The style and its man : Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss' "tolerant" racism

The objective of this paper is to analyse the psychological concept of "race" developed by the student of Edmund Husserl, Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss. This paper analyses the psychological concept of "race" as developed by Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, by tracing its phenomenological roots in both Husserl's Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and in the descriptive psychology of Edith Stein, Clauss' teacher in Göttingen. We try also to show the difference between this concept and the naturalistic, National Socialist ideology of race, represented by Alfred Rosenberg and Hans Günther. We argue that in spite of the claim to work out a clear, rigorous and "presuppositionless", non-judgemental theory of race as a "style" of the experiencing of the world, Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss' "psychology of race" remains a form of racism that contradicts the solidarity of mankind and the principles of tolerance.