Global Equality and Inequality in Enlightenment Thought
Siep Stuurman
Abstract
Focusing on global equality and inequality, this lecture will show that Enlightenment thought was Janus-faced. It proclaimed the universalistic notion of the ‘natural equality’ of all human beings, but at the same time it established a global pedagogical authority of the ‘enlightened’ over those who had not yet seen the light. Moreover, the Enlightenment view of history, whether deeply pessimistic (Rousseau) or moderately optimistic (Adam Smith), always assumed a progression through time, culminating in Europe as the most advanced, albeit not necessarily the most virtuous, stage of world history.
However, not all Enlightenment thinkers justified the European conquest and appropriation of the globe. Recently, historians have begun to recover a significant anti-imperialist strand in the thought of the eighteenth century. The critics of imperialism, such as Raynal, Diderot and Anquetil Duperron championed the equal dignity of all human beings on earth. We may summarize their ideal as global cross-cultural equality. But other important thinkers, such as Smith, Robertson or Turgot, countenanced European superiority. The upshot is that the question, ‘did the Enlightenment advocate global equality?’ cannot be answered one way or another.
Some anti-imperialist critics belonged to the materialistic Radical Enlightenment, but others were Deists and believing Christians. Anti-imperialism and universal equality cannot be reduced to the ‘application’ of the principles of one philosophical current, Spinozist or otherwise, in the polemics of the eighteenth century. There is no direct linkage between metaphysics and politics.
The anti-imperialist critique combined two arguments. The first turned on common humanity. It condemned European conquest because it violated natural equality, often using the language of universal human rights. The second I call the anthropological turn. Drawing on history and ethnography, it posited that Europe was only one civilization amidst others, that other ways of life might be as reasonable and valid as the Christian standards of Europe, and that ‘others’ looked at Europe just as Europe looked at ‘others’. Ultimately, it was the combination of common humanity, universal equality and the anthropological vindication of cultural pluralism that accounted for the robustness of Enlightenment anti-imperialism.
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