Let's take as an example, Vitorino Magalhães Godinho. Economic and social historian, leftist and antifascist, Godinho is a seminal figure of the Atlantic History.Immanuel Wallerstein's "
The discovery of the World Economy" is based on the monumental work of Vitorino Magalhães Godinho.
Accused of "
marxist inspiration", "
against the spirit of the event", his work "
Economic Overview of the Henrican Discoveries" was rejected for publication by the Executive Commission of the 1960 Fifth centenary of the death of Henry the Navigator.
Why haven't they invited in first place a fanatic Eurocentric, ideologically biased with the objective of celebrating the faith and the empire- and the Western civilization as the highest referent of the world?
What it means to be "
against the spirit of the event"? Dale Tomich (Ferdinand Braudel Center for the Study of Economics) explains,
Godinho has written over twenty books, including the magisterial
The Discoveries and the World Economy-four volumes, on my bookshelf. Unfortunately, his work -still not translated in English- is little known in the English-speaking world outside of a circle of specialists. In the mid-1940's, he was forced by the fascist regime to leave his teaching position.:
History is a way of thinking about all of mankind’s problems and about what is the human condition", as he says
.
Braudel wrote: "
All these problems...He takes them up, transforms them and enlightens us with a taste that his predecessors have almost never applied to economic and social realities. From now on, we can see the vastness and novelty of his work"
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Voltaire, and the "intellectually lazy and helpless babies" of Common Soldier,
"
It may be said that if the Negro understanding is not of a different nature from ours, it is at least greatly inferior. The petty nations of blacks, who have but little commerce with other nations...In this middle state between imbecility and infant reason, many nations have continued for several ages"
Kant writes in his essay,
An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?
"
Enlightenment is mankind’s exit from its self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another...Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment"
Sometimes I think that he should have written "What is the
white Enlightenment", the intellectual foundation of the modern white supremacy.Blacks are not fully human, as he says,
"
Humanity is in its greatest perfection in the race of whites. The yellow Indians are already of lower talent. The Negroes are much lower and at the lowest there are parts of the American people"
Hume’s
On National Characters. Common Soldier wouldn't have it better,
"
I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation.
No arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans the present Tartars have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. In Jamaica indeed they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but "tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly"
Kant agrees, on his
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime,
"
Mr. Hume challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere from their countries, although many of them have even been set free, still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality, even though among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble, and through superior gifts
earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the difference between these two races of man, and it appears to be as great regarding mental capacities as in colour".
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So, the question is, can a modern white fanatic Eurocentric, be enlightened? Peter Harrison, Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities at the University of Queensland, tries to answer this question,