Tolerating Difference and Coping with the Infidel

In the first chapter of his book The Conquest of America, Tzvetan Todorov offers a brief account of the discovery and suppression of difference at the beginning of the modern era. His subject is Columbus, an explorer of the unknown who finds only what he already knew.

Todorov begins with the motive that drives Columbus to undertake his hazardous travels to the New World. In the matter of motives, of course, the pursuit of gold looms large, and much evidence can be marshaled to support the claim that desire for riches sets Columbus in motion. Yet, in the end, Todorov rejects this motive, or at least insists that it remains subordinate to another, which is the “universal victory of Christianity” (10). Columbus and others of his time believed that opening a western route to the orient would make it possible for Christians to “recover the Holy Land and send the Turks reeling back to central Asia” (Morrison 16). The triumph of Christianity would, of course, require a substantial amount of wealth. As a goal, it is consistent, therefore, with the pursuit of riches, though it makes that pursuit a means rather than an end in itself.

Though gold and God play a large part in motivating the voyage of discovery, Todorov also discerns another motive, one closer to the spirit of the modern age, as pursuit of the glory of God expresses the spirit of an older time. This other motive treats discovery not as a means but as an end in itself (13). Discovery as an end in itself differs essentially from discovery as a route to establish the hegemony of God in the universe. While the former remains open to possibilities as yet unknown, the latter does not, since to imagine we might discover what is not known is to challenge the word of God, and the order set in place by Him. Columbus finds himself caught between the two possibilities, which is to say between the traditional and the modern worlds.

The whole idea of discovery depends on the unknown, without which there is nothing to