Introduction
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1This special issue appears in the year of the 300th anniversary of Kant’s birth. We, the editors, think that it is important to celebrate Kant’s 300th anniversary due to his achievements in almost all areas of philosophy. However, we also believe that it is important to continue to address Kant’s account of race and his racist remarks even during this important celebration year. This seems particularly relevant to us, since some still deny that there are racist elements in Kant’s thought.
2The issue of race appears at various points in Kant’s writing. Famously, he dedicated three texts to developing a theory of human races, in 1775, 1785 and 1788 (“Of the Different Human Races”, “Determination of the Concept of Human Race”, “On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy”). But it also surfaces in many other texts, both published and unpublished during his life. The texts which are unpublished during his lifetime consist of notes by Kant himself as well as notes by his students from his lectures on physical geography and anthropology. In many of these writings, Kant clearly accepts a hierarchical ordering of the races, with the whites at the top and “Negroes” and Native Americans at the bottom. Kant claims that this ranking is based on the differences in perfection and talent of the races. This ordering is further backed up by racist remarks on people of color that are scattered throughout his corpus.
3Even if Kant’s texts on the theory of race follow a scientific question, they still have racist implications. The aim of his texts on the theory of race is to prove that there are human races, even though they belong to the same species. Furthermore, it is clear, especially in On the Use of Teleological Principles, that Kant addresses the issue in order to show that his teleological approach to nature and its development is productive. Nevertheless, it is in this essay that Kant’s views on racial hierarchy are most clearly incorporated into his study of human races. This raises the question of the extent to which Kant’s scientific study of the human races is intertwined with his racism.
4Kant’s remarks on race have been a subject of scholarly debate for a long time. Recently, the issue gained broader attention, especially in Germany, in the aftermath of the renewed “Black Lives Matter” movement that emerged after the killing of George Floyd. This debate, which took place in 2020 mainly in newspapers, was very controversial. Participants in the debate argued about whether Kant’s thought had racist features. In the past, scholars tended to address the problem by taking one of two opposed sides. One was to call into question Kant’s moral and political theories in light of his racist views (Charles Mills, for instance, called for a radical revision of those theories). The point of this critique is that Kant’s egalitarian thinking applies only to members of the white race. The other was to register those views as reprehensible but set them aside as mere personal prejudices that do not affect Kant’s core philosophy at all. A new perspective was brought in the debate with Pauline Kleingeld’s claim that Kant’s views on race changed in the course of his life and that he abandoned his racist beliefs.
5However, it is not enough simply to acknowledge that Kant held racist views. Nor is it clear that there is any non-question-begging way to insulate the supposed “core” of Kant’s philosophy from those views. One may also wonder whether Kant abandoned his racist beliefs in the 1790s; after all, it is not clear that they are precluded by his anti-colonialist views. This is why we believe that we need to explore all the ways in which Kant’s views on race may be integral to his entire philosophical system. Furthermore, if it turns out that “race” is more central to Kant’s thought than previously assumed, we need answers to the question of how to reckon with the effects of his race thinking.
6This special edition contains a series of articles that examine the topic from different angles. The first group of essays discusses whether there is a conflict between Kant’s moral universalism and his racist beliefs. In the first essay, Andree Hahmann denies that there is a conflict between the universalist views in Kant’s moral philosophy and his racist statements in anthropology and physical geography, as both belong to domains with a different status. However, Hahmann turns to racist implications of Kant’s philosophy of history, which he sees as a consequence of his moral universalism. In contrast, Christel Fricke’s essay suggests that there is a deep tension between Kant’s moral philosophy and his views on non-whites. However, as Fricke argues, this tension can be easily resolved if Kant’s moral rationalism is opened to all rational agents. Nevertheless, as Fricke makes clear, Kant overlooks the vulnerability of non-whites to the pain of racism because, in her interpretation of Kant’s moral philosophy, the agent has the monopoly on determining the meaning of her or his actions. In their essay, Jelena Govedarica and Milica Smajevic Roljic come to a very different conclusion. According to them, the view that Kant is a racist is based on a literal reading of Kant’s notorious statements that ignores main arguments of his theory.
7The second group of essays deals with the significance of Kant’s conception of teleology for his racist views. In their article, Valentina Dafne De Vita and Jessica Segesta doubt that Kant’s theory of teleology provides a basis for scientific racism. Nevertheless, as they argue, it plays a discriminating role in the areas of politics and rights within Kant’s philosophy. In another essay, Marina Martínez Mateo and Heiko Stubenrauch take seriously Kant’s view of nature as purposive to the actualization of freedom and attempt to show that he denies non-white people the ability to participate in the realization of reason.
8The third group of essays links the discussion of Kant’s views with current concepts in the study of racism. While Jordan Pascoe understands Kant’s racism as linked to the “modern/colonial gender system,” David Baumeister traces the conceptual roots of environmental racism back to Kant.
9We are happy that the issue presents a variety of views on the issue of race and racism in Kant. We expect that the various contributions will help move the discussion forward.
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Notizia bibliografica
Gabriele Gava, Huaping Lu-Adler e Achim Vesper, «Introduction», Rivista di estetica, 87 | 2024, 3-5.
Notizia bibliografica digitale
Gabriele Gava, Huaping Lu-Adler e Achim Vesper, «Introduction», Rivista di estetica [Online], 87 | 2024, online dal 01 mars 2025, consultato il 15 mai 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/estetica/17850; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/13tuj
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