Immanuel Kant is, famously, not only the major philosopher of European enlightenment, but also one of the first philosophers to develop a philosophical theory of “human races”. How do these two sides of Kant relate to each other? What is the significance of race in Kant’s philosophy? In this article, we aim to discuss these questions by taking a close look into the conceptual and philosophical presuppositions underlying Kant’s understanding of race; relating them to the concept of teleology as developed (...) by Kant in the Critique of Judgement and to the idea of natural history that can be derived from there. In the last two chapters, we intertwine both perspectives in such a way that, on the one hand, we can determine the philosophical significance of race for Kant, and, on the other hand, show how a race-sensible perspective gives new and critical insight into Kant’s concept of reason. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant was possibly both the most influential racist and the most influential moral philosopher of modern, Western thought. So far, authors have either interpreted Kant as an “inconsistent egalitarian” or as a “consistent inegalitarian.” On the former view, Kant failed to draw the necessary conclusions about persons from his own moral philosophy; on the latter view, Kant did not consider non‐White people as persons at all. However, both standard interpretations face significant textual difficulties; instead, I argue that Kant's moral (...) egalitarianism is so thin as to remain almost entirely useless as an antidote to racism. (shrink)

Eric Voegelin’s writings on the historical development of the concept of race in the early 1930s are important to philosophy today in part because they provide a model upon which scholars can further integrate modern philosophy with the critical philosophy of race. In constructing his history, Voegelin’s methodological orientation depends on the centrality of both Kant’s work and the problem of the mind–body union to the concept of race. This essay asks how one might hold these premises if Kant seems (...) to reject the dominant approach to the mind–body union in the mid-eighteenth century, physical influx, and then go on to publish several essays on race that do not thematize that doctrine in any way. I argue that Kant’s racial union of mind and body cannot be understood as an interaction in space, as his contemporaries had presumed. Rather, the union must be approached as a repetition in time. In this way, Kant’s four racial categories are not merely a part of the mind–body problem, but instead each is a veritable mind–body union. This permits the conclusion that ‘race’, as Kant understood it, is a viable solution to the mind–body problem. (shrink)

This article focuses on the contribution Robert Bernasconi has made to the critical philosophy of race. I look at some representative samples of his work under four categories: his racially informed critiques of canonical Western philosophical figures; his expositions/reconstructions/recuperations of racially informed theory from canonical Western philosophical figures; his reflections on race/whiteness/imperialism and their implications; and his views on race as it has shaped the historic and current realities of philosophy as a discipline.

Over the past 15 years we have seen the rise of a field of inquiry known as Whiteness Studies. Two of its major tenets are (1) that white identity is socially constructed and functions as a racial norm and (2) that those who occupy the position of white subjectivity exercise ‘white privilege’, which is oppressive to non-whites. However, despite their ubiquitous use of the term ‘norm’, Whiteness Studies theorists rarely give any detailed account of how whiteness serves to normalize. A (...) case is made here that we can only understand how whiteness normalizes if we place the development of white racial subject positions within the context of the development of normalizing biopower that Foucault describes in his work through the 1970s. Once that context is provided, it becomes clear that a larger problem exists in Whiteness Studies, one evident in the use of the concept of ‘white privilege’. Whiteness Studies theorists have not thoroughly critiqued the juridical conception of power that they have inherited from traditional political theory; as a result, they cannot get away from psychological accounts of the origins of racism, even though they usually state very clearly that they believe racism is an institutional phenomenon and racist subject positions are formed within networks of power. If Whiteness Studies is to accomplish both its analytical and its political goals, its theorists need to pay close attention to Foucault’s work on biopower. (shrink)

This paper examines Kant’s anthropological project and its relationship to his conception of ‘man’ in order to show that Kant’s answer to the question ‘what is man?’ entails a decisive re-evaluation of traditional conceptions of human nature. I argue that Kant redirects the question ‘what is man?’ away from defining man in terms of what he is, and towards defining him in terms of what he does, in particular through the distinction between three levels of what I will call ‘man’s (...) praxis’: the levels of technicality, prudence, and morality. As soon as man is understood in terms of what he makes of himself rather than in terms of what he is, two crucial issues arise: what is the purpose of his making? And how can he reach this destination? My claim is that whilst the first question is answered by ethics and a doctrine of prudence, the second question is answered by anthropology. In this sense, anthropology plays the crucial role of identifying the worldly helps and hindrances to the realisation of man’s purposes—and this is the reason why it should be understood as a ‘pragmatic’ discipline.Keywords: Immanuel; Kant; Pragmatic; Anthropology; Praxis; Aliens; Human nature. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race provides up-to-date explanation and analyses by leading scholars of contemporary issues in African American philosophy and philosophy of race. These original essays encompass the major topics and approaches in this emerging philosophical subfield that supports demographic inclusion and diversity while at the same time strengthening the conceptual arsenal of social and political philosophy. Over the course of the volume's ten topic-based sections, ideas about race held by Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche are (...) supplemented by suppressed thought from the African diaspora, early twentieth-century African American perspectives and Native-, Asian-, and Latin-, American views. The contributors bring philosophical analysis to bear on the status of racial divisions as categories of humanity in the biological sciences, as well as within contemporary criticism and conceptual analysis. Essays present the special applications of American philosophy and continental philosophy to ideas of race as methodological alternatives to more analytic approaches. As a collection of analyses and assessments of 'race' in the real world, the volume pays trenchant and relevant attention to historical and contemporary racism and what it means to say that 'race' and racial identities are socially constructed. The essays analyze contemporary social issues including the importance of racial difference and identity in education, public health, medicine, IQ and other standardized tests, and sports. Additionally, the essays consider the societal limitations and structures provided by public policy and law. As a critical theory, the volume compares the study of race to feminism. Historical and contemporary, academic and popular, racisms pertaining to male and female gender receive special consideration throughout the volume. While this comprehensive collection may have the effect of a textbook, each of the original essays is a fresh and authentic development of important present thought. (shrink)

In the course of the last 20 years, the problem of Kant’s view of races has evolved from a marginal topic to a question which affects his critical philosophy in general, including the anthropology and its influence on contemporary social studies. The goal of our paper is to examine the anthropological role of Kant’s concept of race from the largely overlooked or underestimated perspective of his Lectures on Anthropology. Taking into account the differences between Kant’s approach in the early lectures (...) of the 1770s and early 1780s and the lectures of the late 1780s in the light of the development of the idea of race in Kant’s works, we will demonstrate that several key elements of Kant’s 1780s theory of race presented in his published works can be found in his early lectures. On the other hand, we will prove that Kant gradually abandons racial hierarchies and moral characteristics of races in his anthropological lectures of the late 1780s and in the Anthropology from the Pragmatic Point of View, shifting his focus to more nuanced descriptions of morals of different nations. (shrink)