François Bernier

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Title page of the font Voyages by François Bernier, written in 1670

François Bernier (* 1620 in Joué-Etiau , Anjou ; † September 22, 1688 in Paris ) was a French doctor , philosopher , traveler to Asia and writer.

Life

François Bernier lost his parents at an early age and came into the care of his uncle. At fifteen he went to Paris to study at the College of Clermont . There he befriended Claude-Emmanuel Lhuillier . Through this he met Cyrano de Bergerac and possibly Molière and belonged to a small group of people whom Pierre Gassendi gave lessons.

He later took part in Gassendi's astronomy lectures at the Collège Royal in Paris , where he taught philosophy himself and from 1647 to 1650 had the opportunity to travel to Germany, Poland and Italy.

When his teacher Gassendi was forced to give up his chair due to a lung disease, Bernier accompanied him as secretary and nurse to southern France near Toulon . During this time he graduated from the University of Montpellier with a doctorate in medicine in 1652 . In the years from 1651 to 1654 he was also involved in the dispute between his teacher and Jean-Baptiste Morin (1583–1656). The two writings Anatomia ridiculi muris (1651) and Favilla ridiculi muris (1653) were created.

After Gassendi's death in 1656, Bernier traveled via Palestine , Egypt , Arabia and Ethiopia to Surat in India , where he arrived in 1658 and spent the next ten years of his life. He became a doctor of Muhammad Aurangzeb Alamgir , the Mughal Mughal of India. After his final return around 1670, his travelogue appeared under the title Histoire de la dernière révolution des états du Grand Mogol .

In 1674 the first part of his most important work, Abrégé de la philosophie de Gassendi , appeared, in which he explained and defended the philosophy of his teacher.

In Paris he was a welcome guest at the literary salons of Marguerite de la Sablière and Ninon de Lenclos . In 1685 he visited Charles de Saint-Évremond in London and Pierre Bayle , with whom he corresponded, in Rotterdam .

A letter read to the French Academy of Sciences on April 24, 1684 and attributed to Bernier proposes dividing the earth not only into geographical regions but also according to the species or races of people who inhabit it. The letter was later published under the title Nouvelle division de la terre par les différentes espèces ou races d'hommes qui l'habitent (German: A new division of the earth according to the different species or races of the people who inhabit it). In it, the author was probably the first to use the term “ race ” in the sense of a taxonomic classification of humanity (as a synonym for “species”). However, he turned against the custom of hastily categorizing people according to skin color, and counted the inhabitants of North Africa and the Middle East as far as India to be the same "species" or race as the Europeans.

Works

  • Histoire de la dernière révolution des états du Grand Mogol . Paris 1670-1671.
(English translation) Travels in the Mogul Empire, AD 1656–1668. Translated by Archibald Constable (1891), 2nd ed. Revised by Vincent A. Smith . London 1916 ( digitized )
  • Anatomia ridiculi muris, hoc est Dissertatiunculae JB Morini, astrologi, adversus expositam a P. Gassendo Epicuri philosophiam . Paris 1651.
  • Favilla muris, hoc est, dissertatinculae ridicule defensae a JB Morino, astrologo . Paris 1651.
  • Abrégé de la philosophie de Gassendi . 1674-1684.
  • Doutes à Mr Bernier sur quelques-uns des principaux chapitres de son Abrégé de la Philosophie de Gassendi . Paris 1682
  • Éclaircissement sur le livre de M. de la Ville ... In: Pierre Bayle: Recueil de quelques pièces curieuses concernant la philosophie de Monsieur Descartes . (Amsterdam 1684); Excerpts translated into: Andreas Scheib (Ed.), This is my body. Philosophical texts on the Eucharistic debate in the 17th century (Darmstadt 2008)
  • Nouvelle division de la terre par les différentes espèces ou races d'hommes qui l'habitent . In: Journal des sçavans . Volume 6, 1684, pp. 133-140, online .
  • Traité du Libre et du Volontaire . Amsterdam 1685.
  • Extrait de diverses pièces envoyées pour étreines à Madame de la Sablière. Introduction à la lecture de Confucius . In: Journal des Sçavans , 1688, pp. 47–52
  • Mémoire sur le quiëtisme des Indes . In: Basnage de Beauval: Histoire des ouvrages des Savans . September 1688, pp. 47-52.

swell

  • Dr. Hoefer (editor): Nouvelle biographie générale: depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à nos jours, avec les renseignements bibliographiques et l'indication des sources à consulter . Paris, Firmin Didot, 1852–1866, 46 volumes
  • Herber Jaumann: Handbook of the scholarly culture of the early modern period. Volume 1 . Gruyter, 2004, ISBN 3-110-16069-2

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt : The meaning of April 24, 1684 for racial studies. In: Journal for Racial Studies and all human research. Volume 5, 1937, pp. 282-288.
  2. ↑ Uwe Hossfeld: History of biological anthropology in Germany . From the beginning until the post-war period. Steiner, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-515-08563-7 .
  3. ^ [Anonymous]: Nouvelle division de la terre par les différentes espèces ou races d'hommes qui l'habitent. In: Journal des sçavans . Volume 6, 1684, pp. 133-140.
  4. ↑ Imanuel Geiss : History of Racism . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1993, ISBN 3-518-11530-8 , pp. 17 and 148
  5. ↑ John R. Baker: The races of mankind , licensed edition Pawlak, Herrsching 1989, p. 17

further reading

  • Pierre H. Boulle: François Bernier and the Origins of the Modern Concept of Race . In: Sue Peabody, Tyler Edward Stovall (Eds.): The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France . Duke University Press, 2003, ISBN 0822331179 , pp. 11-27.
  • Siep Stuurman: François Bernier and the Invention of Racial Classification . In: History Workshop Journal . Volume 50, 2000, pp. 1-21, doi : 10.1093 / hwj / 2000.50.1 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bernier, François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French doctor and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH 1620
PLACE OF BIRTH Joué-Etiau , Anjou
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 1688
Place of death Paris