On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism and Exoticism in French Thought

How can we think about people and cultures unlike our own? In the early modern period, the fact of human diversity presented Europeans with little cause for anxiety: they simply assumed the superiority of the West. During the 18th century this view was gradually abandoned, as thinkers argued that other peoples possessed reason and sensibility, and thus deserved the same respect that Westerners accorded themselves. Since that time, however, Enlightenment belief in the universalities of human nature has fallen into disrepute; critics allege that such notions have had disastrous consequences in the 20th century, ranging from prejudice to persecution and outright genocide. Tzvetan Todorov, aims in this book to salvage the good name of the Enlightenment so that its ideas can once more inspire humane thought and action. The question he poses is of relevance to the conflicts of our age: How can we avoid the dangers of a perverted universalism and scientism, as well as the pitfalls of relativism? Since the French were the ideologues of universalism and played a pre-eminent role in the diffusion of Enlightenment ideas in Europe, Todorov focuses on the French intellectual tradition, analyzing writers ranging from Montaigne through Tocqueville, Michelet, and Renan, to Levi Strauss. He shows how theories of human diversity were developed in the 18th century, and later systematically distorted. The virtues of Enlightenment thought became vices in the hands of 19th century thinkers, as a result of racism, nationalism, and the search for exoticism. Todorov calls for us to reject this legacy and to strive once again for an acceptance of human diversity, through "critical humanism" prefigured in the writings of Rousseau and Montesquieu. This is a work that can help us think incisively about the racial and ethnic tensions confronting the world today.