Race and Aesthetics in the Anthropology of Petrus Camper (1722-1789).

• Superior document: Studies in the History of Ideas in the Low Countries Series ; v.4
• Author: Meijer, Miriam Claude.
• Place / Publishing House: Boston : : BRILL,, 1999.; ©1999.
• Year of Publication: 1999
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in the History of Ideas in the Low Countries Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (261 pages)

After the discovery of the anthropoid ape in Asia and in Africa, eighteenth-century Holland became the crossroads of Enlightenment debates about the human species. Material evidence about human diversity reached Petrus Camper, comparative anatomist in the Netherlands, who engaged, among many other interests, in menschkunde. Could only religious doctrine support the belief of human demarcation from animals? Camper resolved the challenges raised by overseas discoveries with his thesis of the facial angle, a theory which succeeding generations distorted and misused in order to justify slavery, racism, antisemitism, and genocide. Thanks to his abundant papers in Dutch archives, Camper's ideas are restored to their original state. Eighteenth-century issues differed from those of other centuries: Did orang-utans talk like humans, walk like humans; even rape humans? What was the skin pigmentation of Adam and Eve? Did the spectrum of human physiognomies around the globe reflect the Fall of Man, the Creator's bounty, or merely bizarre beauty practices? Why did the ideal beauty of the Greeks appear to be the reverse of the Hottentots? The book contains some 50 illustrations, including apes with hiking sticks or tea cups, metamorphoses of living forms, and Apollo or Venus icons which titillated the science of man.

Table of Contents

Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- Chapter 1 Introduction -- Chapter 2 Camper, his life and philosophy -- Scientific background and expertise: homo universalis -- Physico-theology -- Science and public life -- Writing and teaching -- Scientific journeys -- Epistemology: analysis and synthesis -- Chapter 3 Man and the anthropoid ape -- Apes and monsters -- Eyewitnesses -- Chain of being? -- Teleology -- the place of man -- Views on blacks -- Chapter 4 The question of color -- Observation in conflict with the holy text of the earth: the fossil -- Two creations -- Climate and age -- The color of the skin: 'white moors' -- The first color and racial variety -- Climatic theory -- Monogenism versus polygenism: Adam and Eve -- Chapter 5 Graphic representation -- Artistic background -- Drawing and passions -- Ploos' misreading -- Drawing differences: protrusion and retraction -- Chapter 6 The intersection of race and beauty -- Skulls in history -- Discovery of the facial angle -- Measurement in the eighteenth century: Daubenton and Hunter -- Lavater: physiognomy -- Man and ape reconsidered: similarity and sex -- The image of the walking ape -- The question of speech -- The head -- Kalmuck, African, and ape -- Morphology and metamorphosis: history and skeleton of forms -- The artifice thesis: moulding race -- Nature and aesthetics -- Relative beauty -- Chapter 7 History of the facial angle theory -- Chapter 8 Conclusion -- Appendix: Camper's lecture 'On the Origin and Color of Blacks' -- List of plates -- General bibliography -- Camper's publications -- Camper's manuscripts and drawings -- List of personal names -- INDEX OF NAMES: MODERN AUTHORS.