CHAPTER 2

Race, Social Contract Theory,

and Social Darwinism

Race and Orientalism
Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism reveals the biological determinism
of racial inequality in the figures of John Stuart Mill, John Locke, and
Charles Dickens, among others. Especially in On Liberty and Representative
Government, Mill (1806–1873) appeared to affirm that the Indians are
inferior with respect to civilization, compared to the British. He was an
Indian office functionary for several years in the East India Company.1
In Said’s study of Orientalism, a European mode of representation is
featured in its portrayal of the Orient into Western learning, Western con-
sciousness, and Western empire. His definition of Orientalism seems to be
political, because Orientalism is thought of as a product of certain political
forces and activities. “Orientalism is a school of interpretation whose
material happens to be the Orient, its civilizations, peoples, and localities.”2
In distinction from Said, however, I am concerned with uncovering
power relations between racism and colonialism that Said undermines in
his study of Orientalism. His study of Orientalism seems to be more
imbued with a style of literary interpretation than involved in colonial
power relations in the domains of politics, world economy, and the philo-
sophical discourse of racism.
In this chapter, I seek to trace historically and genealogically a colonial
discourse of race in Spanish colonialism and its civilizing mission. Then, it
is important to uncover a Christian character of primitive accumulation of
capital, while dealing with philosophical assumptions about racial theory

© The Author(s) 2019 27

P. S. Chung, Critical Theory and Political Theology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17172-8_2
28  P. S. CHUNG

and colony inherent in Eurocentric scholarship. An analysis of social

Darwinism becomes a major domain with respect to social contract theory
and the development of racial thinking in the American context. A politi-
cal, theological critique shall be undertaken in regard to social contract
reasoning of individual rights, Christian racial justification, and its millen-
nial character of European modernity.

Colonialism and Natural Slavery

Racism and colonialism have been basic features of the modern world
since the Renaissance and through the Enlightenment and Industrial
Revolution. Various European nations established comprehensive institu-
tions and national political powers controlling diverse areas of Africa, Asia,
and Latin America. For instance, the East India, West Indies, Virginia, and
Royal Africa Companies were established in the seventeenth century.
“Colonial regimes were usually racially organized, and racist beliefs and
practices usually flourished in colonial contexts.”3
Earlier on, colonialism and slave trade existed. Throughout history,
large political states in Africa and Mongolia or China have exploited their
ideology, military powers, economic organization, and political structures
in order to invade and control other territories. But thanks to technologi-
cal advances and capacities, European colonialism caused greater eco-
nomic interest, political dominion, and exercised military power more
than earlier instances of colonialism.
The coasts of Africa and India were plundered by the Portuguese, and
the Pope divided up the New World between the Spanish and the
Portuguese. Colonial regimes established settlement policies, encouraging
thousands of people from their own countries to reside in the colonies.
In the Spanish strategy throughout much of Latin America, an
‘Auschwitz’ began in the life of the Aztec and Inca peoples. The year 1492
was a landmark for Catholic monarchs of Spain, in which Ferdinand of
Aragon and Isabella of Castile joined forces through marriage. They
defeated the last remaining Muslims in Granada and brought Spain under
Christian rule. During the same year, the Italian navigator Christopher
Columbus (1451–1506), rendered in Latin as Christoferens (‘Christbearer’),
opened a path to new worlds by unexpected discoveries. He was inspired
in an apocalyptic vision: “God made me the messenger of the new heaven
and the new earth of which he spoke in the Apocalypse of St. John. … and
he showed me the spot where to find it.”4
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  29

Since Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ America (1492), the pillage

of the treasure of the Aztecs in Mexico (1519) began, followed by the pil-
lage of the Incas in Peru (1534). Luther’s Reformation (1517) was con-
temporary with Hernando Cortés, who was sailing to Mexico and
conquered the Aztecs in 1521. The door to apocalypse shaped Columbus’
conviction of the message of Christ for conversion and also of gaining
gold from those lands. The exploited wealth could finance a new crusade
to expel Muslim control from Jerusalem. Acquiring gold from the colo-
nies was justified in religious terms for the conquest of Jerusalem, which
would usher in the millennial reign of Christ on earth. The Christian form
of chiliasm forfeited the rights of Muslims, Jews, and the non-European
‘heathens.’
Columbus was under the influence of the Spiritual Franciscans, who
believed the world was now in its last stage, the Age of the Holy Spirit,
according to the tradition of Joachim of Fiore. Twenty-four local people
were kidnapped and transported to Spain. Six survived to return with
Columbus to act as translators of the Christian message.5
The Requirements instructed the conquerors to act as messengers of
Christianity during the era of extensive Spanish conquests in the Americas
between 1512 and 1573. They sanctioned that the authority of the con-
queror was grounded in God’s original act of creation. They acted on
behalf of the Spanish monarch, who also acted for the Pope, yet without
reference to Jesus Christ. Anyone who resisted conversion to Christianity
was denounced as being destructive.
But in the Requirements, the Christian conqueror was allowed to dis-
avow any responsibility for violence, but the victim should be blamed. As
the Requirements say: “I solemnly declare that the deaths and damages
received from such will be your fault.”6 Civilizing mission comes along
with a victim-blaming strategy in which military aggression and atrocity
are justified in Christian footings.
Obviously, the year 1492 saw the beginning of the European seizure of
power in the world, and it was characterized as the birth of modern times.
In the Spanish conquest of the island of La Hispaniola (present-day Haiti
and the Dominican Republic), we meet the figure of Bartolomé de Las
Casas (1484–1566), who proclaimed that God takes sides with the subju-
gated pagans against the corruption of Christianity. He served as priest
and administrator in New Spain, and denounced the encomienda. Within
this colonialist economic system, the Spanish king assigned the land and
Indians to the Spaniards by entrusting them with evangelization. The major
30  P. S. CHUNG

purpose of encomienda was, however, to provide a labor force of indige-

nous people for the mines and cattle ranches, but it actually degenerated
to slavery in the end. The Indian in the system of encomienda died of
malnutrition, dietary changes, illness, armed conflict, and forced labor.
They were treated more poorly and cruelly than the slaves were.
Las Casas had confrontation with Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1489–1573),
a proponent of the Enlightenment. The latter undertook the religious,
intellectual justification for colonial conquest through the positions of the
Christian doctrine of just war and the Aristotelian logic of slavery. Indians’
commitment to indulged idolatry and sin became a pretext for justifying
Christian war against them. They were barbarians, blasphemers, and idola-
ters. Their supposed natural rudeness and inferiority was used by Sepúlveda
to underpin the Aristotelian notion of natural slaves, which affirms that
some people are naturally born slaves. Aristotle’s theory of natural servi-
tude was employed to legitimate Spanish colonialism as tutelage to
the Indians.7
On the contrary, Las Casas’ fight for the human rights of the indige-
nous becomes crucial in his critique of injustice of economic system
together with his rejection of Aristotle’s logic of natural servitude.8

Commercial Revolution, Its Christian Character,

and Colonial Racism
The Spanish and Portuguese built up their colonial establishment on
Christian grounds, and Columbus legitimated his search for God and gold
by appealing to Joachim of Fiore’s prophecy: “From Spain will come the
one who will bring back the Ark to Zion.”9 Columbus’ ‘civilizing’ mission
was driven by messianic and apocalyptic expectation. On the contrary,
European modernity cannot be thought of without its dark side, under-­
modernity that inflicted the apocalypse of violence and annihilation.
Mercantilism (from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century) was a sys-
tem of state-regulated exploitation through trade in the age of colonialism
and slavery. The discovery of America had brought opportunity in bring-
ing benefit to Europe for market, forced labor, and gold. Perpetrated
against colonies, the system of mercantilism engendered the triangular
trade or triangle in the North Atlantic. Europe’s wealth was built up on
the basis of the mass enslavement of Africans and the exploitation of
America’s resources; it began in the seventeenth century and continued
into the nineteenth century.
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  31

In the first leg, the slave ships sailed from a European port with a cargo
of manufactured goods (industrial commodities and weapons) to Africa.
In Africa, slave ships sold their cargo and a variety of goods (guns, ammu-
nitions, and other factory-made goods) to the African rulers for slaves. In
the second leg, ships sailed from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to the
Americas and the Caribbean islands, where enslaved Africans were traded
on the plantations in exchange for a cargo of raw materials. In the third
leg, with the products of slave-labor plantations (cotton, sugar, coffee,
tobacco, molasses, and rum), the ships returned to their home, complet-
ing the triangle trade.10 The triangle trade had brought considerable
sources of wealth to Spain throughout the sixteenth century, and such
similar systems repeated themselves in British rule in India and China.
The wholesale transatlantic trade provided investment capital and
wealth for undergirding the industrialization of Western Europe.
According to Adam Smith, European trade and colonialism have done
nothing beneficial to the prosperity of colonies. Instead, it formed the
chimera project in hunting for gold and silver mines and the injustice of
coveting the possessions of a colony.11
In the first volume of Capital, Marx also observed European colonial-
ism in the conquest and exploitation of the periphery countries. “The
discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and
entombment in mines of aboriginal population, the beginning of the con-
quest and looting of East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the
commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of
capitalist production.”12
In the discovery of America, plundering of Mexico and Peru occurred.
Through enslavement of Indians and Negroes and in the circumnaviga-
tion of Africa, a sea link with India, Indochina, China, and Japan was
established. It ended up enriching the life of the bourgeois in Western
Europe, completely transforming its economic course. This historical real-
ity can be called the commercial revolution, which created a world com-
modity market.13 It affirms the Christian character of primitive accumulation
of capital.
In later mission history within Protestantism, there is no doubt that the
consciousness of the superiority on the part of the privileged race perme-
ated in indigenous areas. As the standard model or normative authority, it
moved forward cultural imperialism in connection with political and eco-
nomic domination. Colonial regimes were racially organized through
imperialist distribution, in which religious institution and its discourse
32  P. S. CHUNG

played as a functionary in support of racist beliefs and practices. Racism is

an irreducible dimension of social, cultural, and political relations and the
social construction of racial classification and hierarchies can be seen in the
subjugation and extermination of indigenous people and the massive
expansion of the Atlantic slave trade in the early modern period. The civi-
lizing mission of Europeans is highlighted as ruin and devastation in con-
trast to uncivilized savages.
On the other hand, the Pilgrim Fathers and the European settlers in
North America took the Indians to be ‘Amalekites’ in their millenarian
image. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his Democracy in America (1840), did not
imagine that the Anglo-Saxon democratic principle and civil society will
live upon an equal footing together with the blacks and the Indians. “The
lot of the negro is placed on the extreme limit of servitude, while that of
the Indian lies on the uttermost verge of liberty; and slavery does not pro-
duce more fatal effects upon the first, than independence upon the
second.”14
The will to dominate is the core of colonial discourse in shaping the
spirit of modernity and its Christian millennial imprint. Science and tech-
nology render human reason as an instrument to dominate over the earth,
while sacrificing the life of the underdeveloped and the technological mas-
tery of nature by serving the interest of the conqueror. The Enlightenment
turns into myth in subjugating the victim and propagating white suprem-
acy and its civilizing mission.
The civilizing mission is emphasized in the French colonial context in
that the French sought to transform the people, especially the elites, into
modern and rational citizens in the French way. Franz Fanon examines
how race shapes or deforms the lives of colonized people in the French
Caribbean, in France, and in colonial conflicts in Africa. Dehumanization
is rationally organized in colonial policy. According to Fanon, “in every
civilized and civilizing country, the Negro is the symbol of sin. The arche-
type of the lowest values is represented by the Negro.”15
In his psychological analysis of deformed identity, the black man has
only one destiny, to become like the white man. Fanon scrutinizes the rac-
ist and colonizing project of white European culture, while challenging its
totalizing, hierarchical worldview setting up the black human being as
‘negro.’ “The Negro is not. Any more than the white man.”16 In the colo-
nial condition the colonial self is overdetermined from without, namely
the dominion of the colonizer.17 The struggle against colonial oppression
challenges the European Enlightenment idea of ‘man’ and its historicist
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  33

notion of progress. In Paul Valery’s definition of language, Fanon reads it

as “the god gone astray in the flesh.”18
The memories of the subjugated last long and characterize the reality of
under-modernity, in which the European modernity undertook
‘Auschwitz,’ murdering God and the Other. The death of God is seen as
synonymous with the death of the Other.

Social Contract Theory and Colonial Conquest

The British, with an extension of political and military power, established
the East India Company (formerly 1600–1708, later 1708–1873), which
formed the exploitation system of trade. Developing a monopolistic trad-
ing body, the company became involved in politics, acting as an agent of
British imperialism in India from the early eighteenth century to the mid-­
nineteenth century.
John Locke (1632–1704), a classic republican, contributed to the
Enlightenment and liberalism, and he developed political liberty, repre-
sentative government in rebellion to tyranny, religious tolerance, and a
model of separation between church and state. He wrote the Two Treatises
of Government to defend the Glorious Revolution of 1688, as he coun-
tered the absolutist philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679).
The Two Treatises entails political revolution, which refers to a restora-
tion of natural right against tyranny; such a right resides in every private
citizen, alone as well as collective underlying an idea of tyrannicide.19 His
political philosophy and social contract theory considerably influenced
Thomas Jefferson, author of the American Declaration of Independence
(1776), which stands in the natural law tradition.20
In Locke’s view, the natural condition of humankind (the Law of
Nature), in which there is no civil authority, is not a state without moral-
ity. This condition presupposes equality to one another in a state of per-
fect and complete liberty, free from the interference of others. The Law
of Nature as the basis of all morality, which is granted to us by God,
commands us not to harm others. “The state of nature has a law of
nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: and reason, which is that
law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and
independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or
possessions.”21
Locke defines reason as the Law of Nature and maintains that all
humankind is free, equal, and independent in the enjoyment of life, liberty,
34  P. S. CHUNG

and possessions. The state of nature has little to do with war or anarchy.
Nor is it unsocial condition; people are naturally drawn and bound
together with one another in terms of families and communities, in which
they acquire property and are involved in commerce. Out of the state of
nature, they enter into civil society to preserve lives, liberties, and estates
through the social contract (an act of consent). The idea of a state of
nature and a social contract was also pivotal in the political philosophy by
Hobbes.22 But Locke’s position runs counter to Hobbes’ notion of state
of nature, in which human life in the absence of political order and law
would be in an endless ‘war of all against all’ (bellum omnium con-
tra omnes).
To avoid this state of war, Hobbes suggests to establish civil society in
terms of a social contract and people subject themselves to an absolute
sovereign, Leviathan.23 The sovereign may well be arbitrary and tyranni-
cal, and Hobbes saw the absolute authority of government as the only
alternative to the terrifying anarchy of a state of nature. This position led
him to justify colonialism by just war.24
The long sixteenth century (1450–1640) saw the first formative stage
of the capitalist world economy, in which the British East India Company
started in the form of plunder and tribute from India. The English metal
industries expanded along with the Genoese-led financial expansion of the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The so-called Industrial
Revolution comprises the rapid expansion of English textiles and metal
industries, in keeping with the Dutch-led financial expansion of the eigh-
teenth century.25
The world economy system provides an environment for European
thinkers to advance their Eurocentric theory of colony and racial hierar-
chy, as seen in the tradition of the social contract theory. In Locke’s con-
ception of the social contract, he believed that individuals in a state of
nature would be bound morally by the Law of Nature. Individuals would
only agree to form a state that would provide them with the protection of
the lives, liberty, and property. Since natural rights were inalienable, the
rule of God superseded government authority. Its legitimacy comes from
the citizens’ delegation to the government (reserving the inalienable right
of self-preservation), together with elements of other rights of property.
He frames property rights around the rights of personality, and every
rational being is entitled to it. For the right of subsistence, it is significant
to feed the impoverished: our duty to the needy. The holding of property
entails a stewardship in such a way that private property is allowed for the
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  35

common good. For making the substance available for all, the legislature
intervenes.26
Locke declared in the opening line of his First Treatise: “Slavery is so
vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the gener-
ous temper and courage of our nation; that ’tis hardly to be conceived,
that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it.”27 In the
Second Treatise, Locke still maintains that the liberty of human being is to
be established by consent under government, while retaining “a standing
rule to live by, common to everyone of that society, and made by the leg-
islative power erected in it.”28
However, “Of Conquest” Locke regards the power of the conqueror in
a just war as that of having despotical rights over the captive: “he has an
absolute power over the lives of those, who by putting themselves in a
state of war, have forfeited them; but he has not thereby a right and title
to their possessions”29 (including the children of the conquered). The
conquered people have always a right to shake off the government of the
conquering, setting themselves from the usurpation or tyranny.30
What is at stake in Locke is his theory of consent, because nobody or
no government can have a right to obedience from those with no free
consent; it is true to the extent that “the conqueror in a just war has a right
to the estate, as well as power over the person of the conquered.”31
Therefore, the grants and promises of people in power are just mockery
and conspiracy on the parts of the conquered.32 What’s striking about
Locke’s argument is that the conqueror in a just cause has a despotical
right over the conquered, while he has no lawful title to dominion over
the conquered regarding their possession and children by way of
conquest.33
On the other hand, Locke justifies colonial exploitation, when it comes
to the unproductive ‘wastelands’ of the Native Americans. Locke argues
that a king of a large and fruitful territory in the rich land of Americas
“feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day labourer in England.”34 For
Locke, “God gave the world to men in common; but … it cannot be sup-
posed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He
gave it to the use of the industrious and rational, (and labor was to be his
title to it) not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and
contentious.”35
In a nutshell, we are God’s property and lie in divine property right.
The idea of God’s ‘workmanship’ provides a basis for justifying colonial
exploitation, to the degree that those capable of cultivating America
36  P. S. CHUNG

fruitfully possess a better right to own it. The ‘laborious’ colonialists are
entitled to do that! Shouldn’t Locke have clarified that the relation
between the colonizer and the colonized was based upon universal con-
sent, rather than justifying colonial exploitation? Wasn’t it more appro-
priate that the idea of God’s workmanship should be explicated by
consent and social contract, even in the context of America?
All in all, Locke’s ambivalent position in the Two Treatises (1689) causes
confusion and controversy, accusing himself of recognizing Negro slavery,
as further seen in his co-authored document of the Fundamental
Constitutions of Carolina (1669), in which a hereditary aristocracy is
constructed.36

J.J. Rousseau: Critique of Enlightenment and Anti-Slavery

In the tradition of social contract theory, we observe that the political
principles of Hobbes and Locke find their significance in the Second
Discourse by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778).37 The ancient regime
was still in power during Rousseau’s life span (1712–1778). The revolu-
tion of 1776 in North America took the first major step in the collapse of
European colonial empires after Columbus discovered the New World.
The French Revolution (1789), which was slightly prior to the Industrial
Revolution, collapsed the hereditary monarchies that had ruled since the
Middle Ages.
In the definition of social contract, Rousseau asserts individual freedom
as a basic natural right. But the social contract comes down to the whole
community. In the concept of the general will (volonté générale), Rousseau
holds, “[e]ach of us puts his person and all his power in common under the
supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we receive each member
as an indivisible part of the whole.”38
This act of association which produces a moral and collective body has
its life and will as formed by the union of all others. This public person,
which formerly took the name City, now takes the name of Republic or
body politic or State. When passive it is Sovereign, but when active it
is Power.39
Sovereignty, which is an attribute of the entire body politic, is repre-
sented by a moral and collective body in the assembly rather than any
individual or group. The exercise of political power by individual leaders
and the government must be subordinate to the freely expressed will of
the people as sovereign, the general will which presupposes an egalitarian
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  37

community. This is enacted by vote and law affecting every citizen equally.
“The law is a public, solemn act of the general will, and since everyone has
subjected himself to this will through the fundamental compact.”40
Rousseau’s notion of the general will, which is “the idea of the civil
state,”41 considers only the common interest in contrast to the will of all.
The logic of the general will for the common good, the principle of
­political right, transforms the traditional concept of the common good
into popular sovereignty. Thus, every legitimate government is republican
as ruled by laws.42
The legislator who drafts the law even in terms of almost divine activity
plays a substantial role in constituting the republic. “The general will is the
continuing bond of the body politic,” and “the legislator is never allowed
… to act otherwise than by directing this same will by persuasion.”43
Rousseau distinguished political economy or public economy (called
government) from the supreme authority (called sovereignty). The body
politic is a moral being with a general will which tends toward the preser-
vation and welfare of the whole and of each part. The general will in favor
of the common good is “the source and supplement of all the laws.”44
Virtue or patriotism is based on the conformity of the private will to the
general will which makes virtue reign.45
In establishing the general will as the first principle of public economy,
Rousseau supports public economy in popular sovereignty to provide jus-
tice for all, “especially protecting the poor against the tyranny of the
rich.”46 As Rousseau emphasizes, “[i]t is, therefore, one of the govern-
ment’s most important tasks to prevent extreme inequality of wealth, not
by taking treasures away from those who possess them, but by removing
the means of accumulating them from everyone; nor by building poor-
house, but by protecting citizens from becoming poor.”47 The greediness
of private individuals for the size of profits must be prevented.
As long as agriculture is sacrificed to commerce and the tax-farmer is
made necessary by bad administration of the state revenues, finally venality
pushes to such excess: “reputation is measured in coin and the virtues
themselves are sold for money.” For Rousseau, “[t]hese are the most obvi-
ous causes of opulence and indigence, of the substitution of private inter-
est for the public interest, of the mutual hate of citizens, of their indifference
to the common cause, of the corruption of the people, and of the weaken-
ing of all the mechanisms of the government.”48
Rousseau regards such causes as the evils that a wise administration
should prevent along with good mores in terms of “respect for the laws,
38  P. S. CHUNG

patriotism, and a vigorous general will.”49 In Rousseau’s account of

administration of goods, the right of property is the most sacred of all the
rights of citizens which is more important in certain respects than freedom
itself. “Property is the true basis of civil and the true guarantee of the citi-
zens’ engagements.”50
Rousseau is distinguished from those advocates for the ‘pursuit of hap-
piness’ in unregulated and unfettered property rights. In his view, it is
clear that private property is a sacred individual right in a limited sense,
morally justifiable with the theory of the social contract under the princi-
ple of the general will. He is rather critical of an unlimited property right
which would be the source and the means of exploitation and unfreedom.51
In Rousseau’s ideal social order of an ancient polis against a modern
metropolis, every citizen possessed sufficient private property which would
promote personal independence. It ensures self-sufficiency and makes
every person his/her own master. At the same time, it guarantees mutual
dependence in a society of reciprocity and mutual solidarity. Rousseau’s
position finds it inevitable for the great monarchies of Europe to be on
decline. In this spirit, Rousseau occasionally treats revolutions as inevita-
ble. In a passage from Emile: “You trust in the present order of society
without thinking that this order is subject to inevitable revolutions. …
The noble become commoners, the rich become poor, the monarch
becomes subject. … We are approaching a state of crisis and the age of
revolutions.”52

Revolution and Social Contract

Social Contract finds its critical significance in the French Revolution, but
it is unfortunate that its position was misused and distorted especially by
Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins for their Sadean inspiration of
the Reign of Terror (1793–1794).53
What is crucial in Rousseau’s thought is the great principle according
to which “nature made man happy and good,” “but society depraves him
and makes him miserable.”54 His idea of natural goodness or freedom and
social contract can be seen in the famous opening of Book I, chapter I of
the Social Contract. “Man was/is born free, and everywhere he is
in chains.”
If man was born free in the state of nature, it implies that there were no
civil societies. The origin of civilized governments would be assumed to be
founded upon social contract. A human individual outside of society was
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  39

a stupid, not virtuous, but peaceful animal—if someone did not harm
me—who was impelled by self-preservation and compassion. This position
runs counter to Aquinas’ tradition of an innate reason by which to under-
stand and obey natural law.
For Rousseau human beings at the outset are not political and social
animals. If the Greek antiquity emphasized the significance of political
order within which human beings becomes virtuous, Rousseau takes into
account the state of nature by stressing freedom. In the Social Contract,
political society must protect civil liberty which is a substitute for the natu-
ral liberty previously in the state of nature.55
But Hobbes imputed a number of qualities to natural man: foresight,
pride, and fear of violent death. Unlike Hobbes, Rousseau takes these
qualities to be the product of society. The principles of self-preservation
and compassion contrast with Hobbes’ “war of all against all.” The prin-
ciple of the latter was not true of the state of nature, in Rousseau’s view,
but it is the product of historical development. War of all and its effect led
to the foundation of civil society through social contract.
In the Second Discourse, Rousseau writes: “If we follow the progress of
inequality in these different revolutions, we shall find that the establish-
ment of the law and of the right property was the first stage; the institution
of the magistracy [i.e. governments] the second; the third and last was the
changing of legitimate power into arbitrary power.”56
However, if man is born free, it implies that there is no legitimate gov-
ernment existing. In the name of human beings in chains, every existing
society is to be rejected for the sake of human nature of goodness and
freedom. To the extent that the history of society passes through a stage
of legitimate government under law, it terminates in the most extreme
inequality. Such a situation is compared to “a war of all against all.” Thus
Rousseau supports an overthrowing of an illegitimate and despotic gov-
ernment, calling for a right to revolution. Hereditary monarchy has no
rational sanction. The basic consistency between the Social Contract and
the Second Discourse can be shown in this regard.57
However, Rousseau is highly skeptical of revolutions and the violence
that attends them in light of the protection of the public order and respect
to the laws. This position has little to do with politics of terror by
Maximilien Robespierre. Social Contract does not imply the execution of
the general will through the Reign of Terror; rather, it supports civil free-
dom and the proprietorship of everything under the law. Moral freedom is
added to the acquisition of the civil state.58
40  P. S. CHUNG

In natural liberty, a human being is threatened by survival of the fittest

in which the strong is free to dominate the weak. Under civil liberty
humankind is free as each citizen pledges to protect the rights and liberties
of all through the law. Against natural liberty, vulnerable to impulse and
brute force, civic liberty secures freedom and satisfies humanity’s true
interests. Thus, as those try to assert their natural liberty, their individual
will against the general will, they must be forced back on the ‘civilized’
path of the commonwealth, justifying the cause of revolution in this
direction.
Without the right of community for all, there would be neither solidar-
ity in the social bond nor real force in the exercise of sovereignty.59 The
only truly fundamental law comes from the social compact and the true
principles of the just and unjust are to be sought in the fundamental and
universal law of the greatest good of all. This position has less to do with
totalitarian thinking60 than a communitarian one under legal and rational
dominion in terms of democracy.
Rousseau locates suum cuique (“to each his own” or “may all get their
due”) within private property and civil freedom which are the basis of the
community.61 He is regarded as the pioneer to initiate a participatory the-
ory of democracy in terms of direct democracy, but his position remains
grounded in legal authority and execution through suum cuique.
Therefore, he is pessimistic about a true democracy; the majority governs
while the minority is governed. “If there were a people of Gods, it would
govern itself democratically. Such a perfect government is not suited
to men.”62

Social Contract and Critique of Slavery

Rousseau’s notion of a republican or egalitarian form of government
points to the superiority of ancient political practice in the republican
polis. His preference for the ancient republican polis is based on patriotism
and virtue or city-state in Sparta and early republican Rome.63 Rousseau’s
preference for freedom opposes all forms of absolute governments which
are based on despotism, slavery, and terror of revolution. The value of
freedom disregards Aristotle’s value of the good life, which endorses
­slavery. If Locke strengthens private interests, tending to favor capitalist
society and its expansion, Rousseau’s political economy in the social con-
tract locates the right of property within individual freedom under the
general will in protection of the poor.
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  41

Thus for Rousseau, “the right of each private individual to his own
goods is always subordinate to the community’s right to all, without which
there would be neither solidarity in the social bond nor real force in the
exercise of sovereignty.”64
An act of sovereignty is not an order given by a superior to an inferior.
Nor is it given by a master to a slave. But it is the legitimate convention,
“because it has the social contract as a basis” in the sense of “each to all
and all to each.”65
“On Slavery” Rousseau argues that force does not produce right. The
right of the strongest in the state of nature has degenerated into a state of
war and such a right cannot produce legitimate obligation which is ratio-
nally binding by conscience. “Might does not make right.”66 Likewise,
slavery cannot be natural nor a legitimate convention, “since no man has
any natural authority.”67 For Rousseau “only conventions” are “the basis
of all legitimate authority among men.”68 “To renounce one’s freedom is
to renounce one’s status as a man, the rights of humanity, and even its
duties.”69 Stipulating absolute authority and unlimited obedience are
contradictory.
Given this, Rousseau takes issue with Grotius’ position which derives
another origin of slavery from war. The victor has the right to kill the van-
quished who can buy back the life at the expense of freedom. Against this
argument, Rousseau maintains that such right to kill the vanquished does
not result from the state of war, because the latter arises only from propri-
etary relations, the relationship between things, or between state and
state. With respect to the right of conquest, the law of the strongest can-
not establish the right to enslave the vanquished people if war does not
grant the right for the conqueror to kill them. Rousseau insists that “a
man enslaved in war or a conquered people is in no way obligated toward
his master, except to obey for as long as he is forced to do so.”70
In contrast to the Greek notion of slavery and the modern concept of
representatives, Rousseau’s republic in the social contract excludes the sys-
tem of servitude in which the citizens no longer have either freedom or
will. The general will of the state makes all members citizens and free.71 As
Rousseau writes, “a man enslaved in war or a conquered people is in no
way obligated toward his master. … Thus, from every vantage point, the
right of slavery is null, not merely because it is illegitimate, but because it
is absurd and meaningless. These words slavery and right are contradic-
tory; they are mutually exclusive.”72
42  P. S. CHUNG

Theological Reflection: Social Contract

and Moral Reasoning

In Rousseau’s theory of social contract, I find an inherent conflict unre-

solved between the romantic, sentimental idea of natural goodness and
society in manipulating and thwarting nature. His ethical subjectivism
abides in the law of heart (sympathy, compassion, and forgiveness) rather
than in reason and the influence of society. Education should be mainly
concerned with eliminating the negative influence of society upon natural
development and innate goodness. Nonetheless, Rousseau does not forget
that in natural liberty, a human being is threatened by a survival of the fit-
test, and vulnerable to brutal forces.
At this juncture, such ethical subjectivism is not in extreme, but bound
to universal moral standards or common good in social contract. Under
civil liberty each citizen pledges to protect the rights and liberties of all
through the law. They must be on the civilized path of the common-
wealth. The common good founded upon political society is the place of
norm where the law of heart intersects with a moral theory. It refers to
communitarian moral reasoning which stands under legal and rational
dominion rather than ethical subjectivism.
Rousseau comprehends suum cuique within private property and civil
freedom as the bases of the community. In Aristotle’s elitist ethics, meri-
tocracy (an elitist political system based upon merit) speaks out against
distributive justice as impartiality. Aristotle’s elitist concept of justice and
moral reasoning presupposes that the economically disadvantaged and
marginalized people (women, the poor, including the slave) have not been
allowed a fair opportunity. Rousseau’s political moral reasoning requires
impartiality and treats people fairly against the elitist position.
In a theological context, it is Dietrich Bonhoeffer who takes into
account suum cuique in expressing the multiplicity of the natural and of
rights and also the unity of the right in the multiplicity. When there is a
violation of either the multiplicity or the unity of natural rights, this prin-
ciple is misapplied and even distorted; ‘each own’ is meant to be ‘the
same.’ Or such misapplication is seen in the case of defining ‘each own’ as
arbitrary subjectivism. Here “the unity of rights is nullified in the interests
of free self-will.”73
If there is a right naturally given as an innate right, it must not be
destroyed by a right coming from without. Otherwise, the natural itself is
to be driven to revolution against an unnatural right. According to
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  43

Bonhoeffer, “the principle of suum cuique recognizes the priority of the

rights which are implied in the natural over all other rights,” while “point-
ing to the right which is due to the other man and which is just as much a
natural right as is my own.”74
The limitation of the suum cuique rests on the assumption that the
given natural rights are to be made in accordance with one another, namely
without conflict of interest. Although suum cuique is the supreme princi-
ple for the determination of rights, it fails to consider the conflict of rights
inherent in the nature itself. The conflict of interest requires the interven-
tion from outside, whether divine or secular. Despite its limitation, the
principle of suum cuique entails the relevance and its relative correctness.
Bonhoeffer regards this principle as penultimate, a thing before the last, a
theological eschatology.
Another decisive presupposition in this principle is, then, that the indi-
vidual comes into the world with a natural right of his/her own, which is
not conceded only to the community. If the individual is conceptualized
only as a means to an end in the service of the community, it refers to
social eudemonism which takes the happiness of the community to ­precede
over the natural right of the individual. This leads to the destruction of the
rights of the individual, a path to chaos.
Bonhoeffer’s ethical insight reads: “The right of the individual is the
power which upholds the right of community, just as, conversely, it is the
community that upholds and defends the right of the individual.”75
Bonhoeffer’s ethical reasoning provides effective resistance to the unnatu-
ral principle of social eudemonism allied with a blind voluntarism in an
irrational overestimation of the power.
Against this blind voluntarism, Bonhoeffer considers the principle of
suum cuique to be the highest possible attainment of a reason. This is in
accord with reality and, within the natural life, it discerns that the right is
bestowed upon the individual by God. God guarantees natural rights and
intervenes effectively for the sake of rights inherent in human life. The
individual is capable of carrying out a defense of natural rights in extremely
restricted significance, because God guarantees them.76
Bonhoeffer’s ethical theology appreciates this principle of justice in distrib-
uting social goods necessary to purse liberty rights and common good
through political community. Social contract moral reasoning brings the indi-
vidual liberty and property rights in light of public welfare or general good.
Such insight into the individual in the community may enhance a device of
reforming social institutions in solidarity with the marginalized group.77
44  P. S. CHUNG

Social Darwinism and Its Racial Thinking

Social Darwinist thinking played its decisive part in justifying the colony,
conquest, and civilizing mission. Following Darwin’s Origin of the Species
(1859), social Darwinist thinkers propagated Darwin’s evolutionary
worldview in the spread of evolutionary thinking into the broader culture.
Prior to the publication of Darwin’s Origin, Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
developed his idea of social evolution as part of cosmic evolution and
incorporated Darwin’s account of natural selection into his theory of ‘sur-
vival of the fittest.’78
William Graham Sumner (1840–1910), an American disciple of Hebert
Spencer, was a classical liberal social scientist (taught at Yale) who was not a
trained biologist. Rather, he highlighted social Darwinist thinking as the
dominant ideology of race. American Indians and blacks were made racially
unfit; thus, they must be subordinated to the supremacy of the whites.
What remains central in social Darwinists is the struggle for existence
and survival of the fittest. This principle is regarded as the driving force for
cumulative, progressive development in history and society, at the expense
of others. In Spencer’s day, social Darwinism served to justify laissez-faire
economics in which individuals were free to compete for survival. Only the
fittest could survive, as the natural order does. The minimal state is invoked
in order to best promote unfettered competition between individuals.
Government intervention in protection of the weak had to interfere with
the laws of nature; subsequently, it was doomed to fail.
In the history of British society, industrialization occurred under capi-
talism, leading to the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century (the
initial stage from around 1780 to 1815, and the continuing stage between
1816 and 1840). If the Industrial Revolution began with the ‘take-off’ in
the 1780s, it is in the 1840s that we see the building of the railways and
the construction of a massive heavy industry in Britain. But the ‘take-off
period’ can probably be dated to within the twenty years from 1780 to
1800, which was contemporary with, but slightly prior to, the French
Revolution (1789).79
What passes for British conservatism is the laissez-faire liberalism80
between 1820 and 1850. Britain was part of a larger network of economic
relationships including dependent economy as well as margins of periph-
ery economy in the Americas and in the Orient. British economy in this
period, which was linked to the dependent world by a certain division of
labor, may be called “world economy of the European maritime states.”81
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  45

Marx and Engels in the beginning of The Communist Manifesto (1848)

pointed out that the specter of communism haunted Europe.
Certainly, the Industrial Revolution can also be explained by power of
the state in the regulation of the population and the human body. According
to Michel Foucault, the technological rationality of disciplining the human
body became the prerequisite for the rise of capitalism. The capitalist mode
of production and alienation of human labor in the system of commodity
production is to be reexamined in terms of state bio-power in the discipline
of docile bodies. Disciplinary coercion invents a new political anatomy
under political domination, penetrating the entire body of society. In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the technique of discipline on human
bodies facilitated “the meticulous control of the operations of the body,”82
which imposed upon a relation of docility-­utility in terms of economic utility.
The ascendency of social Darwinism, ranging from the end of
Reconstruction to the start of World War I, shaped Western notion of race
and empire. According to Hannah Arendt, Darwinism achieved such
overwhelming success in providing the ideological weapons and class rule
by means of inheritance. Politically speaking, Darwinism as such was neu-
tral, but in the 1970s and 1980s of the nineteenth century, it was almost
exclusively in the hands of the utilitarian anti-colonial party in England.
And the first philosopher of evolution, Herbert Spencer, in treating sociol-
ogy as part of biology, believed that natural selection would benefit the
evolution of humankind, resulting in everlasting peace. The doctrine of
the necessary survival of the fittest entails the political implication in that
the top layers in society eventually are the ‘fittest.’ Eugenics, the other part
of Darwinism, promised to overcome the troublesome uncertainties and
difficulties of the survival doctrine.83
Darwinian doctrine is used to propagate new ways to regulate the ‘sur-
vival of the fittest’ in accordance with the national interests of the
English people.

The most dangerous aspect of these evolutionist doctrines is that they com-
bined the inheritance concept with the insistence on personal achievement
and individual character which had been so important for the self-respect of
the nineteenth-century middle class. This middle class wanted scientists who
could prove that the great men, not the aristocrats, were the true represen-
tatives of the nation, in whom the ‘genius of the race’ was personified.

This middle class idea of personification led to the declaration: “The

Englishman is the Overman and the history of England is the history of
his evolution.”84
46  P. S. CHUNG

Social Darwinism in American Context

In the American context William Sumner accepted Spencer’s developmen-
tal, progressive view of history, society, and race. The inherent inferiority
of American Indians and blacks made them unfit and incapable of compet-
ing successfully with whites. The inferior races must be subordinated to
the manifest destiny and American white exceptionalism or nationalism.
The development of racial theory is seen in the spirit of American excep-
tionalism fused with racialized nativism, transforming manifest destiny
into a racial destiny.
Christianity played a substantial role in justifying slavery and social
Darwinism. The Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America
(PCCSA) in 1861 wrote a letter to all the churches of the world,85 explain-
ing the reasons for separation from the Northern church. It included their
fear about Lincoln and the Civil War (1861–1865).86 As a result of the Civil
War, the long-standing controversy over slavery was formally undone, yet its
racist reality in society and history continued to shape the American society.87
Form the PCCSA letter we read:

Human rights are not a fixed, but a fluctuating quantity. … As you go up,
the number of rights increases, but the number who possess them dimin-
ishes. As you go down the line, the rights are diminished, but the individuals
are multiplied. … Before slavery can be charged with doing him injustice, it
must be shown that the minimum which falls to his lot at the bottom of the
line is out of proportion to his capacity and culture.88

What is crucial in this argument is pure social Darwinism, in which

inferior types of people deserve to be in a permanent state of subjugation.
The PCCSA invoked Enlightenment and Darwinist ideas of hierarchy of
races ascending a ladder of increasing rights with fewer people at the top.
In the aftermath of the Civil War in 1865, some four million slaves were
given their freedom. But in the process of rebuilding the South during the
Reconstruction period (1865–1877), a new set of significant challenges
such as restrictive ‘black codes’ were introduced under the administration of
President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866. This legislature aimed to
control the labor of former slaves and other African Americans. The South
lost the war, but the price was paid for reunion. Its result reestablished white
supremacy in the states of the former Confederacy. The negotiation was
undertaken in dealing with the issue of slavery and its aftermath. In regard
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  47

to slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, pro-Southern, anti-­black per-

spectives had dominated until after World War II.89
After the brief 12-year experiment, the forces of racism had risen up to
subordinate black Americans through Jim Crow Laws. As the state and
local laws, these were started in 1890 for African Americans (in a separate
but equal status) and enforced racial segregation in all public facilities in
the Southern United States, staying in force until 1965. Through the Civil
War as the first modern war, the fight over race and also the end of conti-
nental expansion in manifest destiny led the American democratic experi-
ment to modernity.90
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, social Darwinists contended
that the major groupings of humanity embody different stages in the bio-
logical evolution of the species. The Caucasians are portrayed as superior
races, such that inferior races must be subject to tutelage by superior races.
This racial theory formed a hierarchical ordering of races and cultures
along developmental scheme—arranged from savagery or barbarity to
civilization, or modernity.
In a broad stream of social Darwinism, violent conflict remains inevi-
table and even desirable because it belongs to a central tenet of the strug-
gle for existence and progress. Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), an English
author (born in Mumbai, India) published his infamous poem ‘The White
Man’s Burden’ in the midst of the imperial undertakings (published in
1899 in McClure’s magazine). Its subtitle is ‘The United States and the
Philippine Islands’ which coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-­
American War.
Kipling articulated Western imperialist ambition in terms of taking up
the ‘burden,’ as Britain and other European nations had. The poem
exhorts the reader to take up the white man’s burden, sending the best of
their country to dark, uncivilized places of the earth to serve their native
peoples. A cultural imperialism is justified as imbued with the superior
English that went into a country of sullen brutes, half-devil and half-child.
It imposes its civilizing behaviors and institutions to eliminate their evil.
Racial superiority and the establishment of hegemony can be effective
ways to assist the impoverished and the backward, justifying racism.91

Ethical Critique of Racism and Under-modernity

In Moltmann’s interpretation of European modernity, the Enlightenment
optimism about race is of a millenarist nature. “In this final age Satan has
48  P. S. CHUNG

been bound for a thousand years.” (Rev. 20:3). Chiliasm, which is pro-
claimed as the third age of the Spirit (Joachim of Fiore), provides leverage
in undergirding a shift from historical faith in the church to the general
faith in reason. All human beings should recognize the Truth itself, with-
out the mediation of the church. Secularization implies the realization of
the millenarist end-time hopes, which can be seen in the beginning of
modern times (for instance, in the Jewish messianism of Shabbetai Tzvi, in
the Puritan apocalypse, and in early German pietism). The modern times
which is termed ‘new time’ (Neu-Zeit) in Germany means the end-time of
history, or the third age of the Spirit within us in Joachim’s fashion.
This chiliasm in Kant’s philosophical system implies a cosmopolitan
vision in the perfect civil union of the human race based on a league of
nations which is to ensure perpetual peace. This idea is connected with the
declarations on human rights and the policy of the United Nations. In his
question “What can I hope for?” Kant sees modernity as a hoped for future
which becomes a new paradigm of transcendence for that which tran-
scends the limitation of history in terms of Enlightenment project and the
unfettered progress.92
This millenarianism-oriented modernity is biblically appropriated or
misused in ways that when Christ comes, the European saints will reign
with him for a thousand years. They will judge the nations and this Empire
of Christ will be the last, golden age of humanity before the end of the
world. Then a new heaven and a new earth will come (Rev. 20:4).
This millennialist modernity has produced the victims of modernity in
its underside of history, in other words, the sub-modernity. An apocalyptic
underside is an outcome of millennialist faith in unhindered progress of
human reason, science, and technology.
As Lessing and Kant were writing the Enlightenment treatises, hun-
dreds of thousands of black African slaves were being sold to America
through the transatlantic trade. The slave trade destroyed the cultures and
kingdoms of West Africa and established the monocultures which deter-
mined the native economies in Central and South America as the supplier
of raw materials in terms of internal division of labor between center and
periphery. Slavery and racism have become essential features in shaping
the modern times of European development. The colonized and exploited
periphery countries are being turned into superfluous backwoods and
their people into surplus people.93
Cornel West conceptualizes tragicomic hope for deep democracy and
the lens of race becomes central in his attempt to expand America’s demo-
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  49

cratic experiment. The dynamic and complex intertwining of racial subju-

gation and democratic flourishing against the British has been and
continues to be driven by market forces, which sets the stage for uneven
development in America. West’s prophetic reasoning in struggle for
democracy is obviously seen in his emphasis on the crucial role of underly-
ing moral commitments, vision, and fortifications empowering and inspir-
ing a democratic way of living. Such democratic vision shatters Manichaean
views prevailing in Americas’ judgment regarding good versus evil/us ver-
sus them.94
The prophetic commitment to justice is foundational in Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. The golden calf of wealth, the idolatry in worship
of power and money has continued to shape today’s world. A black inter-
pretation of tragicomic hope embracing tragedy and also expectation for a
better life is open to people of all colors, and blues and jazz can be a great
contribution to democracy and world history by nurturing the tragi-
comic hope.95
In Helmut Gollwitzer’s account, racism needs to be comprehended
along with the rise of capitalism and its imperial civilizing mission. An
ideology of racial domination disseminated beliefs in cultural and biologi-
cal inferiority of a particular race. It is incorporated into the church’s
teaching. “The capitalist revolution as the revolution of the white,
Christianized, Protestant peoples began its worldwide victory and opened
up a new age of slavery that even today—although in changed forms of
enslavement—has not as yet been terminated.”96
Denouncing theological racism, Gollwitzer contends that racism is a sin
against the Holy Spirit. In the anti-racism program of the World Council
of Churches (WCC), he takes seriously James Cone’s thesis: ‘The black
does not appear in white theology.’97 Black theology inspires Gollwitzer to
emphasize the gloomy consequence of colonialism and the slave trade sys-
tem in the European Christian context.
He furthers to advance the notion of suum cuique in terms of recogni-
tion and encouragement in light of legislation. Every legislation implies
permission and guarantee of freedom. It also refers to the limited area in
which one can be freely at the disposal of one’s property. One has a free-
dom of speech and expression, or is at liberty to freely organize groups or
institutions together with others. Legal rights include freedom in acknowl-
edging the field for free and responsible performance of life and exclude
one’s violation of other rights. Right as the guarantee of freedom is the
ground axiom of all liberal legislation. Hence, right is more freedom,
50  P. S. CHUNG

because it excludes trespassing, interference, or violation against life of

others in society.98
In Gollwitzer’s account, this perspective has been less considered as the
confirmation of peace and togetherness of human life with others in terms
of legislative recognition and encouragement, notably in theological tradi-
tion. The theological pessimistic understanding of human being was
excessively emphasized through the reality of sin, or original sin. It put the
freedom of the masses into suspicion and required an authoritative struc-
ture of the government which is bound to the system of the privileged class.
This aspect undermines the biblical promise of liberation through the
Holy Spirit to new life. This internal freedom has not been taken up to
challenge external shackles and oppression. Thus, the church sidesteps
such an endeavor in developing external freedom and tends to justify its
disinterest in emancipation of the slaves on biblical footing (1 Cor. 20–23).99
What is at stake in Paul’s thought, according to Gollwitzer, is no longer
simply spiritualistic. Rather Paul’s moral reasoning is grounded in the
combination between internal freedom and external freedom. The inter-
nal freedom is comforting under persecution and in the absence of exter-
nal freedom. However, internal freedom calls for external freedom,
entailing that the tendency to equality be under the love of Christ (Gal.
3:28). The church comes along with political responsibility and metanoia
from the wrong direction. In political and economic affairs it should
become the pressure group to the state for the sake of God’s love for
humanity in Christ Jesus (Tit 3:4).

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no

longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28)

This manifesto is central in Gollwitzer’s call for white dominant theol-

ogy to commit the metanoia toward the liberating message of the Gospel.
This aspect challenges the Christian sanction of slavery in the colonial
time. Rather, Christian engagement for the external freedom of all and in
removal of slavery belongs to an endeavor at granting and reinforcing bet-
ter rights into legislation. Removal of dominion and unfreedom in society
forms a purpose of Christian collaboration in the political sphere. Thus,
Gollwitzer elaborates his theological-ethical reasoning in correlating the
double aspect of suum cuique with the guarantee of freedom to critically
transcending colonial formation of slavery and racism. It strives for demo-
cratically oriented freedom, rights, and social justice.100
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  51

Notes
1. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1979), 14.
2. Ibid., 203.
3. McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development, 1.
4. Cited in David Chidester, Christianity: A Global History (New York:
Harper San Francisco, 2000), 353.
5. Ibid., 354–5.
6. Cited in Chidester, Christianity, 356.
7. Bartolomé de Las Casas, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account,
trans. Herma Briffault (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press,
1992), 8–9.
8. It is unfortunate that Hardt and Negri accused Las Casas of being not so
far removed from the Inquisition. Their argument is wrongly assumed.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2000), 116.
9. Cited in Moltmann, God for a Secular Society, 8.
10. Andre G. Frank, Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment (New
York: Monthly Review, 1979), 14–7.
11. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (New York: Bantam, 2003), 722, 747,
760.
12. Karl Marx, Capital, I: A Critique of Political Economy, trans. Ben Fowkes
(London: Penguin, 1990), 823.
13. Ernest Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory 1, trans. Brian Pearce (New
York and London: 1968), 106.
14. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve (A
Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication, 2002), 366.
15. Franz Fanon, Black Skin and White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann
(London: Pluto Press, 1986), 189.
16. Ibid., ix.
17. Ibid., xiii.
18. Ibid., 18.
19. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Mark Goldie (London:
J.M. Dent; Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1993), xxxv.
20. Ibid., xxv.
21. Ibid., 117.
22. Ibid., xxiii.
23. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Dutton, 1950), 105.
24. Ibid., 216.
25. Giovani Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the
Origins of Our Times (London: Verso, 1994), 209–10.
26. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, xI–xIi.
52  P. S. CHUNG

27. Ibid., 5.
28. Ibid., 126.
29. Ibid., 208.
30. Ibid., 213.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid., 214.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 135.
35. Ibid., 131.
36. Locke in the later revision of the Constitutions did not alter the slavery
article. He was a shareholder in the Royal African Company charted in
1672, which sought to monopolize the English slave trade. McCarthy,
Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development, 167.
37. J.J. Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, ed. Roger D. Masters and
trans. Roger D. and Judith R.  Masters (New York: St Martin’s Press,
1964). The full title is Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of
Inequality Among Men, which was written for another prize competition
of the Academy of Dijon.
38. Book I, ch. vi. Rousseau, On the Social Contract with Geneva Manuscript
and Political Economy, eds. Roger D.  Master, trans. Judith R.  Masters
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978).
39. Book I, ch. vi.
40. “Geneva Manuscript,” in ibid., 189.
41. Ibid., 168.
42. Book II, ch. vi.
43. “Geneva Manuscript,” in On the Social Contract, 182. Rousseau values
the great soul of the legislator as the true miracle and takes John Calvin
as the great legislator, who was involved in drawing up of the edicts in the
Republic of Geneva. This does Calvin as much honor as his theological
masterpiece of Institutes. Book II, ch. Vii. footnote.
44. “Discourse on Political Economy,” in On the Social Contract, 216.
45. Ibid., 217.
46. Ibid., 221.
47. Ibid., 221–2.
48. Ibid., 222.
49. Ibid. A just and wise economy, according to Rousseau, needs to over-
come the difficulty “in the cruel alternative of letting the State perish or
attacking the sacred right of property which is its mainstay.” Ibid., 226.
50. Ibid., 225.
51. C.  B. Macpherson, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford:
Oxford University Press. 1979), 16.
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  53

52. Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic
Books, [1762] 1979), 194.
53. Robespierre finds recourse to the right of insurrection from Social
Contract, but the Jacobin campaign of mass executions seems much more
in line with Marquis de Sade (1740–1814). The sadistic misogyny of
Revolution is based on violence and fear. “The well-being of the other
never is the aim of the Sadean subject. On the contrary, he is animated by
an unmitigated devotion to the propagation of evil–crimes, murders, ven-
geance.” Robespierre, ed. George Rude (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall,
1967), 135.
54. Rousseau, On the Social Contract, 7.
55. Book I, ch. vi–viii. Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, 21. 24.
56. Ibid., 172.
57. Emile Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1960), 135.
58. Book I, ch. ix.
59. “Geneva Manuscript,” in On the Social Contract, 167.
60. Iring Fetscher clarifies Rousseau’s idea of legislature in contrast to a
notion of totalitarianism. Iring Fetscher, Rousseaus politische Philosophie:
Zur Geschichte des demokratischen Freiheitsbegriffs (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1975), 147.
61. “Geneva Manuscript,” in ibid., 191. The Latin phrase suum cuique relates
to an old Greek principle of justice in Plato’s Republic. Justice becomes
possible when everyone minds his/her own business, according to his/
her abilities and capabilities. It should refrain from meddling in others’
affairs (4. 433a). Also, everyone should receive his/her own (rights), not
be deprived of his/her own (property). This concept implies distributive
justice which can be developed toward justice as fairness.
62. Book III, iv.
63. For Rousseau, however, “Athens was not in fact a democracy, but a highly
tyrannical aristocracy, governed by learned men and orators.” “Political
Economy,” in On the Social Contract, 213.
64. “Geneva Manuscript,” in On the Social Contract, 167.
65. Ibid., 176.
66. Book I, ch. IV. 49.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid., 50.
70. Book I, ch. iv.
71. Book IV, ch. iii.
72. Book I, ch. iv.
54  P. S. CHUNG

73. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, trans. Neville H. Smith (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1995), 151.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid., 153.
76. Ibid., 153–4.
77. John Rawls’ (1921–2002) theory of justice stands in accord with the
tradition of social contract in Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. Drawing upon
the veil of ignorance, he suggests that this original position explains his
definition of ‘justice as fairness,’ which is to be founded in constitutional
democracy. The social conditions are essential for the adequate develop-
ment of their two moral powers: justice and the good. The principle of
justice is applied to the basic structure of society in the exercise of citi-
zens’ sense of justice. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), rev. ed.
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999), xii. 11. 118–23.
78. Darwin adopted this term in the fifth edition of Origin (1869). Despite
his rejection of teleological readings of evolution, Darwin is accused of
joining the mainstream of social Darwinism. McCarthy, Race, Empire,
and the Idea of Human Development, 77.
79. Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (New York: Vintage
Books, 1996), 29.
80. The term laissez-faire, the product of the Enlightenment, refers to the
way to unleash human potential through the restoration of a natural sys-
tem without the restrictions of government. It would come along with
the invisible hand by Adam Smith (1723–1790), who sees economy as a
natural system and the market as an organic part of that system. But
Smith never used the term.
81. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire: An Economic History of Britain since
1750 (Letchworth: The Garden City Press, 1968), 21.
82. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans.
Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1995), 137.
83. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland and New York:
The World Publishing Company, 1958), 178.
84. Ibid., 180. In this respect, Arendt maintains that Carlyle’s ideas on the
genius and hero worship emphasize the innate greatness of the individual
character independent of his social environment. It became really more
effective weapons of a ‘social reformer’ than the doctrines of the British
Imperialism.
85. John Edwards Richards, The Historical Birth of the Presbyterian Church in
America (Liberty Press, Liberty Hill, South Carolina, 1987). This book
is a history of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), which includes
many churches which were members of the PCCSA.
 2  RACE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY, AND SOCIAL DARWINISM  55

86. Eleven Southern states in which slavery was legal wanted to leave the
United States, and they formed the Confederate States of America. It is
called the Confederacy against the Union which refers to the US govern-
ment, and the states where slavery was illegal are sometimes called the
North supporting the Union of the Government.
87. McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development, 107.
88. Cited in David Snoke, “The Southern Presbyterian Church and Racism,”
3. https://www.cityreformed.org/uploads/4/4/0/9/44096805/rac-
ism.pdf.
89. McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development, 107.
90. Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight against Imperialism
(New York: Penguin, 2005), 50–1.
91. The poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’ was widely reprinted in American
Newspapers, calling for arms. Hannah Arendt writes against the imperialist
character of Kipling. “The fact that the ‘White Man’s burden’ is either
hypocrisy or racism has not prevented a few of the best Englishmen from
shouldering the burden in earnest and making themselves the tragic and
quixotic fools of imperialism.” Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 209.
92. Moltmann, God for a Secular Society, 10–11.
93. Ibid., 13.
94. West, Democracy Matters, 15.
95. Ibid., 16, 20.
96. Helmut Gollwitzer, “Why Black Theology?,” Union Seminary Quarterly
Review 31, no. 1 (1975), 42.
97. Ibid., 44.
98. Golliwtzer, Befreiung zur Solidarität. Einführung in die Evangelische
Theologie (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1984), 197.
99. Ibid., 199.
100. Ibid., 200.

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