Nazi breeding ideology literalized Enlightenment metaphors of human cultivation

Evidence

While Frederick the Great merely demonstrated how eagerly he wished to absorb the Enlightenment lesson, at least some of his successors did their best to “make philosophy into a material force” and thus treat humans as one does bananas and pineapples, using for this purpose the unprecedented technological resources and managerial capacities offered by the modern state. And they understood literally the precept of breeding, which Frederick the Great could treat as no more than a wistful metaphor. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 387

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends Bauman on how the modern bureaucratic state and Enlightenment managerial ambition enabled the Holocaust.