Blumenbach’s Racial Classification

This open access book explores how the elements of Blumenbach’s epistemology have been variously assembled in different ways and in different historical-cultural and political-social contexts. It looks at the ways in which this epistemology has been enriched with new elements that have ensured its reproduction.

The contributors revise approaches to the historical legacy of Enlightenment scholars such as Blumenbach in terms of nuances to our understanding of intellectual responsibility for the reproduction of race-informed thought, the legitimization of racial discrimination, and the lack of critical response to both.

Blumenbach’s Racial Classification: Deconstructing the Timeless Call for Human Differentiation transcends the simplistic boundaries between “right” and “left” science and revises the internally contradictory impact of racialist/racial thinking on knowledge about humanity.

This book deepens our understanding of race as a contributor to various fields of the production of knowledge about humanity and different epistemic platforms. Instead of highlighting the pathos in revealing racism in the stances of the most authoritative thinkers, the editors and authors suggest contemplation of the persistence of epistemologies that promote racially informed views on humanity and their implications.

The book attributes the responsibility for atrocities legitimized by “race science” to intellectual movements like Enlightenment, through more complex historicization, making it of great importance to philosophers, historians of science, and those specialised in racial studies and social sciences.