Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"In this timely, thoroughly documented, and well-argued book, Devin J. Vartija takes on one of the enduring paradoxes of intellectual history: why is the Enlightenment seen as the origin of modern egalitarianism even as it is understood as a source of scientific racism?...Vartija’s book presents the Enlightenment in its complexity, multiplicity and heterogeneity.
The Color of Equality provides an exceptional model for locating the inherent intellectual tensions that the Enlightenment embodies and addressing the problematic interpretive legacies that it leavesin its wake." * Cromohs *
"This book is a valuable contribution to the study of Enlightenment thought, valuable partly because it refuses to take a side 'for' or 'against' the Enlightenment’s approach to racializing of humans. Vartija has parsed out why the Enlightenment remains a significantly important era for examination. By examining facets of intellectuals’ concerns, Vartija has shown us that any easy tendency to embrace or to dismiss Enlightenment philosophy misses a key point about legacies of Enlightenment...Vartija is to be commended for taking on such a project as this." * The Eighteenth Century Intelligencer *
"It is hard to imagine a more timely and significant book. In this compelling study, Devin J. Vartija not only unpacks the complex history of race as a category but also shows its sometimes surprising connection to equality in a century that was crucial to the articulation of both. As a consequence, our modern challenges become more comprehensible and, we can hope, all the more surmountable." * Lynn Hunt, author of Inventing Human Rights: A History *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1. Early Modern Debates on Human Sameness and Difference
Chapter 2. Chambers's Cyclopaedia and Supplement: The Growth of the
Natural History of Humanity
Chapter 3. Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie: A New Human Science
Chapter 4. De Felice's Encyclopédie d'Yverdon: Expanding and Contesting
Human Science
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
