Kant, Race, and Racism

Abstract

Kant scholars have paid relatively little attention to his raciology. They assume that his racism, as personal prejudice, can be disentangled from his core philosophy. They also assume that racism contradicts his moral theory. This book challenges both assumptions. It shows how Kant’s raciology—divided into racialism and racism—is integral to his philosophical system as a whole. It also rejects the individualistic approach to Kant and racism. Instead, it uses the notion of racism as ideological formation to demonstrate how Kant, from his social location both as a prominent scholar and as a lifelong educator, participated in the formation of modern racist ideology. As a scholar, Kant developed a groundbreaking scientific theory of race from the standpoint of a philosophical investigator of nature or Naturforscher. As an educator, he transmitted denigrating depictions of the racialized others and imbued them with normative relevance. In both roles, he presented a worldview that excluded nonwhites from such goods as recognitional respect and candidacy for cultural and moral achievements. Some effects of this worldview are still palpable today. Scholars who research and teach Kant’s philosophy therefore have an unshakable burden to take part in the ongoing antiracist struggles, through their teaching practices as well as their scholarship. And they must do so in a color-conscious as opposed to colorblind way, with a pragmatic attention to nonideal social realities and a clear normative orientation toward substantial racial justice, equality, and inclusion.

Kant, race, and racism: Views from somewhere. By HuapingLu‐Adler, Oxford University Press. 2023

“…Alternatively, Lu‐Adler (2023: 77) builds on the work of Tommie Shelby (2003) and Sally Haslanger (2017) to situate Kant's theory of race within a collective account of “knowledge production” and “ideology formation.” Thus framed, the pressing question for Kant scholars is not simply what Kant said but what Kant as an educator and public intellectual “contributed to the system of information sharing, knowledge production, and meaning making in which modern racist ideology came to take shape” (Lu‐Adler, 2023: 7). This approach shifts our attention from trying to figure out what Kant thought to critically examining “the racist sentiments and worldviews he might have helped to cultivate in the hearts and minds of other people through his numerous publications, decades of letters, and countless copies of student notes of those lectures that circulated beyond his classroom” (Lu‐Adler, 2023: 5–6).…”

“…This systematic investigation is the engine room of Lu‐Adler's study. Working carefully through Kant's extensive corpus, Lu‐Adler identifies three “levels of discourse” in the Kantian system: pure moral philosophy, pragmatic anthropology, and physical geography (Lu‐Adler, 2023: 71). Each level has a distinct conception of the human being: the study of “human beings qua spatio‐temporally particularized inhabitants on earth” (physical geography), the “human being qua free‐acting, yet‐to‐be‐perfected rational animal” (pragmatic anthropology), and the “human being qua rational being as such” (pure moral philosophy) (Lu‐Adler, 2023: 71).…”

“…Working carefully through Kant's extensive corpus, Lu‐Adler identifies three “levels of discourse” in the Kantian system: pure moral philosophy, pragmatic anthropology, and physical geography (Lu‐Adler, 2023: 71). Each level has a distinct conception of the human being: the study of “human beings qua spatio‐temporally particularized inhabitants on earth” (physical geography), the “human being qua free‐acting, yet‐to‐be‐perfected rational animal” (pragmatic anthropology), and the “human being qua rational being as such” (pure moral philosophy) (Lu‐Adler, 2023: 71). The transition between each level is marked by an increase in what Lu‐Adler calls “real abstraction” (2023: 72), the lower level providing the conditions for the application of the principles discerned in the higher.…”

“…Each level has a distinct conception of the human being: the study of “human beings qua spatio‐temporally particularized inhabitants on earth” (physical geography), the “human being qua free‐acting, yet‐to‐be‐perfected rational animal” (pragmatic anthropology), and the “human being qua rational being as such” (pure moral philosophy) (Lu‐Adler, 2023: 71). The transition between each level is marked by an increase in what Lu‐Adler calls “real abstraction” (2023: 72), the lower level providing the conditions for the application of the principles discerned in the higher. As Kant (1996: 4:412) puts it in the Groundwork , pure moral philosophy “needs anthropology for its application to human beings.”…”

“…This point takes centre stage in the book's forward‐looking conclusion, which we will come to shortly. Provisionally, the close of Part I sets up the remaining parts by suggesting that “we should look into what roles he, as a social actor , might have played in shaping the beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and habits of mind of other relevant agents” (Lu‐Adler, 2023: 96). By taking up Haslanger's (2017) emphasis on practice, Lu‐Adler's contention is that Kant's pragmatic writings are far more important than scholars tend to acknowledge.…”