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Kant As an Unfamiliar Source of Racism

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Kant As an Unfamiliar Source of Racism Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays Edited by Julie K. Ward, Tommy L. Lott Copyright © 2002 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd CHAPTER 8 Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Racism ROBERT BERNASCONI 1 In 1972 Isaiah Berlin gave a lecture on “Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of National- ism”, which has recently been published in The Sense of Reality.1 The lecture began: At first sight nothing would seem more disparate than the idea of nationality and the sane, rational, liberal internationalism of the great Königsberg philosopher. Of all the influential thinkers of his day, Kant seems the most remote from the rise of nationalism. (SR, p. 232) Just as Berlin shows a connection between Kant and nationalism, I propose to do the same for Kant and racism. However, the form of Berlin’s argument is somewhat dif- ferent from mine. Berlin does not question the legitimacy of the image of Kant’s phi- losophy as “deeply rational and cosmopolitan” (SR, p. 244). Berlin’s interest is, rather, to show how “ideas turn into their opposites” (SR, p. 248). He has in mind what became of Kant’s ideas in Herder and Fichte. My thesis, by contrast, is that, in spite of Kant’s avowed cosmopolitanism that is evident in such essays as his “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” one also finds within his philosophy expres- sions of a virulent and theoretically based racism, at a time when scientific racism was still in its infancy. Although the blatant and unremitting racist declarations of Europeans at this time, like Edward Long’s History of Jamaica of 1776, are shocking and deplorable and call for further intellectual inquiry, some authors present a further puzzle that has a particular interest for philosophers and historians of ideas. This is because they join their racism to the new universalism or cosmopolitanism, which is supposed to be one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment and an antidote to 145 Robert Bernasconi racism. That is to say, the puzzle lies in the fact that some of Europe’s greatest minds appear to have held beliefs that strike us as contradictory. The most famous and most debated example is provided by Jefferson,2 but the more puzzling case is Kant, because, unlike Jefferson, he was neither under political pressure on this particular issue nor compromised by the self-interest of being a slave owner. It remains something of a mystery how an articulate racism can within a given society co-exist with ideas of “human brotherhood,” as happened during the Enlight- enment to an unprecedented degree.3 The same question must, of course, also be asked of sexism as well, but because, at least to late twentieth-century ears, the very term “human brotherhood” indicates sexism, the puzzle is in that case highlighted, although no closer to being resolved. It is not a case of ideas turning into their opposites during the course of their development. Nor does it seem to be a case of timelag as a soci- ety struggles to catch up with a transformation in its morality. If one takes up Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s suggestion in The Dialectic of the Enlightenment that human- ism, egalitarianism, and cosmopolitanism do not so much contradict racism as lend themselves to racism, affirming it as they seek to deny it, this raises more questions than it resolves and so can only be taken as a starting-point.4 Why were so many Enlightenment thinkers apparently unable to articulate the new sense of humanity without at the same time drawing the boundaries within humanity more rigidly and explicitly than before? Does not the historical record show that cosmopolitanism not only was not introduced to combat racism, but also readily accommodated racism? Does this not suggest that the ease with which scholars today define the two terms as contraries and then read these definitions back into history distorts the historical rela- tion of the two ideas? Did the advocacy of cosmopolitanism also give to its sup- porters a sense of superiority over all those whom they perceived as tied to their particularisms? Even if universalism does not necessarily take the form of a demand that others assimilate to those standards that the dominant group holds to be universal, thereby establishing a universalism for everyone else, while the dominant group retains its particularism, is it not a constant threat? Perhaps if we had better answers to these questions, we would be better equipped to understand the persistence of racism within our own society and the disguises behind which it conceals itself. But the problem of making sense of this conflict within a particular society’s values is not as difficult as making sense of this same conflict within a single individual, particu- larly if it is not someone one wants to accuse of blindspots, hypocrisy, or stupidity, like Kant. In 1775 in “Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen,” Kant defined race in the following terms: Among the deviations, that is, among the hereditary dissimilarities that we find in animals that belong to a single line of descent are those called races. Races are deviations that are constantly preserved over many generations and come about as a consequence of migration (dislocation to other regions) or through interbreeding with other deviations of the same line of descent, which always produces half-breed offspring. (AA, II, p. 430)5 That Kant was a leading proponent of the concept of race when its scientific status was still far from secure is well established.6 Indeed, Kant can legitimately be said to have 146 Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Racism invented the scientific concept of race insofar as he gave the first clear definition of it. When the concept of race was attacked first by Herder and then by Georg Forster, Kant immediately rushed to its defense by publishing two further essays on race, “Bestim- mung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace” (1785) and “Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der Philosophie” (1788).7 Once Kant’s role in constructing a rigorous concept of race is recognized, it is a relatively easy matter to give Kant a place in the history of racism. Using an argument of the kind employed by Berlin, one can readily show that his ideas gave rise to by-products that he nevertheless would have repudi- ated (cf. SR, p. 244). George Mosse in Toward the Final Solution drew such a connec- tion between Kant’s novel insistence on the immutability and permanence of race and the racist policies of the National Socialists.8 My question here, however, is whether Kant’s contribution to racism is limited to this role. So far as the question of whether his racism and his views on race obtruded into the critical philosophy, I will argue else- where that Kant’s understanding of race is at stake in the discussion of teleology in the Critique of Judgment.9 Here I will focus only on Kant’s original contribution within the history of racism, ignoring his subsequent use by racists, such as the National Socialists in Germany.10 It might seem that Kant’s reputation for cosmopolitanism is so long-standing that any attempt to sully it now can be understood only as another example of tabloid philosophy in which one attempts to bring a thinker down simply because they are exalted. However, I believe that studying how the classical works of the history of philosophy connect with the institutional oppression of their time is the best preparation for questioning the limitations of our own thinking. The still domi- nant tendency to reduce our understanding of classic philosophers like Locke, Hume, Kant, and, for that matter, Heidegger to the most narrow, abstract and defensible state- ments of their positions that we can formulate, might at first sight seem to protect them and us from those things we prefer they had not written, but this restriction of their thought ultimately diminishes philosophy. Not least, it fosters the pretense that the great philosophers were unmotivated in their research and withdrawn from concern for society.11 It is extraordinary that Hume’s racism has received more attention than Kant’s, even though Hume’s racism is much less extensive than Kant’s and far less integrated into his philosophy.12 I cannot document here the full range of Kant’s anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism, nor introduce the qualifications necessary to establish a balanced picture. Given my aims, it will not be necessary for me to rehearse, for example, the often cited comment in Kant’s Observations on the Sublime and the Beautiful.13 But con- sider this quotation from the Physical Geography, which documents Kant’s ideas about racial inequality: Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites. The yellow Indians do have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them and at the lowest point are a part of the American peoples. (AA, IX, p. 316)14 Or consider Kant’s claim in an unpublished note that Whites “contain all the impulses (Triebfedern) of nature in affects and passions, all talents, all dispositions to culture and civilization and can as readily obey as govern. They are the only ones who always 147 Robert Bernasconi advance to perfection” (AA, XV/2, p. 878). I will often return to this note, number 1,520 in the Adickes edition of Kant’s fragments on Anthropology. Because some of its most shocking statements appear to have no exact parallel elsewhere in the Kantian corpus, it has to be approached with caution. However, in this case there are support- ing documents in the form of student notes for his lectures on Anthropology from 1781 to 1782, which correspond sufficiently closely to note 1,520 to suggest that the latter belonged to Kant’s own notes for his lectures.
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