Anthropology and race in the eighteenth century

This chapter explores the emergence of anthropology as a field of inquiry in the eighteenth century, with attention paid to the creation of cultural anthropology alongside the development of a natural history of mankind. This latter set of investigations gradually became more specialized as a physical investigation into human variation such that by the end of the century, physical anthropology had created the scaffolding for racial pseudoscience. The discussion traces how key German thinkers—such as Leibniz, Schlözer, Herder, and Kant—contributed to the evolution of these two investigatory programmes. Enlightenment thought influenced emerging ideas on human classification, with figures like Linnaeus and Buffon shaping German approaches to biological taxonomies, and Scottish historians impacting German notions of human historical development and progress. The study contrasts the centrality of language for Leibniz and Herder’s work to understand national character and identity with the approach taken by theorists focused instead on the natural history of the species. Kant is positioned as a figure with interests in both fields of investigation, given his many decades devoted to teaching and writing about humans as both a natural and moral species.