Boas and the metaphysics of race in the biological race debate

Abstract

Franz Boas is widely regarded as a revolutionary anthropologist, maybe even the “founding grandfather” of modern anthropology. In this paper, I examine whether, besides his scientifically pioneering work in anthropology, Boas was also a pioneer with respect to the metaphysics of race. I argue that while Boas reconstructs a biological realistic (deterministic) position about race as the popular position about race he argues with, Boas’ own position about race is best understood as anti-realism. Hence, I state that Boas accepts the biological (deterministic) meaning of race but seems to hold that given this meaning, human races are not real. I thus suggest that Boas may be taken to have led an ontological turn in the metaphysics of race rather than a semantical one, holding that human races do not exist. Boas, then, seems to be a pioneer in holding that races are not real, and his novel scientific evidence regarding so-called human races enabled him to develop his anti-realist position about race. However, I also argue that in contrast to the great influence of Boas’ scientific revolutionariness, surprisingly, his ontological turn has been almost completely unnoticed.