... perspectives they attacked similar targets—obscurantism and superstition in theology, metaphysics and dogmatism in philosophy, and despotic systems of tyranny and privilege in politics and economics. Both figures were also generally critical of the great speculative systems of European philosophy...

...This chapter turns to the history of the race concept. It considers the early development of thinking about human diversity and human origins in the context of the Renaissance. In important respects, later reflections in European philosophy echo debates that played out a century earlier within...