A Opacidade Do Iluminismo: O racismo na filosofia moderna

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand the philosophical reasons for the racist discourse in the Enlightenment era. My hypothesis is that philosophy placed scientific truths on natural objects and knowledge of different peoples on the same level of certainty. With this, philosophy allowed itself to draw an impersonal and objective horizon to which all peoples should walk in order to assure the adulthood of reason. When philosophy determined the European model as that horizon, modern philosophy laid the foundations for ethnocentrism and for one of its possible consequences: racist discourse. I believe that with this text it is possible to take the theme of racism in philosophy out of the shadows.