On the Fall of Natural Man

This is a very smart book, although I’m not certain that the subtitle is particularly suitable. The book question that looms over the book is: “How did the Spanish legitimate their rule in America during the 16th century?” Pagden offers a thorough intellectual history shot through with Aristotelian psychology and bitter debates by Spanish intellectuals. The story goes something like this:

When the Spanish first arrived in the Americas, they weren’t sure what to make of its life—whether fauna, flora, or human. Initially, they believed they were in Asia and classified plants and animals according to European systems. However, when things did not fit, the categories could be modified, allowing them to bring things like tomatoes and llamas into their sense of the world. Recognition that America was an entirely new continent did not drastically change their systems of classification, but it did raise new questions about how to classify the humans there. In legitimating their rule, the Spanish argued that indigenous peoples in the Americas were “natural slaves,” not fully formed and therefore fully subject to Spanish rule.

This suited Spanish authorities well, as it gave them free reign to do whatever they wanted in the region. However, as news about Spanish brutality to indigenous peoples became more prominent in Spain, intellectuals in universities effectively rebelled and sought out new ways of legitimating Spanish rule while minimizing the amount of damage that might be done to American Indians. Likely the most important intellectual who sought to transform the Spanish system was Bartolomé de las Casas—who lived in the Americas and hired Mexica assistants, although he treated them badly—while the most important intellectual who sought to maintain the current order was Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda—who lived most of his life in Southern Italy and never crossed the Atlantic.

Ultimately, Bartolomé de las Casas won the debate, but through quite restrictive means. Rather than classifying Amerindians as “natural slaves” in Aristotelian psychology, he made the argument that they are better classified as “children” and need the Spanish to (at least temporarily) help them grow into maturity. Woof, it’s still a pretty messed up conclusion, but much better than Sepúlveda’s claims. By making this case, las Casas also inaugurated the transition towards “relativism” in thinking about non-European peoples—don’t ask me how, I didn’t fully understand it.

It’s easy to get lost in the details in this book and it seems almost necessary to have some sort of sense of Aristotle’s thought, at least in basic terms, as well as some knowledge about the outpouring of information that came with the Italian Renaissance. Pagden does his best to situate his subject within this context, and I think he did the best he possibly could, but this is very much a text for scholar’s who know the literature. It’s worth reading for that purpose, but I don’t see this book having a major effect on how I see the past.