From aesthetics to anthropology: ideal beauty in Camper's (1722-1789) theory of race.

Abstract

The problem of providing an objective characterization of human variation have been often intermingled with the questionable task of providing scientific grounds for racism. The source of this confusion lies in the misconception that Petrus Camper's (1722-1789) theory of the facial line demonstrates the superiority of the Caucasian racial type. In this paper, we argue that the invention of the facial line, far from obeying Euro-centric aesthetic bias, grounded Camper's neutrality with respect to any claim of racial superiority. This can be understood by analyzing the representational function of the facial line in the light of the aesthetic underpinnings of Camper's overall theory. Thus, we show that the theory of the facial line rests upon the fundamental assumption that if a representation faithfully captures certain aesthetic properties of its target, then it also represents objective physical properties thereof. To unpack how this principle underlies the construction of the theory of the facial line, we analyze the influence of Johan Joachim Winckelmann's (1717-1768) conception of Ideal Beauty on Camper's craniological studies. The features of correctness, neutrality, and duality which Winckelmann ascribes to the Ideal Beauty informed the discovery of the facial line as the appropriate key for the anthropometric characterization of human variation. From this it is argued that a consistent interpretation of Camper's work must consider his representation of human variation as a preorder, not a hierarchy, in the logical space of the facial angle.