Theme Of Equality: Examining The Racial Views Of Enlightenment Philosophers

Paradox of Equality: Examining the Racial Views of Enlightenment Philosophers The Enlightenment took place from the late 17th century into the early 19th century and was regarded as the age of reason because of the important discoveries that were made. During this time period there were significant political changes and scientific findings that were effected by philosophers such as Imannual Kant, Thomas Jefferson, Simon Bolivar and many others. These thinkers were adamant about the importance of equality and intellectual engagement and felt that such things were essential in order to progress. However, these same Enlightenment philosophers also held very racist views that seemed to promote inequality more than equality and that showed a limited

He mentions that all people are endowed with inalienable rights, but he enslaved hundreds of people who he stripped the rights from. In The Dark Side of the Enlightenment, Jamelle Bouie points out these contradictory theories of the enlightenment thinkers, stating that “[i]deas of human freedom and individual rights took root in nations that held other human beings in bondage [enslavement] and were then in the process of exterminating native

In his piece What is Enlightenment Immanuel Kant describes a “Self-incurred. tutelage’ that “lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another”, he exclaims, “Sapere aude [Dare to Know]!” and implores his readers to "Have courage to use [their] own reason!" because “that is the motto of enlightenment”.But he conducted faulty experiments that John Locke in the The Fundamental Constitution of the Carolinas, 1669 “[He has the] liberty to follow his own will in all things, where the law prescribes [specifies] not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.” Despite this, John Lock expects others to follow his “arbitrary will’ that caucasian Europeans are the superior race, a finding based entirely on his bias and ethnocentrism and not While Enlightenment thinkers’ consistent emphasis on the importance of equality and having a deep understanding of the world does not align with their ideas of racial discrimination, it is true that in some of their well-known writings they did express ethnocentric and racist ideas. In Charles Linneaus’s Systema Naturae he incorporates a chart that describes the “Africanus” or