Wilhelm von Humboldt on Slavery and the Snobbishness of the Philosophers

One minor oddity of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on the Von Humboldt brothers is that the one devoted to Alexander by Dalia Nassar has many references to his opposition to slavery (and imperialism), while Wilhem’s opposition to slavery goes unmentioned in the entry by Kurt Mueller-Vollmer and Markus Messling.

My interest in Wilhem von Humboldt (1767-1835) was piqued not so much by Mill’s citations in On Liberty, but by Noam Chomsky’s description and admiration for him in “Language and Freedom.” Humboldt’s argument against slavery in The Sphere and Duties of Government (now also known as The Limits of State Action) is distinctive enough to deserve some attention. (In what follows I quote from Joseph Coulthard’s nineteenth century translation.) This work dates from the early 1790s, but was only published posthumously.

Humboldt takes for granted that slavery is immoral (“barbarous and unjust”). And he offers a kind of error theory why the philosophical philanthropists of the Greeks did not condemn it. It is worth noting that Humboldt’s strategy echoes the one we find in Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (5.2.15), when Smith’s confronts the grounds of the corruption of the sentiments of Plato and Aristotle in condoning infanticide. (There are other allusions to Smith about which some other time more.)

Humboldt’s error theory also corrects the first impression that his liberalism itself has an one-sided aristocratic bent exclusively focused on cultural experimentation and the self-development even self-cultivation of the creativity of individuals. For he notes that the Ancient acceptance of slavery has itself its roots in the cultural rejection of work and manual labor, especially, as inferior and an obstacle to self-development. I want to quote a passage that also attracted Mill’s attention. But Mill picks up somewhat exclusively on the strain of anti-anti-individualism, in which conformism and even a species of alienation is the effect of lack of freedom. But there is also another strain lurking in the passage:

But, still, it cannot be doubted that freedom is the indispensable condition, without which even the pursuits most happily congenial to the individual nature, can never succeed in producing such fair and salutary influences. Whatever man is inclined to, without the free exercise of his own choice, or whatever only implies instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but still remains alien to his true nature, and is, indeed, effected by him, not so much with human agency, as with the mere exactness of mechanical routine. The ancients, and more especially the Greeks, were accustomed to regard every occupation as hurtful and degrading which was immediately connected with the exercise of physical power, or the pursuit of external advantages, and not exclusively confined to the development of the inner man. Hence, many of their philosophers who were most eminent for their philanthropy, approved of slavery; thereby adopting a barbarous and unjust expediency, and agreeing to sacrifice one part of mankind in order to secure to the other the highest force and beauty. But reason and experience combine to expose the error which lies at the root of such a fallacy. There is no pursuit whatever, nothing with which a man can concern himself, that may not give to human nature some worthy and determinate form, and furnish fair means for its ennoblement. (pp. 29-30)

In addition to charging the ancient Greek philosophers with injustice, Humboldt offers two other arguments: first, they are willing to sacrifice some people to secure the advantages of leisure to others. Even if these benefits are real this is not to be done on Humboldt’s view. The separateness of persons as individual and inviolable ends and not to be used as means has to be respected (there is an approving reference to Kant’s moral philosophy in an earlier chapter). Later in the essay, Humboldt notes on such grounds that contracts are unenforceable, “When the party promising cannot transfer any right of coercion without making himself a tool for the designs of others—as, for example, in every contract which ends in the slavery of the person contracting.” (p. 133)*

Second, and more important, Humboldt clearly thinks that all pursuits, including manual labor, can ennoble human nature (to repeat): “There is no pursuit whatever, nothing with which a man can concern himself, that may not give to human nature some worthy and determinate form, and furnish fair means for its ennoblement.” This echoes the kind of claim we find in Hutcheson, and also Smith, both of whom defend the worth of work in all ‘levels’ or ‘stations’ of society.

Of course, as stated Humboldt’s claim is probably too strong—his wording might allow the thief’s ingenuity and manual dexterity in unlocking a complex safe may be a means to the ennoblement of human nature. But the gist of his position can be defended.

Notice, too, that it is crucial to his argument that the occupation has to be freely chosen. This is compatible with the observation that many occupations are chosen from need alone. And it is not quite clear how Humboldt proposes to facilitate amelioration from this fact since he also seems to reject (say the state’s obligations for) the prevention from need arising in the first place; and often writes as if the overcoming of obstacles are themselves a means toward self-development.

Above I suggested that Humboldt seems somewhat indebted to Smith. This is evident in a subsequent passage that is part of his stadial theory in which he explains how kings seem to be the earliest political leaders (often chosen as chiefs in war), and itself part of a wider error-theory about the origins of political authority. I quote:

The apprehension that the one person so selected may ultimately become a master is unknown to the man who is truly free; he does not even dream of such a possibility; to no one does he attribute the power of subjugating his liberty, and to no one that is himself free the wish to lord it over others-for he who is utterly insensible to the sublime beauty of liberty and thirsts only for dominion, is in reality in love with slavery, so long as he does not contemplate the likelihood of being himself a slave; and thus it is, that as the science of morals originated in crime, and theology in heresy, so politics sprang into existence with servitude. (p. 54)

The passage itself is confusing because there is a tacit switch in perspective from the point of view of the freedom-loving person who can’t even imagine what we may call the usurpation of permanent power by a temporary elected chief to the perspective of that person, so elected, who “thirst[s] only for dominion.” That slavery is rooted in love of domination is also Smith’s view, but it seems very unlikely that Humboldt would have been familiar with Smith’s lectures on jurisprudence. Interestingly enough, Humboldt treats this enduring thirst as itself an effect of the arrogant failure to consider (behind a veil, as it were) the possibility of ending up in the position of the subject or slave.

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*Strikingly the state need not prevent the contract. And this has troubling relationship to the fact that sometimes need may well induce some self-servitude.