Below are some classic examples, from Western texts and history, of the idea of nature being used to establish rulership, superiority, and right to violence of one kind of person over another. This sometimes manifests in theories that certain kinds of people are “naturally” slaves, children, animals, biological errors, or machines. The list is by no means exhaustive, but it is suggestive. “Nature” has often been the central conceptual tool in systems of violent social hierarchy. As in the example of Stalin, below, material nature, such as the agricultural production cycle, has been used as a tool of political terror.
The examples below should not be taken to suggest that only Western societies use the idea of nature in such a way. Traditional societies around the world have been marked by caste systems, which produce social stratification through the imposition of hierarchy on the fact of social difference. That is, different kinds of people are ranked as greater or lesser than other kinds, rather than simply being different. Though caste systems are sometimes pragmatic and malleable, they are often rigid and imposed by violence. Ideologically, caste systems are often sustained by an appeal to “nature” as the source of the truth and justice of social stratification. If you want a good overview of caste systems across the world, follow this link.
A Short History of “Nature” as the Foundation of Social Hierarchy in Western Civilizations
Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, Part IV
Again, a possession is spoken of as a part is spoken of; for the part is not only a part of something else, but wholly belongs to it; and this is also true of a possession. The master is only the master of the slave; he does not belong to him, whereas the slave is not only the slave of his master, but wholly belongs to him. Hence we see what is the nature [phusis] and office of a slave; he who is by nature not his own but another’s man, is by nature a slave; and he may be said to be another’s man who, being a human being, is also a possession. And a possession may be defined as an instrument of action, separable from the possessor.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Question 99, Article 1
Article 2. Whether, in the primitive state, women would have been born?
Objection 1. It would seem that in the primitive state woman would not have been born. For the Philosopher says (De Gener. Animal. ii, 3) that woman is a “misbegotten male,” as though she were a product outside the purpose of nature. But in that state nothing would have been unnatural in human generation. Therefore in that state women would not have been born.
Objection 2. Further, every agent produces its like, unless prevented by insufficient power or ineptness of matter: thus a small fire cannot burn green wood. But in generation the active force is in the male. Since, therefore, in the state of innocence man’s active force was not subject to defect, nor was there inept matter on the part of the woman, it seems that males would always have been born.
Objection 3. Further, in the state of innocence generation is ordered to the multiplication of the human race. But the race would have been sufficiently multiplied by the first man and woman, from the fact that they would have lived for ever. Therefore, in the state of innocence, there was no need for women to be born.
On the contrary, Nature’s process in generation would have been in harmony with the manner in which it was established by God. But established male and female in human nature, as it is written (Genesis 1-2). Therefore also in the state of innocence male and female would have been born.
I answer that, Nothing belonging to the completeness of human nature would have been lacking in the state of innocence. And as different grades belong to the perfection of the universe, so also diversity of sex belongs to the perfection of human nature. Therefore in the state of innocence, both sexes would have been begotten.
Reply to Objection 1. Woman is said to be a “misbegotten male,” as being a product outside the purpose of nature considered in the individualnature, as above explained (92, 1, ad 2). case: but not against the purpose of universal
Reply to Objection 2. The generation of woman is not occasioned either by a defect of the active force or by inept matter, as the objection proposes; but sometimes by an extrinsic accidental cause; thus the Philosopher says (De Animal. Histor. vi, 19): “The northern wind favors the generation of males, and the southern wind that of females”: sometimes also by some impression in the soul (of the parents), which may easily have some effect on the body (of the child). Especially was this the case in the state of innocence, when the body was more subject to the soul; so that by the mere will of the parent the sex of the offspring might be diversified.
Reply to Objection 3. The offspring would have been begotten to an animal life, as to the use of food and generation. Hence it was fitting that all should generate, and not only the first parents. From this it seems to follow that males and females would have been in equal number.
Georg Hegel on Africa
(Taken from lectures of 1830-1831)
“The peculiarly African character is difficult to comprehend, for the very reason that in reference to it, we must quite give up the principle which naturally accompanies all our ideas-the category of Universality. In Negro life the characteristic point is the fact that consciousness has not yet attained to the realization of any substantial objective existence-as for example, God, or Law-in which the interest of man’s volition is involved and in which he realizes his own being. This distinction between himself as an individual and the universality of his essential being, the African in the uniform, undeveloped oneness of his existence has not yet attained; so that the Knowledge of an absolute Being, an Other and a Higher than his individual self, is entirely wanting. The Negro, as already observed, exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state. We must lay aside all thought of reverence and morality-all that we call feeling-if we would rightly comprehend him; there is nothing harmonious with humanity to be found in this type of character. The copious and circumstantial accounts of Missionaries completely confirm this, and Mahommedanism appears to be the only thing which in any way brings the Negroes within the range of culture.” [Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York: Dover, 1956), 93.]
President Andrew Jackson’s Case for the Removal Act
First Annual Message to Congress, 8 December 1830
It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation. Two important tribes have accepted the provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress, and it is believed that their example will induce the remaining tribes also to seek the same obvious advantages.
The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves. The pecuniary advantages which it Promises to the Government are the least of its recommendations. It puts an end to all possible danger of collision between the authorities of the General and State Governments on account of the Indians. It will place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters. By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on the north and Louisiana on the south to the settlement of the whites it will incalculably strengthen the southwestern frontier and render the adjacent States strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid. It will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those States to advance rapidly in population, wealth, and power. It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community. These consequences, some of them so certain and the rest so probable, make the complete execution of the plan sanctioned by Congress at their last session an object of much solicitude.
Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people. I have endeavored to impress upon them my own solemn convictions of the duties and powers of the General Government in relation to the State authorities. For the justice of the laws passed by the States within the scope of their reserved powers they are not responsible to this Government. As individuals we may entertain and express our opinions of their acts, but as a Government we have as little right to control them as we have to prescribe laws for other nations.
With a full understanding of the subject, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw tribes have with great unanimity determined to avail themselves of the liberal offers presented by the act of Congress, and have agreed to remove beyond the Mississippi River. Treaties have been made with them, which in due season will be submitted for consideration. In negotiating these treaties they were made to understand their true condition, and they have preferred maintaining their independence in the Western forests to submitting to the laws of the States in which they now reside. These treaties, being probably the last which will ever be made with them, are characterized by great liberality on the part of the Government. They give the Indians a liberal sum in consideration of their removal, and comfortable subsistence on their arrival at their new homes. If it be their real interest to maintain a separate existence, they will there be at liberty to do so without the inconveniences and vexations to which they would unavoidably have been subject in Alabama and Mississippi.
Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and Philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections. But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another. In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes. Nor is there anything in this which, upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race, is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the conditions in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?
The present policy of the Government is but a continuation of the same progressive change by a milder process. The tribes which occupied the countries now constituting the Eastern States were annihilated or have melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the westward, and we now propose to acquire the countries occupied by the red men of the South and West by a fair exchange, and, at the expense of the United States, to send them to a land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual. Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves of their fathers; but what do they more than our ancestors did or than our children are now doing? To better their condition in an unknown land our forefathers left all that was dear in earthly objects. Our children by thousands yearly leave the land of their birth to seek new homes in distant regions. Does Humanity weep at these painful separations from everything, animate and inanimate, with which the young heart has become entwined? Far from it. It is rather a source of joy that our country affords scope where our young population may range unconstrained in body or in mind, developing the power and faculties of man in their highest perfection. These remove hundreds and almost thousands of miles at their own expense, purchase the lands they occupy, and support themselves at their new homes from the moment of their arrival. Can it be cruel in this Government when, by events which it can not control, the Indian is made discontented in his ancient home to purchase his lands, to give him a new and extensive territory, to pay the expense of his removal, and support him a year in his new abode? How many thousands of our own people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on such conditions! If the offers made to the Indians were extended to them, they would be hailed with gratitude and joy.
And is it supposed that the wandering savage has a stronger attachment to his home than the settled, civilized Christian? Is it more afflicting to him to leave the graves of his fathers than it is to our brothers and children? Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous. He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement. . . .
May we not hope, therefore, that all good citizens, and none more zealously than those who think the Indians oppressed by subjection to the laws of the States, will unite in attempting to open the eyes of those children of the forest to their true condition, and by a speedy removal to relieve them from all the evils, real or imaginary, present or prospective, with which they may be supposed to be threatened.
The Divine Right of Kings, from Wikipedia:
The Divine Right of Kings is a political and religious doctrine of political absolutism. It asserts that a monarch derives his right to rule from the will of God, and not from any temporal authority, including the will of his subjects, the aristocracy, or any other estate of the realm. The doctrine implies that any attempt to depose the King or to restrict his powers runs contrary to the will of God.
Such doctrines are, in the English-speaking world, largely associated with the early Stuart reigns in Britain and the theology of the Caroline divines who held their tenure at the pleasure of James I and Charles I and II. The English textbooks of the Divine Right of Kings were written in 1597-98 before his accession to the English throne by James VI of Scotland, whose Basilikon Doron, a manual on the duties of a King, was written to edify his four-year-old son Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, who died young. A good King
- “acknowledgeth himself ordained for his people, having received from God a burden of government, whereof he must be countable.”
The conception of ordination brought with it largely unspoken parallels with the Anglican and Catholic priesthood, but the overriding metaphor in James’ handbook was that of a father’s relation to his children. “Just as no misconduct on the part of a father can free his children from obedience to the fifth commandment, so no misgovernment on the part of a King can release his subjects from their allegiance.”[1] James’ reading of The Trew Law of Free Monarchies allowed that “A good King will frame his actions to be according to the law, yet he is not bound thereto but of his good will.” James also had printed his Defense of the Right of Kings in the face of English theories of inalienable popular and clerical rights.
In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child collected this opinion from an anonymous American slaveholder: “The Declaration of Independence is exuberantly false and arborescently fallacious. Life and liberty are not inalienable. Men are not born entitled to equal rights. It would be far nearer the truth to say, that some are born with saddles on their backs, and others booted and spurred to ride them; and the riding does them good; they need the reins, the bit, and the spur” (“The Patriarchal Institution, as Described by Member of Its Own Family” 5)
Theologian Delores Williams explains the connection between American slavery and the concept of nature in “Sin, Nature and Black Women’s Bodies”:
- Female slaves were beaten, overworked, and made to experience excessive childbearing in order to provide income, comfort, and leisure for slave-owning families. Because, in the nineteenth century, slave owner consciousness imaged black people as belonging to a lower order of nature than white people, black people were to be controlled and tamed like the rest of the natural environment. Black women (and black men) were “viewed as beasts, as cattle, as ‘articles’ for sale” (Nicols 1963, 12). The taming of these “lower orders of nature” would assure the well-being of both master and slave—so slave owner cosciousness imagined. Put simply, the assault upon the natural environment today is but an extension of the assault upon black women’s bodies in the nineteenth century. (Williams 24-5)
Stalin’s Forced Starvation of Ukrainians:
The Artificial Famine in Ukraine, 1932-33, as a punishment for Ukrainian peasants:
A Man-Made Famine raged through Ukraine, the ethnic-Ukrainian region of northern Caucasus (i.e. Kuban), and the lower Volga River region in 1932-33. This resulted in the death of between 7 to 10 million people, mainly Ukrainians. This was instigated by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his henchman Lazar Kaganovich. The main goal of this artificial famine was to break the spirit of the Ukrainian farmer/peasant and to force them into collectivization. The famine was also used as an effective tool to break the renaissance of Ukrainian culture that was occuring under approval of the communist government in Ukraine. Moscow perceived this as a threat to a Russo-Centric Soviet rule and therefore acted to crush this cultural renaissance in a most brutal manner. The famine/genocide also had the added “benefit” to ethnically cleanse Ukrainians from vast territories.
Rene Descartes and the Theory of Animals as Machines (“Automata”):
Another reason to deny that animals deserve direct concern arises from the belief that animals are not conscious, and therefore have no interests or well-being to take into consideration when considering the effects of our actions. Someone that holds this position might agree that if animals were conscious then we would be required to consider their interests to be directly relevant to the assessment of actions that affect them. However, since they lack a welfare, there is nothing to take directly into account when acting.
One of the clearest and most forceful denials of animal consciousness is developed by Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who argues that animals are automata that might act as if they are conscious, but really are not so (Regan and Singer, 1989: 13-19). Writing during the time when a mechanistic view of the natural world was replacing the Aristotelian conception, Descartes believed that all of animal behavior could be explained in purely mechanistic terms, and that no reference to conscious episodes was required for such an explanation. Relying on the principle of parsimony in scientific explanation (commonly referred to as Occam’s Razor) Descartes preferred to explain animal behavior by relying on the simplest possible explanation of their behavior. Since it is possible to explain animal behavior without reference to inner episodes of awareness, doing so is simpler than relying on the assumption that animals are conscious, and is therefore the preferred explanation.
Descartes anticipates the response that his reasoning, if applicable to animal behavior, should apply equally well to human behavior. The mechanistic explanation of behavior does not apply to human beings, according to Descartes, for two reasons. First, human beings are capable of complex and novel behavior. This behavior is not the result of simple responses to stimuli, but is instead the result of our reasoning about the world as we perceive it. Second, human beings are capable of the kind of speech that expresses thoughts. Descartes was aware that some animals make sounds that might be thought to constitute speech, such as a parrot’s “request” for food, but argued that these utterances are mere mechanically induced behaviors. Only human beings can engage in the kind of speech that is spontaneous and expresses thoughts.
Descartes’ position on these matters was largely influenced by his philosophy of mind and ontology. According to Descartes, there are two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive kinds of entities or properties: material or physical entities on the one hand, and mental entities on the other. Although all people are closely associated with physical bodies, they are not identical with their bodies. Rather, they are identical with their souls, or the immaterial, mental substance that constitutes their consciousness. Descartes believed that both the complexity of human behavior and human speech requires the positing of such an immaterial substance in order to be explained. However, animal behavior does not require this kind of assumption; besides, Descartes argued, “it is more probable that worms and flies and caterpillars move mechanically than that they all have immortal souls” (Regan and Singer, 1989: 18).
The theory of white superiority in the writing of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer:
“The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Indians and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmans, the Incas, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands. All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the parsimony of nature and out of it all came their high civilization.” ( Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume II, Section 92)
And, last but not least, here is Adolf Hitler praising the ancient Spartans for their practice of eugenic infanticide as a means of racial purification: “At one time the Spartans were capable of such a wise measure, but not our present, mendaciously sentimental, bourgeois patriotic nonsense. The rule of six thousand Spartans over three hundred and fifty thousand Helots was only thinkable in consequence of the high racial value of the Spartans. But this was the result of a systematic race preservation; thus Sparta must be regarded as the first Völkisch State. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject, and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a hundred thousand healthy children in consequence of birth control or through abortions, in order subsequently to breed a race of degenerates burdened with illnesses.” ( Hitler, Adolf (1961). Hitler’s Secret Book (in English). New York: Grove Press, pp. 8-9)
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