Synthesis and Race: Barge, Buytendijk, and the rassenvraagstuk of the 1930s

Samenvatting

On the basis of two case studies, this article demonstrates that throughout the 1930s “synthetic reasoning” in the Netherlands provided arguments to denounce racial reductionism and eugenicist policy. These two case studies concern the anatomist and physical anthropologist J.A.J. Barge (1884-1952) and the physiologist and psychologist F.J.J. Buytendijk (1887-1974). Barge and Buytendijk participated in a public debate on race and fiercely contested the claim – from their perspective primarily defended by German scientists – that heritable, racial factors determined personality and physiology. Christian principles undoubtedly motivated Barge and Buytendijk to raise their voices, but in criticizing the public uses of race, they based their arguments, above all, on epistemological considerations. This article examines theoretical investigations by Buytendijk and Barge into the foundations of the life sciences, the “race question” of the 1930s, and the 1939 Seminar on the Race Question organized by the Catholic University in Nijmegen. Although both intellectuals supported the broadening of explanatory schemes in biology and the human sciences, they differed on the question what synthesis meant with regard to the concept of race.