The Persistence of Scientific Racism

Ernst Cassirer on the Myth of Race

Bibliographic Data

ID18954573
AuthorsShuchen Xiang (0000-0001-5686-0390, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume9
Issue1
Pages126-150
Publication date2021-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Philosophy of Race (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2165-8684 • E-ISSN: 2165-8692
PublisherThe Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5325/critphilrace.9.1.0126
OpenAlexW3119259578
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited11

This article argues that Ernst Cassirer's views about the concept of substance and his views on mythic consciousness are applicable to the concept of race. By analyzing examples from the most influential and representative racial theories, this article shows that the concept of race functions like the concept of substance whereby random, large-scale, and irreducibly complex phenomena is explained through the deterministic behavior of a smaller, material, constituent part. Given that mythic consciousness explains causality in the same way, this substance-mode explanation of becoming can also be termed “mythic.” Further, under this substance/racial understanding of personhood, humans have no agency to determine their own fates. It is this fatalism that Cassirer railed against in The Myth of the State. In place of this substance (racial) understanding of personhood, and as this article will describe, Cassirer argued for a “functional” (cultural) understanding of personhood

Consciousness · Epistemology · Fatalism · Mythology · Personhood · Racism · Sociology · Transcendental number · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy, Science, and History · Race, Genetics, and Society

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