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Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss and Racialization

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Husserl’s Ideen

Part of the book series: Contributions to Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 66))

Abstract

Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss (1892–1974) was a student of Husserl and during the 1920s he wrote three books which sought to show that Husserlian phenomenology had made possible for the first time a rigorous concept of race. He subsequently became one of the foremost racial theorists in Nazi Germany. This essay explores what is problematic in Clauss’s approach, but the main emphasis is on what we learn from Clauss about the project of a phenomenology of the racialization process itself: what do we see when we see race?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Die nordische Seele. Rettung, Prägung, Ausdruck (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1923); Rasse und Seele ( Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1926); and Von Seele und Antlitz der Rassen und Völker (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1929). The first two titles went through numerous editions and sold many thousands of copies. Sometimes the revisions were so thorough that one wonders they were not published under different titles. This was in fact the case with Von Seele und Antlitz der Rassen und Völker which was, Clauss tells us, begun as a revision of Rasse und Seele, x. I have consulted the 1923, 1932, 1933, 1934, and 1939 editions of Die Nordische Seele and the 1926, 1933, 1936, 1938 (?), 1939 and 1943 editions of Rasse und Seele.

  2. 2.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele (1926), 27.

  3. 3.

    Karl Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 217 and 237.

  4. 4.

    Clauss, Die Nordische Seele (1923), 9 and note.

  5. 5.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele (1926), vi.

  6. 6.

    Clauss, Von Seele und Antlitz der Rassen und Völker,xii.

  7. 7.

    Karl Löwith, “Rezension: Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Rasse und Seele,”Zeitschrift für Menschenkunde, Blätter für Charakterologie und angewandte Psychologie 2 (1926–1927): 18–26. Reprinted in Löwith’s Mensch und Menschenwelt. Sämtliche Schriften (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1981), 198–208.

  8. 8.

    Wilhelm Schmidt, Rasse und Volk (Salzburg-Leipzig: Anton Pustet, 1935), 51–52.

  9. 9.

    Eric Voegelin, Rasse und Staat (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1933), 12; Race and State, trans. Ruth Hein (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 12.

  10. 10.

    Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Rasse und Seele (Berlin: Buechergilde Gutenberg, 1933), 180, this is, in fact probably a 1938 revision. The comment is found in some additions which were added to the 1933 edition some time after 1933 but without the copyright date being changed. The fact that this is the 13th edition suggests that the edition I consulted dates from 1938 or early 1939.

  11. 11.

    However, in his main book published after the war, Clauss did refer to Max Scheler’s book on sympathy. Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Die Seele des Andern. Wege zum Verstehen in Abend- und Morgenland (Baden-Baden: Bruno. 1958). Clauss understood that the problem of understanding was particularly acute in the case of an alien people (ibid., 228). He also understood that mere observation, which was the route adopted by Western science, but not only it, was inadequate for understanding (ibid., 233). It is in this context that he recalled Scheler’s distinctions between Nachfühlen and pity (Mitleid), but looked beyond it toward what Clauss called Mitschwinger, a co-vibrating (ibid., 240). Quoting Max Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, Gesammelte Werke 7 (Bern: Francke), 19; The Nature of Sympathy, trans. Peter Heath (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 8.

  12. 12.

    The most extensive recent exploration of Clauss’s ideas including his relation to Husserl can be found in Richard T. Gray’s About Face. German Physiognomic Thought from Lavater to Auschwitz (Detroit: Wayne State University, 2004), 273–332. Other recent discussions of Clauss include Édouard Conte and Cornelia Essner, La quête de la race (Paris: Hachette, 1995), 76–79 and Christopher M. Hutton, Race and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 56–60. An older study that contains personal reminiscences of Clauss is Reinhard Walz, “Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss zum 70. Geburtstag. Die Entstehung einer Psychologie der Psyche,” Jahrbuch für Psychologie, Psychotherapie und Medizinische Anthropologie 9 (1962): 149–65.

  13. 13.

    Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement. An Historical Introduction, third edition (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), 249.

  14. 14.

    Peter Weingart, Doppel-Leben. Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss: Zwischen Rassenforschung und Widerstand (Frankfurt: Campus, 1995), 36.

  15. 15.

    It was signed and dated 20 December 1923. Clauss also sent Husserl copies of the first editions of Rasse und Seele (1926) and Fremde Schönheit (1927). I am grateful to Dr. Thomas Vongehr of the Husserl Archives for this information. There is also no indication of a falling out between the two men when Husserl refers to Clauss’s work in Germanistics in his letter to Roman Ingarden of 30 December 1920. See Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel, vol. 3, ed. Karl Schuhmann (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 208.

  16. 16.

    L.F. Clauss, “Das Verstehen des sprachlichen Kunstwerks” Edmund Husserl zum 70. Geburtstag gewidmet, Ergänzungsband zum Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1929), 56n. The other authors were Hermann Ammann, Oskar Becker, Martin Heidegger, Gerhart Husserl, Roman Ingarden, Fritz Kaufmann, Alexandre Koyré, Hans Lipps, Friedrich Neumann, Edith Stein and Hedwig Conrad-Martius. For his contribution Clauss reverted to his earlier interest in philology with an essay entitled “Das Verstehen des sprachlichen Kunstwerks. Ein Streifzug durch Grundfragen der verstehenden Wissenschaften.” In it Clauss made a brief passing reference to the phenomenological notion of originally given experiences (Erlebnisse). He also included an endnote relating philology as research on expression to the discussion of comparative research on expression as found in the section on “die mimetische Methode” in Clauss’s heavily illustrated study of racial types from the same year, Von Seele und Antlitz der Rassen und Völker. For Clauss’s visit to Husserl, see Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, 383.

  17. 17.

    See Weingart, Doppel-Leben, 133.

  18. 18.

    Edmund Husserl. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch, Husserliana 4 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952), 240; Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 251.

  19. 19.

    Husserl, Ideen. Zweites Buch, 94; trans. Ideas. Second Book, 110.

  20. 20.

    Husserl, Ideen. Zweites Buch, 94; trans. Ideas. Second Book, 110.

  21. 21.

    Husserl, Ideen. Zweites Buch, 96; trans. Ideas. Second Book, 102.

  22. 22.

    Clauss, Die nordische Seele (1923), 34.

  23. 23.

    Husserl, Ideen. Zweites Buch, 240; trans. Ideas. Second Book, 252. Trans. modified.

  24. 24.

    Husserl, Ideen II, 321; trans. Ideas II, 333.

  25. 25.

    Husserl, Ideen II, 236; trans. Ideas II, 248.

  26. 26.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele, (1926), 19.

  27. 27.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele, (1926), 19.

  28. 28.

    Clauss, Von Seele und Antlitz der Rassen und Völker, 93–96. Bruno Petermann praised Clauss for his introduction of the notion of style in the context of the study of races: Wesensfragen seelischen Seins (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1938), 96.

  29. 29.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele (1926), 9

  30. 30.

    Joseph de Maistre, Considérations sur la France, eds. R. de Johannet and F. Vermale (Paris: Vrin, 1936), 81; Considerations on France, trans. Richard A. Lebrun (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1974), 97.

  31. 31.

    Albrecht Wirth, Rasse und Volk (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1914), 37.

  32. 32.

    Idem.

  33. 33.

    Hans F. K. Günther, Rassenkunde Europas (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1926), 76; The Racial Elements of European History, trans. G. C. Wheeler (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1927), 83. Translation modified.

  34. 34.

    For example, Nella Larsen, Passing (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1929).

  35. 35.

    For the proper usage of these terms, see Wilhelm Johannsen, “The Genotype Conception of Heredity,” The American Naturalist 45, March (1911): 129–59.

  36. 36.

    Eugen Fischer, “Review of L. F. Clauss, Rasse und Seele,” Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie, 26/1 (1926): 187.

  37. 37.

    Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Rassenseelenforschung (Erfurt: Kurt Stenger, 1934), 14.

  38. 38.

    Fritz Lenz, “Die Erblichkeit der geistingen Begabung” Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1923), 413; “The Inheritance of Intellectual Gifts,” Human Heredity, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931), 633–34. (The translation is from the heavily modified 1927 edition, but there are no significant differences introduced in the passages cited.) In fact Lenz’s next sentence is more objectionable than the one Clauss highlights: “the notorious lack of sexual control among Negroes” is attributed by Lenz not to a strong sexual impulse but a childish lack of inhibition. Clauss’s critique seems to reflect his reading of Supplement XIV of the second book of Husserl’s Ideen.

  39. 39.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele (1926), 28n.

  40. 40.

    Fritz Lenz, “Die Erblichkeit der geistigen Begaburg,” 419; trans. “The Inheritance of Intellectual Gifts,” 655.

  41. 41.

    Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Von Seele und Antlitz der Rassen und Völker, 96.

  42. 42.

    Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Rasse ist Gestalt (Munich: Franz Eher, 1937), 9. It should be noted that it is the third pamphlet in the series Schriften der Bewegung and the cover bears the insignia of an eagle carrying a swastika,

  43. 43.

    Clauss, Rasse ist Gestalt, x.

  44. 44.

    Husserl. Ideen II, 183; trans. Ideas II, 192–93.

  45. 45.

    Clauss, Die Nordische Seele (1932), 17.

  46. 46.

    Clauss, Rasse ist Gestalt, 9.

  47. 47.

    Clauss, Rasse ist Gestalt, 11.

  48. 48.

    Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Rasse und Seele (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1939), 43 and 60.

  49. 49.

    Clauss, Die Nordische Seele (1923), 1–2. These paragraphs were repeated with only minor modifications in the subsequent editions consulted.

  50. 50.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele (1933), 38.

  51. 51.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele, (1926), 27–28.

  52. 52.

    Husserl, Ideen II, 183; trans. Ideas II, 192–93.

  53. 53.

    Clauss’s approach is particularly in evidence in his work on the people of the Middle East, which saw fruit in Als Beduine unter Beduinen (Freiburg: Herder, 1933). It was republished in a revised form as Semiten der Wüste unter sich. Miterlebnisse eines Rassenforschers (Berlin: Buechergilde Gutenberg, 1937), but reappeared, further revised, after the Second World War under the old title. See also the remarkable pamphlet made up of letters to his son: Araber (Berlin: Luken and Luken, 1943).

  54. 54.

    Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Rasse und Charakter (Freiburg: Diesterweg, 1942), 103–13.

  55. 55.

    Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1946), 216; trans. Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 1962), 186.

  56. 56.

    Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, 216–17; trans. Phenomenology of Perception, 187.

  57. 57.

    Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Die Nordische Seele (Munich: F. F. Lehmann, 1939), 25.

  58. 58.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele (1926), 33.

  59. 59.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele (1926), 24.

  60. 60.

    Clauss, Die Nordische Seele (1939), 30.

  61. 61.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele (1926), 21.

  62. 62.

    Clauss, Die Nordische Seele (1933), 9.

  63. 63.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele (1926), 22.

  64. 64.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele(1926), 22.

  65. 65.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele(1926), 23.

  66. 66.

    Clauss, Rasse ist Gestalt, 28.

  67. 67.

    Clauss, Die Nordische Seele (1923), 121.

  68. 68.

    Clauss, Rasse und Seele (1933), 28.

  69. 69.

    Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1946), 187; Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 1962), 161.

  70. 70.

    Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 3.

  71. 71.

    Lynn Duke, “Confronting Violence: African American Conferees Look Inward,” Washington Post, January 8, 1996.

  72. 72.

    Frantz Fanon, “L’expérience vécue du Noir,” Esprit 19/179 (May, 1951): 657–79; “The Lived Experience of the Black,” Race, trans. Valentine Moulard, ed. Robert Bernasconi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 184–201. The essay was reprinted the following year in Black Skin, White Masks: Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris: Seuil, 1952), 113–41.

  73. 73.

    Jean-Paul Sartre, Réflexions sur la question juive (Paris: Morihien, 1946), 73; Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. George J. Becker (New York: Schocken Books, 1976), 60–61.

  74. 74.

    Sartre, Réflexions sur la question juive, 82; trans. Anti-Semite and Jew, 64.

  75. 75.

    Sartre, Réflexions sur la question juive, 82; trans. Anti-Semite and Jew, 64.

  76. 76.

    Sartre, Réflexions sur la question juive, 82; trans. Anti-Semite and Jew, 64.

  77. 77.

    Linda Martin Alcoff, Visible Identities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 184–85.

  78. 78.

    Ibid., 188.

  79. 79.

    The UNESCO Statement on Race of 1950 that was produced under the chairmanship of Ashley Montagu identified three major divisions of mankind: the Mongloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid. For the text and Montagu’s own commentary on it, see his Statement on Race (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 72–75. In his commentary on the following paragraph Montagu listed some 36 “ethnic groups” (ibid., 76–80). They would have been considered “races” by many earlier authorities and these could easily have been further multiplied. In the United States the division (or rather multiplication) was largely for immigration purposes. See Report of the Immigration Commission, Dictionary of Races or Peoples (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1911).

  80. 80.

    See Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann, The Structures of the Life-World, trans. Richard M. Zaner and H. Tristram Engelhardt (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 81.

  81. 81.

    Susan T. Fiske, “Are We Born Racist?” Are We Born Racist?, eds. Jason Marsh, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Jeremy Adam-Smith (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), 9.

  82. 82.

    Fiske, “Are We Born Racist?” 12–13.

  83. 83.

    See Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 105.

  84. 84.

    Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Fremde Schönheit (Heidelberg: Kampmann, 1928). According to the Preface, Clauss intended the book as a complement to the German emphasis on German beauty (5).

  85. 85.

    See Robert Bernasconi, “Racism is a System,” The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism, ed. Steven Crowell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

  86. 86.

    For example. Ellis Cose, The End of Anger. A New Generation’s Take on Race and Rage (New York: Ecco, 2011).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Robert Bernasconi

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  1. , Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Rd, Boca Raton, 33431, Florida, USA

    Lester Embree

  2. Dept. Philosophy, University of Memphis, Clement Hall 316, Memphis, 38152, Indiana, USA

    Thomas Nenon

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Bernasconi, R. (2013). Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss and Racialization. In: Embree, L., Nenon, T. (eds) Husserl’s Ideen. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 66. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5213-9_4

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