Dmitri Levitin: 'The Origins of Modern Eurocentrism: Erudition, Theology, Philosophy, and Race, 1700-1800'

Date: 10 May

Time: 17.00 BST

Venue: Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College, Oxford

In 1800, German writers started offering genealogies of modernity running
from classical Athens (especially its philosophers), through early Christianity
(considered a Greek rather than a Jewish phenomenon, at least in spirit), to
modern 'enlightened' Protestantism. A century earlier, this genealogy would
have been unthinkable. For in 1700, every European intellectual would have
agreed that Greek philosophy was not qualitatively different from its ‘oriental’
counterpart, and that Christianity had emerged directly from Judaism.

Combining intellectual and social history, this lecture will provide a new
account of how this peculiar Eurocentrism emerged, and why it proved so
successful, coming to be deployed in political debates about Jewish
emancipation and the abolition of Atlantic slavery. Moreover, it will identify the
origins of some long-lasting concepts and ideas: (1) the distinction between
‘Pauline’ and ‘Jewish’ Christianity; (2) the distinction between ‘pre-’ and ‘post-
Socratic’ philosophy; (3) a ‘Greek miracle’ in intellectual history; (4) the earliest
full conspiracy theory about a Jewish politico-economic plot to take over the
world; (5) the first fears of a ‘Great Replacement’ of native Europeans by
immigrants. It will suggest that the parallel appearance of these concepts was
not unconnected.