Heredity, Race, and the Birth of the Modern (Studies in Philosophy)

This book places under sustained scrutiny some of our most basic modern assumptions about inheritance, genealogy, blood relations, and racial categories. It has at its core a deceptively simple question, one too often taken for granted: what constitutes'good'bonds among humans, and what compels us to determine them so across generations as both a physical and a metaphysical attribute? Answering this question is complex and involves a foray into a seemingly disparate array of early modern sources: from adages, common law, and literature about bloodlines and bastardy to philosophical, political, and scientific discourses that both confirm and confound the'common sense'of familial, communal, national, and racial identity. This book places under sustained scrutiny some of our most basic modern assumptions about inheritance, genealogy, blood relations, and racial categories. It has at its core a deceptively simple question, one too often taken for what constitutes "good" bonds among humans, and what compels us to determine them so across generations as both a physical and a metaphysical attribute? Answering this question is complex and involves a foray into a seemingly disparate array of early modern from adages, common law, and literature about bloodlines and bastardy to philosophical, political, and scientific discourses that both confirm and confound the "common sense" of familial, communal, national, and racial identity. Book Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 6 Copyright......Page 7 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction: Generating the Good......Page 12 1 Legal Fictions of Genealogy......Page 23 2 Mothers Have Animals, Fathers Have Heirs......Page 36 3 Questions of Kind: The Human Species......Page 52 4 Questions of Kind: (family) Race (species)......Page 70 5 Genealogical Purifi cation......Page 96 6 Medical Police and Hybridization......Page 116 7 Literary Insight: Brotherhood, the End of Tolerance......Page 139 Postscript: Heredity’s Time......Page 167 Notes......Page 170 Bibliography......Page 194 Index......Page 208 In this volume, Eigen places under sustained scrutiny some of our most basic modern assumptions about inheritance, genealogy, blood relations, and racial categories in order to answer the question, what constitutes "good" bonds among humans, and what compels us to determine them so across generations as both a physical and a metaphysical attribute?€

In this volume, Eigen places under sustained scrutiny some of our most basic modern assumptions about inheritance, genealogy, blood relations, and racial categories in order to answer the question, what constitutes

Sara Eigen Figal. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [183]-195) And Index.