Philosophical Anthropology on the Eve of Biological Determinism: Immanuel Kant and Georg Forster on the Moral Qualities and Biological Characteristics of the Human Race

In the late eighteenth century, any attempt to categorize humankind by race was necessarily tied to the controversy surrounding slavery as well as to the debate about the general perfectibility of humankind, which, in turn, focused on the potential of “primative” peoples to achieve higher (European) levels of civilization. The widespread glorification of the Pacific Islanders as unspoiled childern of nature in the wake of Rousseau's idealization of a natural state and Bougainville's La Nouvelle Cythère made the debate even more complex; the enthusiastic reception of these texts in Europe bespoke an alienation from a polarized society and a dissatisfaction with rapid technological advances. Meanwhile, scientists were striving to avoid such rhetoric by attempting to define anthropology as a science, to collect data, and to categorize humankind free of political bias and the limitations of any particular philosophy of history.