Positivism and Progress in Firmin’s Equality of the Human Races

24 pages.With The Equality of Human Races , Haitian intellectual Anténor Firmin offered the world its first sustained, philosophical, book-length response to scientific European racism. With the publication of the English translation in 2000, we in the Anglophone world finally have the opportunity to reclaim Firmin and his work as a part of Black intellectual history. What is perhaps most striking for the modern day reader is Firmin’s critical project. Firmin proceeds systematically through the key “scientific arguments ” in favor of racial inequality, casting doubt on the methodologies, countering what passes for evidence, and revealing the underlying assumptions, prejudices and ideologies behind them. Along with this critical project, however, Firmin puts forward an original thesis about the origin, development, advancement, and ultimate equality of the human races. In this essay, I discuss Firmin’s notion of progress , the idea at the heart of that positive thesis, situating him relative to several key figures of his time. On the one hand, progress is the key to the difference between Arthur de Gobineau’s Inequality of Human Races and Firmin’s Equality of Human Races—the latter viewing it as an absolute certainty, the former as an idealistic illusion. On the other hand, progress is what unites Firmin with such key nineteenth century figures as Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, who clearly serve as models for the type and scope of Firmin’s positivist project. Progress is also that for which Firmin must provide a new, anti-racist theory in order to successfully counter the social Darwinist arguments of scholars like Clémence Royer (while positioning himself as proponent of Darwin’s theories)