Adventures In Strange Vocabulary: Sensuous Barbarism

Sensuous Barbarism:

G.W.F. Hegel was a philosophical big shot around Germany way back in the 19^th Century. He was one of those know-it-alls who had an opinion about everything, even if he knew nothing at all about it.

Take black people, for instance, Africans. Hegal's analysis of black culture and society was very, very rough-edged and negative. He casually announced that black Africans had no real part to play in the history of the human race. He described their way of living as “sensuous barbarism.” A totally sense-based state of superstition and magical unreality. He had obviously not done his homework.

He took as his sources such “experts” as Herodotus, the ancient historian. If he had bothered to look into it, he would have found out that much of Africa at the time had very advanced cultures, featuring elaborate laws regarding property and trade.

Nice turn of phrase though, don't you think? “Sensuous barbarism.” You could almost sell that as a cultural option today.