/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16032867]

Montesquieu on slavery:
>These creatures are all over black, and with such a flat nose, that they can scarcely be pitied.
It is hardly to be believed that God, who is a wise being, should place a soul, especially a good soul, in such a black ugly body.
>It is so natural to look upon colour as the criterion of human nature, that the Asiatics, among whom eunuchs are employed, always deprive the blacks of their resemblance to us by a more opprobrious distinction.
>The colour of the skin may be determined by that of the hair, which, among the Egyptians, (the best philosophers in the world,) was of such importance, that they put to death all the red-haired men who fell into their hands.
>The Negroes prefer a glass necklace to that gold which polite nations so highly value; can there be a greater proof of their wanting common-sense?[316]
>It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men; because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow, that we ourselves are not Christians.
what the HELL /lit/ I thought this guy was supposed to be anti-slavery

[Anonymous No.16032894]

Cancelling all of the liberals may be a good way to proceed.

[Anonymous No.16033098]

Racism against blacks by americans is so funny. It really is just disguised self hatred, pure projection. Lay off the black man, he's harmless at worst. The only people that challenge the notion of being human are the anglo-americans.

[Anonymous No.16033198]

>>16032894
I’m just going to pretend that little shirt collar by her neck isn’t there and she’s wearing nothing underneath that jacket and I’m going to cum to this picture

[Anonymous No.16033263]

>>16033098
>Montesquieu

[Anonymous No.16033313]

>>16033098
>he's harmless at worst
I am sure all the rape and robbery victims of blacks dont think the same way.

[Anonymous No.16033514]

>>16033313
Harmless to humanity, not to the individual.

[Anonymous No.16034292]

>>16033098
>Lay off the black man, he's harmless at worst.
You know nothing

[Anonymous No.16034307]

>>16032867
what a retard. black people are just as intelligent as white/asian people.

[Anonymous No.16034311]

>>16032867
>the Egyptians, (the best philosophers in the world,)
What did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.16034346]

>>16032867
>The Negroes prefer a glass necklace to that gold which polite nations so highly value;
That changed, lol

[Anonymous No.16034373]

>>16033514
Wow, I guess the Rhodesians and South Africans didn't get the memo!

[Anonymous No.16034401]

>>16034373
inb4 "harmless to humanity, not the nation"

[Anonymous No.16034404]

>>16034307
AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH, no.

[Anonymous No.16034409]

>>16033098
He died before the US even existed you fucking retard, and he was French

[Anonymous No.16034490]

>>16033198
Based and coomerpilled

[Anonymous No.16034504]

>>16034311
>We will never read the lost Egyptian philosophers

[Anonymous No.16034575]

>>16032867
>they put to death all the red-haired men who fell into their hands.
Big mistake, they didn't play the long game. They clearly never encounter the aesthetic pale skinned natural red haired women.

[Anonymous No.16035607]

>>16034404
Okay incel

[Anonymous No.16035642]

>>16033313
Imagine being this low T.

[Anonymous No.16035671]

>Christian heresy that “the lower parts of the earth” or “the lowest” into which Jesus descended was not Hell but sub-Saharan Africa

[Anonymous No.16035700]

>>16035671
i dunno chief that sounds a lot like hell to me

[Anonymous No.16035729]

Obvious bait... passages in question are widely interpreted as sarcastic (grammatically the passage is in the subjunctive—and thematically the passage is discordant to central ideas to forms of governance described)

[Anonymous No.16035920]

>>16035729
I didn't interpret them as sarcastic

[Anonymous No.16035941]

>>16035729
... how

>der, the prince was a satire.

ive read period works and they make it pretty clear if they are being sarcastic. where is OP’s text from, ill look into it.

[Anonymous No.16036140]

>>16035941
Spirit of the Laws, book 15, chapter 5

[Anonymous No.16036310]

>>16035920
I may have overstepped my bounds, as Montesquieu does make deterministic categorizations of the global South (e.g. if you are born within a certain range of the equator, you will have certain characteristics).

>It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men; because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow, that we ourselves are not Christians.

This, however, should only be interpreted as satire. This passage invalidates that which precedes it. It changes what had hitherto been a proof of justifiable slavery (the evidence being the inhumanity of blacks) into a bald faced assertion that demands evidence, no matter how specious, lest the assertion be wrong and all of Europe become enveloped in sin.

[Anonymous No.16036360]

>>16032867
>anti-slavery
You can oppose slavery while being aware of intrinsic racial differences.

[Anonymous No.16036366]

>>16036140
thanks, will look at lunch.

[Anonymous No.16036432]

>>16036310
I agree with your sentiment although I'm not sure I would call it satire. Rather it seems an observation that slavery is unChristian. Thus if we are to be Christian blacks must necessarily be animals no different from the cow or sheep. "God said unto them... have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." If blacks are not men, then the Lord has granted dominion over them.
Really I don't read any of the statements in OP as satire or even a statement of the inferiority of blacks. The remark about souls feels like a veiled reference to Plato who is regularly referenced by Montesquieu.

[Anonymous No.16036462]

>>16036432
How *do* you read it?

[Anonymous No.16036479]

>>16032867
crazy how this is the same guy who once said
>I love democracy. I love the republic.

[Anonymous No.16036511]

>>16036479
Because slavery isn’t bad. It’s only bad if it’s raced based. It’s okay if you enslave women of all races as they are meant to be sex slaves with swollen stomachs

[Anonymous No.16036551]

>>16036462
Lines 3 and 4 are just historical remarks. Line 5 is dependent upon the meaning of common sense, as common sense will vary depending on the locality. This statement is a reasonable observation in the context of European common sense where gold is the measure of value. I feel that line 1 is also an observation. Rather than pity the man covered with warts it is natural to feel a revulsion to him. There is a similar sensation which arises from blacks. Even light-skinned blacks look upon the darker blacks with revulsion in America. It seems likely that this is simply due to ingrained societal beauty standards but I will not comment further.

Also these lines are taken completely out of context. Chapter 8 of the same book is entitled "Uselessness of slavery among ourselves". Montesquieu also argues that the right of slavery derives from man selling himself and thus choosing his master or from necessities of climate. Montesquieu wrote extensively on how climate affects man's constitution.

[Anonymous No.16036687]

>>16033514
Jazz and blues pretty much led to the homogenization of world culture, the decline of western society, and the extermination of art. You can enjoy your canon composed entirely of James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. That's what it's going to take to accommodate them.

[Anonymous No.16036699]

>>16034307
Yeah, no.

[Anonymous No.16036758]

>>16036687
Literally none if those things would have the reach they had without a certain someone promoting to the rest of the workd, which you know full were not black people themselves. They were just enjoying themselves.

[Anonymous No.16036774]

>>16032867
BASADO

My friends, I am downwardly mobile. I hope I have switched directions. But I woke up in the middle of my life in a dark 'hood. I sleepwalked through adolescence in a white western suburb, dropped out of college, and moved to a majority black city and did menial work. I started a Dantean climb through the castes that my old peers could not imagine. They think I know LESS being racist! But oh no. Where they've heard, I've seen. Where they think, I know. Six long years with the Negro. For them 'black person' is a Pokemon card. For me it refers to a real flesh-and-blood being.

Negroes are nothing like us. They are ahistorical and acivilizational beings. Forget the Information Age. Forget the Industrial Revolution. They never made it to Antiquity or Medievalism. *They can't even farm.* We found them naked, without the wheel, speaking unwritten languages of a few hundred words. Without White or Asian administration they would have no guns, no cars, no running water, no electricity, no writing, no historical consciousness. Sun comes up, sun goes down, you eat the fruit from the tree. That's Black existence. Trying to fit them into rational systems of production, accumulation, and stewardship is a fool's errand. They can never be anything but a hazard to us.

[Anonymous No.16036921]

>>16036758
I think the libidinal qualities of that music make it naturally appealing to anyone with a pulse. It's not surprising that white (and by whites I mean white gentiles) would want to participate in it, especially in their dispirited post-WWI state. The real problem was that enough wasn't done to suppress it. Enough people from all over the political spectrum tried to warn us, but no seemed to listen.

[Anonymous No.16037010]

>>16036774
>Negroes are nothing like us.
They're closer to you in every way than you are who any European person who reached adulthood before the first world war. Even then, people are generally more similar than they are different.

The extent which you've exaggerated the Africa's slow development honestly makes me think that you're just projecting failure onto an entire race in our to feel better about the unfortunate manner in which your life has developed. Get some help.

[Anonymous No.16037247]

>>16037010
>They're closer to you in every way than you are who any European person who reached adulthood before the first world war. Even then, people are generally more similar than they are different.
Retard.

[Anonymous No.16037419]

>>16037247
Perhaps, but no where near as much as the guy who's found himself in the same social conditions as blacks, yet still thinks he's their superior. At best it's desperate.

[Anonymous No.16037472]

>>16034373
Both of those unjust nations got what they deserved

[Anonymous No.16038112]

>>16037419
>found himself in the same social conditions as blacks, yet still thinks he's their superior
I believed I was equal, and found I was superior.

That the problem with us gifted autists. We have the courage of our convictions. The typical White liberal does one thing and says another. A systematic, dissonance-lessening thinker will actually go, "We're equal, so what's the big deal?" Oh, you learn the deal.

Btw working part time to live in Schopenhauerean seclusion 4 days a week was pretty based. Better than the middleclass wagie's life of deadlines. I got a lot of spiritual work done. Lifted a lot of weights. And definitely lost all faith in our dusky brethren.
>Get some help.
Get some reddit, faggot.

[Anonymous No.16039160]

>>16032867
Love this fella, I remember that he also wrote on how Britain's weather was so horrific that it made its inhabitants depressed and suicidal.

[Anonymous No.16039174]

>>16037010
>They're closer to you in every way than you are who any European person who reached adulthood before the first world war.
I'm not sure how you'd determine something like this. You have a bunch of heterogeneous qualities you can note similarities and differences in.

[Anonymous No.16039198]

>>16037472
You don't know anything about either of them do you. You probably think they went there and 'took over' a native civilization.

[Anonymous No.16039271]

>>16034404
>>16036699
/pol/ is that way.

[Anonymous No.16039284]

>>16039160
kek explains why a*glos are soulless bugmen

[Anonymous No.16039458]

>>16039160
>>16039284
Found the chapters, Book XIV, seems that I bookmarked them in my e-reader, they are more fun if we read first the introduction of chapter 13

Chapter 13:
>In a nation, so distempered by the climate as to have a disrelish of every thing, nay, even of life, it is plain, that the government most suitable to the inhabitants is that in which they cannot lay their uneasiness to any single person’s charge, and in which, being under the direction of the laws rather than of the prince, it is impossible for them to change the government without subverting the laws themselves.

Chapter 12:
>We do not find in history that the Romans ever killed themselves without a cause: but the English are apt to commit suicide most unaccountably; they destroy themselves even in the bosom of happiness. This action, among the Romans, was the effect of education, being connected with their principles and customs; among the English, it is the consequence of a distemper*, being connected with the physical state of the machine, and independent of every other cause.
>In all probability, it is a defect of the filtration of the nervous juice: the machine, whose motive faculties are often unexerted, is weary of itself; the soul feels no pain, but a certain uneasiness in existing. Pain is a local sensation, which leads us to the desire of seeing an end of it; the burthen of life, which prompts us to the desire of ceasing to exist, is an evil confined to no particular part.
>It is evident that the civil laws of some countries may have reasons for branding suicide with infamy: but, in England, it cannot be punished without punishing the effects of madness.

[Anonymous No.16039490]

>>16039458
>Pain is a local sensation, which leads us to the desire of seeing an end of it; the burthen of life, which prompts us to the desire of ceasing to exist, is an evil confined to no particular part

[Anonymous No.16040024]

>>16032867
>>16035729
>>16036140
yep, sorry for late response, i read it. i wouldnt quite call it sarcastic, but he was extrapolating from the justifications that others would use for slavery. its very much implied that that would not be his opinion, but that difference in custom and appearance was the justification for others treating them as less than man and therefor worthy of slavery. the passage ends “for if its not the case, they would not be christian”. and he says this was not a worthy justification for slavery

op is misleading.

[Anonymous No.16041535]

>>16032867
this text was supposed to be ironic