern theory of inherent biological
inferiority but rather exclusively on environmental factors, which he
uses to denigrate the morals of many other (mostly southern) nations
as well. Perhaps surprisingly, the inferiority of the Negroes does not
justify systematic discrimination against them, for elsewhere in the same
volume Hume condemns slavery in no uncertain terms.5 Moreover,
Hume’s moral philosophy, which is based on a sympathy for others,
recognizes that we tend to favor those who are closest to us, and that
we must constantly revise our conceptions and expand our circle of
concern to those whom we previously did not know or care about. So,
while Hume, like many of this time, makes racist comments, the modern
reader must balance them against his progressive philosophical and
moral system.
The work of Immanuel Kant is even more clearly riven by this con-
tradiction. On the one hand, Kant’s moral philosophy is characterized
by the defense of individual autonomy based on the principle of the
categorical imperative, in which an action is judged to be right only if
its motive can become a universal law of nature.6 For example, it is
wrong to break a promise because, if the motive of doing so (e.g. to
benefit oneself or someone else) were to become a law of nature, then
the very institution of promising would become meaningless. Kant’s
second formulation of the categorical imperative is even clearer: act so
that you treat yourself or others always as an end never merely as a
means (p. 38). Slavery, for instance, is immoral according to this formu-
lation because the masters are not respecting the autonomous goals of
the individual slaves but are treating these people merely as means to
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Philosophy & Social Criticism 31 (2)
their own ends. It hardly seems possible that Kant could be accused of
racism.
However, Kant, far more than Hume, develops and defends racist
ideas in his writings, particularly in those devoted to anthropology and
physical geography. In a work that predates his most important philo-
sophical achievements, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and
the Sublime, written in 1763, in the chapter, ‘On National Character-
istics’, he first quotes Hume’s comments as authoritative and then deigns
to add some of his own.7 Here is a remarkable passage from this work,
in the midst of a subsequent discussion devoted to demonstrating the
inferiority of women. Kant first quotes Father Labat’s report that ‘a
Negro carpenter, whom he [Labat] reproached for haughty treatment
toward his wives, answered: “You whites are indeed fools, for first you
make great concessions to your wives, and afterward you complain
when they drive you mad.”’ Kant then comments, ‘And it might be that
there were something in this which perhaps deserved to be considered;
but in short, this fellow was quite black from head to foot, a clear proof
that what he said was quite stupid’ (p. 113). Quite remarkably, in the
extensive introduction to this essay, written in 1959, although the trans-
lator notes that Kant’s view of women would be considered ‘intolera-
bly low’ today, he completely passes over the obvious racial prejudice.
It seems that the commentator can ignore these disagreeable parts of the
essay because, for one thing, no doubt he did not expect anyone in his
audience to be offended, and because, for another, as we see in the case
of women, some of whom presumably were in the audience, he assumes
that these are the unfortunate intrusion of the prejudices of the age and
they should not detract us from discussion of the real philosophical
issues, such as the beautiful and sublime.

Part 2
In the meantime, however, the audience has come to include a few
people of color who are not so easily distracted from these annoying
sentences. Emmanuel C. Eze disputes readings of Kant and Mill that
relegate or even ignore these comments altogether as supposedly minor
occurrences, products of the time, which should be ignored. He instead
tries to show that their racial ideas play a central role in the construc-
tion of their properly philosophical systems. Charles W. Mills, in his
already well-known book The Racial Contract, builds on Eze’s work
(among others) to claim that the dual nature of these philosopher’s
writings is not a contradiction but itself constitutes part of a systematic
racist program that has endured for centuries. Both argue that what
seem to be minor points about race reveal a deeper social pathology
that influences the very core of their philosophical positions.
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In two detailed studies, Eze disputes the reading of Hume and Kant
that dismisses the significance of their racist comments. He argues in
both cases that the philosophical view is deeply influenced by the racial
anthropology. In the case of Hume he points out that the frequent
revisions to the damning footnote can only mean ‘that the ideas
expressed therein were important to the author and, significantly, to the
arguments of “Of National Characters”’ (692). Eze argues that Hume
classified the ‘Negro mind’ as inferior – e.g. he deemed it incapable of
‘arts and sciences’ (p. 693) – on the basis of his philosophical psychol-
ogy: ‘Hume would not deny all mental, psychological, or cognitive
functions to the Negro; he simply insists that in comparison to the white
the Negro is naturally endowed with a passive and therefore inferior
level of mind’ (p. 694). Eze concludes that Hume’s racist comments are
not separate from his mature philosophical system and that the analysis
of these so-called national characteristics was central to the development
of Hume’s system (p. 698).
Eze analyzes Kant’s ideas of race similarly. He notes that Kant con-
tinued to write and lecture in physical geography for over 40 years and
developed his ideas on race continually over that time (pp. 200–1).8 He
argues that Kant did not separate his thinking about race from his
properly philosophical writings, but rather used it to develop the idea
of ‘man’ at the very center of his moral and political philosophy (p. 213).
If blacks lack the full mental capacities of whites, and in particular do
not possess the same degree of reason; and if humanity is defined on the
basis of rational character; then clearly only whites are truly human,
meaning that only they are moral subjects, bearers of political rights, and
capable of making fine aesthetic judgments (p. 221). Eze claims that Kant
goes beyond a mere empirical classification of race, such as one espoused
by Linnaeus, and posits race as a transcendental category (p. 225).9 What
this means is that race has become implicit in the moral conception of
humanity itself, that is, it defines who can actually become fully human
as a goal of moral action. In the case of both philosophers Eze shows
that the apparent universal conception of ‘man’ that is central to both
their systems ought to be parsed in light of their hierarchical and racist
ordering of human types. The ‘European’ is the true form of ‘Man’, and
it is essentially impossible for those who are low enough down on the
hierarchy that governs the distinction between national characteristics
ever to achieve what the others have as their birthright (p. 232).
Charles Mills situates these claims about specific philosophers in a
larger historical narrative. He reminds us: ‘the golden age of contract
theory (1650–1800) overlapped with the growth of a European capi-
talism whose development was stimulated by the voyages of exploration
that increasingly gave the contract a racial subtext’ (p. 63).10 The social
contract, which defended autonomy, equal rights, and freedom, excluded,
as we have seen, those who were subject to colonial expansion. Mills
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Philosophy & Social Criticism 31 (2)
calls the development of ideas of racial inferiority, and the actions that
were justified on this premise, the ‘Racial Contract’. So if we take into
account the racialized conception of humanity, we can see that the racial
theories put forward by philosophers were not merely incidental to the
subjugation of other peoples but rather instrumental in its accomplish-
ment. Mills claims that ‘[t]he Racial Contract is thus the truth of the
social contract’ (p. 64). The very silence of modern readers and com-
mentators regarding these racist texts is not a matter of forgetfulness,
insensitivity, or the unfortunate result of poor historical training, but
itself a constitutive part of the discourse. Both the texts themselves and
the modern reading of the texts undermine the supposed egalitarian
moral and political ideals they proclaim and serve to bolster a pur-
poseful ideological blindness to the reality of racism.

Part 3
These critiques are a necessary corrective to the distorted view that either
ignores the racist theories of early modern philosophers or tries to
separate them from the philosophy proper. However, they suffer from
several problems of their own.
First, their readings of the specific texts do not always seem to estab-
lish the larger point they want to make. Eze’s work certainly convinces
us that Kant did qualify his understanding of human nature in light of
his racial distinctions: for him, to be truly human meant to attain those
qualities that Europeans embodied. Indeed, Kant is quite open about the
superiority of European civilization. Nonetheless, superiority of one
group over another does not necessarily imply that the inferior groups
are inhuman. Eze neglects to mention Kant’s theory of human progress
through which backward peoples are improved through commerce with
more advanced groups.11 Of course, this only seems to further justify
colonialism.12 But the point is simply that the moral concept of humanity
does not necessarily exclude those whom anthropology deems inferior.13
Hume likewise suggests that race is the product of environmental factors,
which might be ameliorated. His stand against slavery would imply that
the subjugation of those who are inferior is not justified. And even if
Kant does conceive of race as a moral defect it would only put those
subject to this defect in a rather large group of immoral beings prone to
the same desires and limitations, a group not necessarily defined by race.
Second, even if we grant Eze his point, and I think it is a signifi-
cant one, precisely because of the amazing modern blindness to the
racism of the texts, then we might still claim that one could cure the
texts of their blight. At best, it seems to me, Eze has demonstrated a
contingent relationship between the conception of human nature and
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Rosenthal: ‘The black, scabby Brazilian’
the hierarchical classification of race. I would argue that Eze conflates
the use of Hume’s philosophy to justify racism with the idea that racism
is foundational to his thinking. For all that he insists on it, Hume’s racist
footnote is inconsistent with the argument of his essay as a whole. Eze
shows that Hume uses his philosophy to arrive at his racist conclusion
but not that the philosophy necessarily had to arrive at this conclusion.
Likewise, it may be the case that Kant denied a transcendent humanity
to the African, but his grounds for doing so rest on an empirical infer-
ence, which can be questioned. The modern reader ought not to ignore
these texts or simply condemn them, but rather attempt to purify the
moral concepts of these racial concepts and expand the conception of
humanity to include those who had previously been excluded from it.
Third, it strikes me that both Eze and Mills either implicitly or
explicitly make use of the enlightenment values that they claim are hope-
lessly tainted by racism. If they want to argue that the history of racism
is wrong precisely because it denies freedom and equality to those who
have been subjugated, then they are confirming the point just made –
namely, that these concepts could be purged of their racist origins and
interpreted in a truly egalitarian fashion.14
Fourth, both critics rely on a common argument against essential-
ism, which tries to show that claims made in the name of some uni-
versal ideal in fact are interpreted (and acted upon) in light of some
particular interest that masquerades as universal. Feminists have now
long argued that ‘humanity’ really means ‘white male’ and does not
include women.15 Critical race theorists, such as Eze and Mills, make
the same move in their analyses and argue that ‘humanity’ either
excludes non-whites or places them irremediably low on the ladder of
development. However, the anti-essentialist arguments, which they
proffer as an alternative, suffer from an equally problematic history.
In fact, it could be argued that the anthropology of Kant’s great
18th-century critic, Herder, which argued that there was no common
origin of humankind, but rather developed the idea of polygenesis into
the distinctively romantic view that each people or Volk had its unique
culture and destiny, is the forebear of modern oppression and extermi-
nation.16 To claim otherwise would be to idealize the history of modern
anti-essentialism in the same way as they claim their opponents have
done with the history of universalist essentialism.

Part 4
The first approach to these texts – to separate the racism from the phil-
osophy – suffers from naïveté at best and is perhaps guilty of promul-
gating racism at worst. The second approach – to point out the racism
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Philosophy & Social Criticism 31 (2)
inscribed in the heart of the philosophical system – strikes me as anach-
ronistic in that it reads these texts from hundreds of years ago and eval-
uates them with modern sensibilities. Moreover, in the attempt to criticize
the font of ‘universalism’ it tends to smooth out the internal contradic-
tions among the various texts. The difficulties of both interpretative
strategies arise, I think, from a problem at the heart of the history of
philosophy itself: the enterprise is historical and yet philosophical. We
care about the ideas because they help us to think. As Foucault puts it,
we ought to be writing a history of the present. But that does not mean
that we simply project our views and values on the past. In fact, it is by
respecting their difference, which by definition must bear some relation
to us, that we learn from them. Is there another way to understand these
texts, one that does not ignore the racism but one that also recognizes
their historical difference and emancipatory potential?
Now let us return to text with which we began, Spinoza’s letter.
Remember that Spinoza concludes that his friend Balling’s auditory hal-
lucination of his child’s groans was indeed an omen of the impending
illness, because it was based on an intimate knowledge of the child,17
while his dream of the black, scabby Brazilian was not, because it was
the product of physical sickness and delirium. Allow me to suggest that
Spinoza came to the wrong conclusion about his own dream. The
immediate cause of the dream may indeed have been delirium, but the
content of the dream – that is, the frightening image of a colonial native
– could not be explained by purely physical causes, but rather by
Spinoza’s confused mental awareness of the colonial enterprise itself and
the representations of that enterprise in his culture. In a certain sense,
then, the dream shows that Spinoza was haunted by race and that his
dream was an omen of our future repugnance of racist domination.
Indeed, I would argue that the concept of haunting may help us in the
interpretation of these problematic texts.
To help explain what I mean I will cite an interesting passage from
Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, a recent
book by Avery Gordon:18
If haunting describes how that which appears to be not there is often a
seething presence, acting on and often meddling with taken-for-granted
realities, the ghost is just the sign, or the empirical evidence if you like, that
tells you a haunting is taking place. The ghost is not simply a dead or
missing person, but a social figure, and investigating it can lead to that
dense site where history and subjectivity make social life. (p. 8)

The philosophers such as Eze and Mills who point out the almost
grotesque obliviousness of prior commentators to the racism of early
modern philosophers have done an important service. They demonstrate
that behind the rational façade lurks the ghost of the oppressed, which
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Rosenthal: ‘The black, scabby Brazilian’
haunts these texts. However, what they ignore in their own rush to
judgment is the counterdiscourse internal and external to the texts them-
selves. As we investigate these vanishing traces of the colonialist project
in the early modern philosophers we can no longer read them the same
way. Indeed, we have the advantage of distance and historical hindsight.
Just as Spinoza recognizes and analyzes the suffering of his friend but is
unable to see clearly the meaning of his own dream, we can see things
in the texts of early moderns of which they were not fully cognizant.
Spinoza’s distress at the image of his dream, Hume’s repulsion at the idea
of slavery, Kant’s audacious commitment to an enlightenment based on
knowledge and freedom, are all signs that speak of their own effort to
exorcize their ghosts. Even if they are tainted by subtle or obvious forms
of racism these sentiments and ideas are themselves omens of things to
come. That is, the very tensions in these texts call upon us to resolve
them in our own philosophical endeavors. Those of us living today are
no less ‘haunted’, no less historical, no less subject to the prejudices of
our age than those philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries were, and
our best efforts to understand the world around us will likely be judged
to fall short by those who come after.19 Hopefully, in this way, we can
understand the racism of these philosophers without excusing it, and
without losing sight of their contribution to our efforts to overcome it.

Department of Philosophy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

PSC

Notes
I would like to thank the organizers and participants of Grinnell College’s
Africana Studies Conference 2002 where this paper was first presented. I am
also grateful to Arin Hill and Johanna Meehan for conversations on this topic.

1 Benedict Spinoza, The Letters, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis, IN:

Hackett, 1995).
2 Edwin Curley translates this word as ‘Black’. See The Collected Works of
Spinoza (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), vol. 1, p. 353.
3 All commentary I have examined focuses on the importance of the letter in
Spinoza’s theory of the imagination and critique of prophecy and does not
mention the issue of race. See, for instance: Michèle Bertrand, Spinoza et
l’imaginaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983), pp. 5–36; Moira
Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd, Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and
Present (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 19–23; Henri Laux, Imagination
et religion chez Spinoza (Paris: Vrin, 1993), pp. 141–5; and Sylvain Zac,
Spinoza et l’interprétation de l’Écriture (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1965), pp. 175–8.
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Philosophy & Social Criticism 31 (2)
4 David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller
(Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics, 1987). According to Emmanuel C. Eze,
in ‘Hume, Race, and Human Nature’, Journal of the History of Ideas 61(4)
(2000): 691–8, the first edition of the work was published in 1742. The
essay in question was written in 1748 and revised first between 1753 and
1754, then again in the final edition, which Hume prepared in 1777.
5 In ‘Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations’, Hume writes: ‘slavery is in
general disadvantageous both to the happiness and the populousness of
mankind’, and ‘its place is much better supplied by the practice of hired
servants’ (p. 396).
6 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Mary
Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 31.
7 Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the
Sublime, trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1991[1960]). We find these comments in section IV, ‘Of National
Characteristics, so far as they depend upon the distinct feeling of the
beautiful and the sublime’.
8 Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, ‘The Color of Reason: The Idea of “Race” in
Kant’s Anthropology’, in Anthropology and the German Enlightenment:
Perspectives on Humanity, ed. Katherine M. Faull (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell
University Press, 1995), pp. 200–41
9 Still, he notes that given the apparently empirical character of Kant’s views
on race, it may be a contradiction to speak of the concept transcendentally.
10 Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1997).
11 See ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’, in Kant: Political Writings,
ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), pp. 93–130. In the ‘First Supplement’, section 3, Kant suggests
that the ‘spirit of commerce’ will naturally help realize the moral impera-
tive to form a just cosmopolitan constitution between nations (p. 114).
12 Nonetheless, earlier in ‘Perpetual Peace’, Kant criticizes ‘the inhospitable
conduct of the civilised states of our continent, especially the commercial
states’ for ‘the injustice which they display in visiting foreign countries and
peoples (which in their case is the same as conquering them)’ (p. 106).
13 On this point, see also Catherine Wilson’s interesting essay: ‘Savagery and
the Supersensible: Kant’s Universalism in Historical Context’, History of
European Ideas 24: 4–5 (1998): 315–30, especially 321.
14 See, for instance, Mills’s comments on Hobbes: ‘Hobbes remains enough of
a racial egalitarian that, while singling out Native Americans for his real-
life example, he suggests that without a sovereign even Europeans could
descend to their state, and that the absolutist government appropriate for
non-whites could also be appropriate for whites’ (p. 66).
15 See Genevieve Lloyd, Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Phil-
osophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).
16 This point has been made by such writers as Isaiah Berlin. See his essays
‘The Counter Enlightenment’ and ‘Herder and the Enlightenment’, both
collected in The Proper Study of Mankind (New York: Farrar, Straus,
Giroux, 1997).
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17 Perhaps something even stronger, as Spinoza writes: ‘And since . . . there
must necessarily exist in Thought an idea of the affections of the essence of
the son and what follows therefrom, and the father by reason of his union
with his son is a part of the said son, the soul of the father must likewise
participate in the ideal essence of his son, and in its affections and in what
follows therefrom’ (p. 127).
18 Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1996).
19 I owe this point to Janelle S. Taylor.
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