The experience of human diversity and the search for unity.
Concepts of mankind in the late Enlightenment

1. The Experience of Diversity

1. The epoch-making upheaval in European epistemological and scientific tradition in the eighteenth century is commonly regarded as being brought about by a “change of experience” in contemporary society. The German historian Reinhart Koselleck took the analysis of the gradual separation between what he called the “space of experience” and the “horizon of expectation” as the starting point for his definition of modernity, the origins of which he set between 1750 and 1850.^[1] Likewise Michel Foucault, somewhat narrowing the period down around 1800, recognised these decades as the incubation period for the transformation of modern sciences.^[2] In addition, the sociologist Wolf Lepenies diagnosed an enormous material growth in knowledge in the course of the eighteenth century which resulted in profound change in scientific methods of research and analysis. In particular Lepenies has pointed out the rise of the empirical imperative (Empirisierungszwang) mainly due to the pressure of ever expanding experience and observation (Erfahrungsdruck).^[3]
What led to this fundamental change of experience which no longer followed the traditional patterns of explanation and no longer cherished the time-honoured sources of knowledge, including - above all of course - the Bible? And who was affected by the general change of experience?
Whilst an answer to these questions should start with analysing the ground-breaking discoveries in the natural sciences of the seventeenth century, it is also vital to take tho most general popularization of “knowledge” in the course of the eighteenth century into account. This popularization proceeded at different paces in different countries, but the general process was marked by a democratization in the access to “knowledge”. Typical exemples of this process of of this democratization include the opening of private libraries to the public, the foundation of academies, clubs and societies, all of which were important moments in the “structural transformation of the public sphere”.^[4] The possibility of gaining new experiences, whether through the test-tube or through travel accounts, was no longer reserved to small academic circles; through the “revolution of print”, in quote Robert Darnton, such indirect experiences reached an increasingly broader readership, a process that has also been described as a revolution through reading.^[5] Studies of the many newly established public libraries show that travel accounts were at the top of the list of requested books. The information concerning foreign peoples – and especially the study of the so-called “savages” - became a matter of broad public discussion, whereas up until then it had only been debated in small specialist circles.^[6]

2. The “experience of Human Diversity” stimulated both the curiosity and the imagination, as much as it questioned dearly held certainties of a feudal society still moulded by fundamentally Christian values. Scholars had debated questions that had arisen from the earlier experience of diversity of mankind for quite some time; but even here it is possible to discerne a qualitative change taking place from the middle of the century.The issues at stake, including monogenism and polygenism, the distinction between men, monsters and animals, the diversity of languages, and the differences between ranks and gender stopped being subjects mainly studied by theologians. Whilst the authorsof the travel accounts themselves already offered some suggestions for how to interprete and solve these problems, it was no longer the traditional group of scholars of theology or philosophy, that felt the urge to develop a new catalogue of answers.
In fact the traditional universal models of explanation turned apparently inadequate aut to be inadequate in the face of the new demands that the diversity of the phenomena posed. That the ancient texts, that had been admired for so long, were silent about these phenomena helped to undermine their authority; the long lasting quarrel between “ancients and moderns” was at least provisionally decided for the moderns.^[7] Even the attempt to balance the biblical account with the new discoveries was gradually abandoned.Increasingly the Bible was read as one historical text along with others. It was not so much the truth of the holy text that was substantially doubted, but rather its sufficiency as a source for explaining the latest scientific findings^[8]. The location of man in the “great chain of being” - where man was part of the animal world - was a widely held conception^[9] and the proto-evolutionistic theories like those of James Burnett (Lord Monboddo) or Erasmus Darwin were only its most striking expressions.^[10] But also the quite static ideal-type of society, as provided by natural law philosophy was no longer capable of adequately explaining the simultaneous existence of civilized and barbaric societies. The knowledge of contemporary savage peoples questioned the ideaof a prehistorical state of nature, even if the idea itself was still accepted as providing a useful model. But within that model, the variety of experiences could not really be integrated into a coherent whole and the question of a unifying principle wasnot at stake^[11].

3. The most successful texts around the middle of the eighteenth century did not attempt to undermine the notion of variety in mankind but rather traced it back to general principles. Of considerable influence in this regard were Montesquieu, whose L’Esprit des Lois (1748) was taken by David Hume returning from exile in France to Scotland, where he subsequently edited it in parts.^[12] Another substantial contribution to the discussion was made by Buffon, in whose Histoire Naturelle (1749 ff.) the significance of the development of mankind as a species could only be derived from the cognition of human diversity.^[13] Other influencal works included Turgot’s Plan de deux discours sur l’histoire naturelle (1753), and Rousseau’s Discours sur inégalité parmi les hommes (1755).^[14] The most important debates took place against the backdrop of these texts and they can be characterized as marking the beginning of the so-called “anthropological change”.^[15] Under this new paradigm the authors attempted to ascertain theexperience of the distinction of mankind through a common theoretical foundation.

2. Anthropological Premises

4. One important project was David Hume’s “Science of Man”. Launched in his Treatise on Human Nature (1739-1740), it aimed to generate universally applicable rules on the nature of man, in accordance with the new standards in the natural sciences. These rules had to be based on observation which required a general anthropological basis.
One of the new anthopological premises consisted of the thesis that au fond all human beings, throughout all periods of time and throughout all places in the world, had stayed the same. To cite the locus classicus from Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:

According to Hume, only on the basis of the assumption of the “uniformity of human nature” it is possible to turn the observation of the different and manifold manifestations of man – either through parallel experiences or in a historical perspective – into a coherent science. And coherent science meant, according to Newton, the disclosure of the laws of nature, which “are to be derived from the common nature of man, of which every person partakes who is not a monster”^[17]. The exception proved the rule that should be the basis for “the sake of the order of our discourse”^[18], as demanded by the general perception of difference.

5. A second fundamental anthropological premise was that of “perfectibility”, which held that every human being has the natural ability to attain some state of perfection; an axiom which was sometimes interpreted as being in blatant contradiction with that of the supposed uniform nature of man. The theorem of perfectibility typifies very well the attempt of the philosopers to integrate man into natural history and to take advantage of the new developmental models, originally designed for plants and animals, for the study of mankind. In accordance with Buffon’s theory of preformation, which stated that the development of all biological species should be completely determined, the description of development followed a fixed programme.^[19] The urge for perfection found its expression in the physical necessities of man,such as in the instinct for reproduction and for self preservation. The theory of perfectibility was indebted to Rousseau but - in contrast to him -, for most of the Enlightenment thinkers it was not necessarily combined with the propensity for depravation. Especially the Scottish philosophers had no problem to taking perfectibiliy as a crucial principle affirming the uniformity of human nature. As they saw, man had never been or ever was in an everlasting state of nature. Nonetheless, according to the Scots, when man followed what can be described as his “natural programming”, he would not fail to meet his ultimate designation.^[20]
Through the power of language, man was, in contrast to animals, able to exchange experiences and moreover to pass on knowledge amongst the species over the course of time. The investigations of the physical constitution and the faculties of man smoothed the way for reflections of the species.^[21]

3. The Methods of the “Science of Man”

6. Equipped with these theoretical tools, an entiregeneration of natural historians met the challenge posed by the experience of human diversity with new proposals for the study of the history of mankind. Travel accounts, especially those of the New World, had not only stimulated to the rising demand for explanations, but provided at the same time a new range of sources for a science of man that moved will beyond the traditional models. The observation of the apparent similarities between primitive and classical peoples gave rise to the idea that historical processes were determined by similar principles of development; an idea already suggested by a number of travel accounts. In the popular account Moeurs des Sauvages Americains, Comparées aux Moeurs des Premieres Temps (1724), the missionary Joseph-François Lafitau described the North American Indians, comparing them with the Greeks of Homer’s times.^[22]
Whilst Hume wanted to confine his project of a “Science of Man” to the study of the nature of man and thereby describe the phenomena of society such as religion and economy, the historical sphere itself was increasingly brought into focus. Still the “study of the principles of our own nature [...showed] signal effects in the history of mankind” as Ferguson put it, but “there is also much to be learned from the system of things, in the midst of which mankind are placed, and from the varieties of aspect under which the species has appeared in different ages and nations”.^[23] From that perspective “human nature is a subject of history and physical science”.^[24]
The most popular proposal from the Scottish Enlightenment for the history of man – as for example in Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), John Millar’s Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (1771), Henry Home’s Sketches on the History of Man (1774), or James Dunbar’s Essays on the History of Mankind in Rude and Cultivated Ages (1780) - was the so-called “four-stages-theory” which still adhered to anthropological insights and was in no way a proto-materialistic philosophy of history.^[25] It was in fact no philosophy of history at all, but a theory of historical development the practical application of which posed a number of problems that demanded a new set of instruments. The main methods were borrowed non-explicitly from Hume’s epistemology: “To me, there appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause and Effect”.^[26] It is important to note that Hume’s epistemological guidelines of Hume corresponded with the methods of the natural historians: analogy, comparison and the causal explanation. Following Hume’s sceptical approach, the insistence on the absolute necessity of a connection between cause and effect was abandoned, yet the data obtained by empirical means had to be set out as a part of a “natural system” in a diachronic sequence, as in the new biological accounts. Adam Ferguson’s dictum was as follows: “The works of intelligent power are comprised under general law, or generic decriptions”.^[27] This did not presuppose a causal connection between the historical events themselves, rather it implied links between the motives of human actions and a possible regularity of events, that occured as a result of them.

7. The method of systematic comparison was of fundamental importance for this kind of research. It was indeed seen as the main tool of the science of man.^[28] Comparison could act as a methodological mediator between observation and abstraction or – to put it differently – between empiricism and rationalism as the supposed antipodes of Enlightenment philosophy.^[29] The powers of this scientific tool were analysed epistemologically by James Hutton:

The comparison of human actions in the field of history was intended to substantiate the anthropological premises. Ferguson drew the following conclusions from his diachronical comparisons that emphasized the principle of equality of the peoples:

The “rude savages” were not first and foremost regarded as being “different”, rather they were seen as being in an early childhood phase of the own civilization.
The various manifestations of man could thus be integrated into an all-embracing concept of mankind in which everyone was allocated his place. The comparative method gave rise to the concept of the congruence of peoples, based on the idea of a time-table with room for both advances and delays. In this way, the conclusions drawn from analogy were a substitute for the experiment in the natural sciences, which was clearly impossible to carry through in the historical field. The analogies with the “savage peoples” served to replace the non-existant sources for pre-historical times. In this way similarities could be established between dissimilar things, enabling the natural historians to integrate various and diverse manifestations of man under a general heading. History as indirect observation provided a posteriori the facts^[32] for the general principles of man, which were stated a priori by deduction. The empirical foundation and the abstract superstructure of the science of man were still distinct methods and only unified in kind of a hermeneutic system. As Ferguson pu it:

The present world were actually such a chaos to the human mind, if it were not qualified to single out what the Grecian philosopher [...Plato] calls the One in many, and to wield the indefinite multitude of things, under general denominations expressive of the common description or form in which numbers agree.^[33]

8. This system was based on a concept of mankind in which the term “mankind” was not only synonymously with the “species”, but which also served as an expression for the introspection and self-determination of man. The concept of mankind was oriented towards its destination of “humanitas”. The historiographical approach to this destination generated a new form of secular self-description that operated within its own frame of reference and was therefore able to dismiss an external guarantee of the order.^[34]
The methods of the natural historians of mankind provided grounds for its later critics who saw it, at best, as a “conjectural method”^[35] or who condemned itstraightfowardly because of its “airy, vague and unsubstantial speculations”^[36]. Already among the next generation of Scottish scholars, including Dugald Stewart and Alexander Fraser Tytler, the empirical claims of the natural historians were no longer seenas credible. From their standpoint of pure positivism, the overall designs for the history of mankind had ceased to have any validity.^[37]
This powerful critic shows how temporarily limited the ground was on which olistic conceptions of mankind could be prepared. Around the turn of the century, the “Science of Man” was divided into the different subjects and the hybrid overall designs of the history of mankind disappeared between the borders of the new specialized disciplines, such as anthropology, psychology, history, ethnology, archaeology and linguistics. Considering the universal claim of this field of study, the subjects dealt with as well as the theories and methods should be of particular interest to the history of science.

4. Conceptions of Mankind

9. One of the most significant accomplishments of the Scottish approach to the history of mankind was to integrate man, just as every other creature, into the study of the general development of nature. The Scottish histories of mankind were not derived fromthe tradition of the “historia humana” but from the “historia naturalis”. With the integration of man into the “historia naturalis”, this realm of science experienced its most radical and innovative change since the days of Bacon.^[38]
The Scottish contributions to natural history had a very prompt and enthusiastic reception in the German-speaking enlightened society and found there many imitators.^[39] Since the 1770s it would be no overstatement to characterize the conceptualization of mankind as a “fashionable study” in Germany, as noted with smugness by Johann Gottfried Herder, who didn’t hesitate to publish his own work under the telling title Also a Philosophy of History. A Contribution to the Many Contributions of the Century.^[40] The subject of man and mankind was at the top of the agenda of Enlightenment authors. It was treated under a great variety of titles, focusing on whole range of different parameters in the process of civilization – like religion, economy, law, manners and gender.^[41] The heterogeneity of the genre was inevitably accompanied by great differences in quality. Along with the number of publications, the consciousness of compulsory subjects and appropriate methods also increased.^[42] The result was an attempt at systematization and meta-historical reflection. In this context the “histories of arts and sciences” sprang up like mushrooms. In most cases these histories were outlines of special university lectures, offering a general view of the different sectors of science.^[43] One of their favourite taskswas to categorize and evaluate the different conceptions of mankind within the natural, philosophical and historical sciences. Fine examples of this sort of approach include Friedrich August Carus’ Ideen zu einer Geschichte der Menschheit^[44] and Christian Daniel Beck’s Anleitung zur genauern Kenntniss der allgemeinen Welt- und Voelkergeschichte (1787).

10. Carus delivered the only contemporary historiography of the “history of mankind”.In his view, this genre had not been treated seriously in the past. After some promising attempts in antiquity, serious research on the histoey of mankind only started with the discovery of the American continent and all its implications. Hence the exploration of America was an important caesura, even if at first the main focus was on the mere description of the external appearances and characteristics of man. This tendency was, according to Carus, connected with the methods of the traditional “natural history” and its strongly descriptive character which had the propensity to build “arbitrary arrangements of peoples”. The representation of mankind was then merely given in the form of a scale or a tableau, and Carus complained about a missing connecting thread or “plan” in most of the works.^[45]
Some of the admired Scottish writers also underwent this critique, as well as prominent professors from the university of Goettingen, like Christoph Meiners, who - according to Carus – played with names when he wrote his Grundriss der Geschichte der Menschheit (1785). It was actually a highly traditional natural history of man, along the conventional static forms of that tradition, dealing neither with “history” as a process nor with “mankind” as an entity.^[46]
The primacy of anthropology became a bone of contention. The critics argued that these anthopological concepts were not able to go beyond mere descriptions of refined or unrefined states of society, that were derived only from the nature of man. Additionally the critics argued that primary sources should be selected with greater care. In contrast to wholesale ecclecticism and the indefatigable collections of materials, historians should pay more attention to the authenticity of the sources, especially in the use of travel accounts.^[47] Even in the application of the method of analogy historians were urged to be more careful, because similarities could be strained. Rather than scientific judgement poetry could be the result of the use of analogy, a propensity that Carus found for example in Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784).^[48]

11. The congenital defect of the different approaches to the study of mankind was, from the very beginning, the alleged dishonest mixture of its methods. Critics pointed to the apparent conflict between the theoretical foundations, which could function as a philosophical model on the one had site, and the empirical access in reviewing these theories on the other. Karl Popper would later define such a model as “conjecture and refutation” or better known, as the method of “trial and error”.^[49] Such a synthesis of methods appeared to the contemporary philosophers of science as epistemologically preposterous. According to the critics the approaches to the history of mankind should neither be the outcome of compilation, as was the case with the traditional annals describing the history of mankind, nor should they be purely philosophical or legal constructions, which could also exist unaffected by the disturbing new materials on mankind.
Following the categories employed by these early historians of science it is possible to disentangle four prevailing conceptions for the history of mankind in the late eighteenth century.
I. Natural History of Man. With the attempt to integrate man like every other creature into the course of nature, the traditional picture ofman as the jewel of Creation was discharged. A process that intertwined historicizing nature and naturalizing man became the basis of a modified “Natural History of Man”, that moved away significantly from the pure classifications of traditional “Natural History”.^[50] The new approach to Natural History was in itself divided between a group who focused on the nature of man and those who attempted to offer an overview of the whole species. The anthropological orientation of the first group is exemplified by works such as Ernst Platner’s Neue Anthropologie fuer Aerzte und Weltweise. Mit besonderer Ruecksicht auf Physiologie, Pathologie, Moralphilosophie und Aesthetik (1772), Franz von Irwing’s Beitrag zur philosophischen Geschichte des Menschen (1781) and Johann Samuel Ith’s Versuch einer Anthropologie oder Philosophie des Menschen nach seinen koerperlichen Anlagen (1794 ff.).

12. With the emancipation of pure auxilary functions to moral philosophy the anthropological conceptions had the inclination to study physiological and psychological subjects, and to turn into what was colled with a fine German noun Erfahrungsseelenlehre. The title “Anthropology” was increasingly adopted. Whilst it was not newly designed, it became more extensively applied in the course of the eighteenth century.^[51] Comprising physis and psyche the anthropological approach was used as propaedeutics for every possible scientific interest in man. In addition its practical use was emphasized with the argument that it supported the improvement of the general knowledge of human nature.^[52]
The task of the second group of natural historians was to answer the questions that the physical diversity of man posed. Schemes of racial analysis were developed, but these remained full of at most anticipatory ideas, becoming a single identifiable conception of race only a century later.^[53] The question of diversity of the species was inextricably connected with the investigation of the relation between man and animals, as in Christian Friedrich Ludwig’s Grundriss der Naturgeschichte der Menschenspecies (1796)^[54] and Johann Christian Polykarp Erxleben’s Anfangsgruende der Naturgeschichte (1773). Under the healing of the “Natural History of Man” scientific interest in the individual and in the species was connected. Anthropological and historical insights intersected, but still neither of the sides intended to divide the science of man. The idea was still to build a common foundation.^[55]
II. World History. At the end of the eighteenth century the growing knowledge of geography was now accompanied by ethnology^[56], the study of foreign peoples. This combination generated new scientific tools such and auxiliary disciplines such as a highly specialized cartography. The mixture of sciences created the conditions for the development of a refined and elaborated “World History”.^[57] World historical research was carried out systematically along the continents and their different inhabitants. These „World Histories“ were often written with educational purposes in mind, as exemplified by Johann Matthias Schroeckh’s Allgemeine Weltgeschichte fuer Kinder (1780 ff.), Karl Hammerdoerfer’s Leitfaden der allgemeinen Weltgeschichte oder die vornehmsten Weltbegebenheiten nach der Zeitfolge geordnet und zum Gebrauch fuer Lehrer und Lernende eingerichtet (1786), and Georg Christian Raff’s Abriss der allgemeinen Weltgeschichte fuer die Jugend und ihre Freunde (1788).^[58] As a specific approach tho the histor of mankind “World History” was a responce to the ever growing group of readers, fullfilling the Enlightenment aspiration to widen that circle. Beginning with education already in earliest childhood, a consistent picture of the world should be at everyone’s disposal.^[59] Such a homogenous picture of the world asked for a new style of narration, that was suitable for teaching purposes and therefore easy to grasp.^[60]

13. III. Universal History. Not too different from “World History” was the approach of “Universal History” which had found its most prominent expression in Gray-Guthrie’s Universal History (1736 ff.). Due to its many translations and adaptationsthis work became the starting point of a major European project^[61]. Gray-Guthrie’s Universal History had an encyclopaedic character^[62] that met the traditional requirements for that genre of historical writing.^[63] Yet under the healing of “Universal-History” some German scholars debated an ideal conception to elucidate the history of mankind.^[64] August Ludwig Schloezer ordered the narrative and presentation of his “Universal-History” in a very pedagogical way. On the one hand hecharacterized the functions of universal history by factually describing nations and peoples; on the other hand, he emphasized the need for a connecting thread throughout that description. The purpose was to derive a “System” from a set of pure data, what he called an “Aggregat”.^[65] Such a systematic account afforded the construction of a general association of the individual events, a task that asked for new methods of association as well as an innovative istylistic representation.^[66] The consistency of Schloezer’s model depended on the capability of the historian and on the abiliy of his methods to produce a convincing nexus in the history of mankind throughout time and space. The practical consequences of Schloezer’s methodological considerations were the exclusion of sourceless pre-historical times from a proper “Universal History” and the strong emphasis on peoples that had held a hegemonial position for some time in the course of world affairs.^[67] This form of “Universal History” relinquished its holistic claim and withdrew the more limited areas of research that were in the reach of the scientific tools of the historian.
IV. History of Mankind. The protagonists of the so-called “History of Mankind” or “Menschheitsgeschichte” had far less difficulties with these problems. Their claims were not limited by methodological questions of the historian because they treated the history of mankind in a philosophical manner with principled deliberations. They did not mind to call themselves “historical philosophers” or “pragmatic anthropologists”. “Pragmatic” meant that this conception of mankind served the profoundly enlightened cause of the instruction and improvement of mankind. The “History of Mankind” was not just the subject of this approach, but also its object, with the history of mankind seen as a teleological process. This model found its most illustrious examples in Immanuel Kant’s Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in Weltbuergerlicher Absicht (1784)^[68] and in Johann Gottfried Herder’s Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1794 ff.)^[69]. In contrast to the other three conceptions they did not hesitate to define the guiding principle of the nature of man as “progressive” and to deduce the history of mankind as transparent in its progress and movement towards its designation.^[70]

14. One part of the german protagonists of this approach to the study of mankind were ardent supporters of their Scottish precursors such as Christian Garve’s Rede ueber die Erziehung der Menschheit (1800)^[71] or Daniel Jenisch’s Universalhistorischer Ueberblick der Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts, als eines sich fortbildenden Ganzen (1801).^[72] The other part of historians undertook zealous attempts to apply Kant’s philosophy to the history of mankind. Representative for this group are Philipp Albert Stapfer’s Die fruchtbarste Entwicklungsmethode der Anlagen des Menschen zufolge eines kritisch-philosophischen Entwurfs der Culturgeschichte unseres Geschlechts (1792)^[73], Karl Heinrich Ludwig Poelitz’ Geschichte der Cultur der Menschheit nach kritischen Principien (1795),^[74] and Karl Ludwig von Woltmann’s Ueber pragmatische Behandlung der Geschichte (1803).^[75] These epigonous works indicated the end of the era of the “Histories of Mankind”. The general interest started to shift to the realm of “culture” that had so far been woven into the triad of “man”, “nature” and “culture”.^[76]
This brief survey of different conceptions of mankind in the late eighteenth century enables us to differentiate between the various approaches while situating them in a field of contestations between the landmarks of anthropology and history.^[77] It is possible to identify the pure forms of each individual conception within taht field, but it should be emphasized that they overlap in a great number of places. If only for this reason, the whole field of the studies of mankind merits further investigation; it is one of the areas where, from about 1750, the so-called “tranformation of knowledge and science” truly occured. From the middle of the eighteenth century the new “Science of Man” dealt with the nature of man itself, contrasting man with animals and studying the differences within the species. These studies proceeded in a new direction when man himself became the mere starting-point for historical research, and their main interest moved to the historical development of the species. The evolving historical anthropology developed models based on the uniformity of human nature, like the four-stages-theory, that remained popular for a long time. With these models it became possible – and that was new – to reconcile the disturbing experience of diversity. Moreover, the vacuum created by the lack of historical records for pre-historical times could now be filled with the accounts of savage peoples. Natural historians were thus able to maintain their emphatic adherence to the inductive method. By means of comparison they drew parallels between contemporary travel accounts and historical events, unifying them in a system with the method of analogy. And whereas Hume, as well as Kant, remained sceptical about the idea of a science of history itself, the scientific interest of their successors shifted from the nature of man to he history of mankind – from anthropology to history. Perfectibility was no longer a principle of man,but a system of perfection throughout mankind. The existence of different peoples, in both synchronic and diachronic perspective, was interpreted in the overall designs of mankind as different steps on the same ladder. While the integration of all peoples in one system may have operated on the basis of eurocentric propositions, as contemporary critics argue, it should be noted that the creation of a holistic approach to the history of mankind was deeply indebted to the idea of the equality of all peoples.

15. The attempt to confront the “change of experiences” with new models explaining all of mankind was of short duration. The critique concerning its peculiar mixture of methods only intensified and finally led to the result that the secular conceptions of mankind ceased abruptly. Around 1800 the subject of“man” or “mankind” was delegated to specialized disciplines.^[78] The scientific community of the nineteenth century had serious doubts concerning Enlightenment science in general and especially concerning its attempts at historical research, which were judged from a highly professionalized vantage point.^[79] Conceptions for the history of mankind had no role in the scientific agenda in the era of nationalism.
It is only now, in the era of globalization, when old ideological and political traditions have lost their hegemony, that conceptions for mankind are again in demand. It took a long time and a great effort to acknowledge “diversity” as an experience that does not require a creation ofan hierarchical order. Nonetheless as the opposition between civilized and barbaric nations and peoples continues to be popular, the search for a unifying conception of mankind seems more urgent than ever before. A study of eighteenth century approaches to the history of mankind is therefore imperative – for historical, historiographical, cultural and indeed political reasons.