HEGEL, LAS CASAS, AND THE ERASURE OF PARTICULARITY: THE PEDAGOGICAL COERCION OF THE BARBARIAN

We follow Hegel’s description of the barbarian as a natural being, incapable of freedom and thereby a threat to its Idea, achieved only in European culture. The alternatives left for her in the modern world are either assimilation to the universality of the European by means of a civilizing mission (pedagogical coercion) through which she must lose her particularity, or physical extermination. Either way, her concreteness cannot withstand the universality of reason and freedom. In contrast, Bartolomé de las Casas in his 1550 debate with Ginés de Sepúlveda offers various strategies with which he attempts to save native cultures from both assimilation and extermination. In opposition to Hegel, what is under threat for las Casas, and requires absolute sovereignty instead of pedagogical coercion, is not the universal idea of freedom but the concrete existence of native communities