Hobbes supplied the theoretical premise of excluding humanity that race doctrines need
Evidence
The philosophy of Hobbes, it is true, contains nothing of modern race doctrines, which not only stir up the mob, but in their totalitarian form outline very clearly the forms of organization through which humanity could carry the endless process of capital and power accumulation through to its logical end in self-destruction. But Hobbes at least provided political thought with the prerequisite for all race doctrines, that is, the exclusion in principle of the idea of humanity which constitutes the sole regulating idea of international law. With the assumption that foreign politics is necessarily outside of the human contract, engaged in the perpetual war of all against all, which is the law of the “state of nature,” Hobbes affords the best possible theoretical foundation for those naturalistic ideologies which hold nations to be tribes, separated from each other by nature, without any connection whatever, unconscious of the solidarity of mankind and having in common only the instinct for self-preservation which man shares with the animal world. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 427
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- DEFINE: Gives the mechanism by which the idea of humanity was excluded from political theory, grounding later race doctrines.
- XREF: This is the foundational move for constructing the ‘Other’ that Orientalism and later critical-theory readings assume.