Sublime Waste: Kant on the Destiny of the ‘Races’

References

• This essay explores Kant's contribution to the production of the modern pseudo-biological theory of “race.” I omit scare-quotes around “race” in this essay only for reasons of convenience. Although “race” is a fiction, its lineage needs tracing because its consequences are real.
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• Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theories des Himmels Immanuel Kant, in Kant's Gesammelte Schriften, ed. (Königliche) Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 29 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter and predecessors, 1902-), i 318. References to works of Kant will be made in text. For translations used, see bibliography.
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• Gleichheit “Die aller Individuen der menschlichen Gattung ist für Kant aus reiner Vernunft wißbar, sie ist zusätzlich auch noch durch Reflexion, die arn gegebenen Leib ansetzt, auf hypothetische, aber doch zugleich gut gesicherte Weise gewiß…. Die Kantische Rassetheorie redet dem Rassismus nicht nur nicht das Wort, sie ist der erntshafteste, energischste Einspruch gegen diesen—den allerschlimmsten—Wahn” [“The equality of all individuals of the human race is for Kant knowable by pure reason, (and) it is further certain in a hypothetical though secure way through reflection starting with the body…. The Kantian theory of race not only does not pave the way for racism, (but) it is the most serious, energetic objection to this—the very worst—madness.”] (Rudolf Malter, ‘Der Rassebegriff in Kants Anthropologie,’ in Die Natur des Menschen. Probleme der Physischen Anthropologie und Rassenkunde (1750–1850), ed. Gunter Mann and Franz Dumont [Stuttgart & New York: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1990], 121–22).
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• “Strictly speaking, Kant's anthropology and geography offer the strongest, if not the only, sufficiently articulated theoretical philosophical justification of the superior/inferior classification of ‘races of men’ of any European writer before him” (Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, ‘The Color of Reason: The Idea of ‘Race’ in Kant's Anthropology,’ Bucknell Review 38:2 [1995]: 231). “[F]or Kant non-white or non-European humanity, properly speaking, lies beyond the realm of reason and thus beyond the possibility of rational redemption” (Tsenay Serequeberhan, ‘Eurocentrism in Philosophy: The Case of Immanuel Kant,’ The Philosophical Forum 27:4 [Summer 1996]: 337).
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• Versuche über die Geschichte des Menschen See Heinrich Home [Lord Kames], 2 vols. (Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Junius, 1774, 1775); the discussion of human diversity appeared in 1774.
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• de , W. , ed. 1924 . The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach…and the Inaugural Dissertation of John Hunter, M.D. on the Varieties of Man For the others see trans. and ed. Thomas Bendyshe (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1865). For the connection to the ideas of Kames, see Robert Wokler, ‘Apes and Races in the Scottish Enlightenment. Monboddo and Kames on the Nature of Man,’ in Philosophy and Science in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Peter Jones (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1988), 145–68. Erich Adickes argues against the view that Kant was defending Buffon against Kames at Kant als Naturforscher, 2 vols. (Berlin: Gruyter,1925), ii 449.
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• Versuche über die Geschichte des Menschen Kames surmises that it was after the building of the Tower of Babel that the dispersion happened (ii 47ff).
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• Dougherty , Frank W.P. “ ‘Buffons Bedeutung für die Entwickelung des anthropologischen Denkens im Deutschland der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts,’ in ” . In Die Natur des Menschen. Probleme der Physischen Anthropologie und Rassenkunde (1750–1850) This definition of species is usually traced to the seventeenth-century botanist John Ray, but has roots in antiquity. See ed. Gunter Mann and Franz Dumont (Soemmerring-Forschungen VI) (Stuttgart & New York: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1990), 189–220,255n30.
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• Abartung was the term used in the 1772 German translation of Buffon's 1766 ‘De la dégération des animaux.’ Cf. ‘Von der Abartung der Thiere,’ Allgemeine Historie der Natur nach allen ihren besonderen Theilen abgehandelt, VII/2 (Leipzig: Hermann Heinrich Holle, 1772), 189–222.
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• Kant als Naturforscher For Kant's position midway between eighteenth-century “evolutionism” and “epigenesis,” see Adickes, ii 429ff.
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• For Kant, “brunette” refers not primarily to hair colour, but rather to “skin colour (with its result, eye and hair colour).” See viii 68.
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• Allgemeine Historie der Natur nach allen ihren besonderen Theilen abgehandelt II/1 (Hamburg & Leipzig: Georg Christian Grund & Adam Heinrich Holle, 1752), 313.
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• The Anthroplogical Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach 99
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• Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit Johann Gottfried Herder, 4 vols. (Riga and Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1784–91), IV 5 (i 239), and VII 1 (ii 80).
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• Herder . Ideen VII 1 (ii 81); cf. VII 5 (ii 121).
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• Zammito , H. 1992 . The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment Chicago and London : University of Chicago Press . John 208.
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• Forster , Georg . “ ‘Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen’ and ‘Beschluß der im vorigen Monat angefangenen Abhandlung des Herrn G. R. Forsters über die Menschen-Rassen,’ ” . In Teutscher Merkur October 1786,57–86, and November 1786, 150–66.
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• Forster apparently knew only two works of Kant's at the time of writing: the 1785 essay on race, and the playful interpretation of the creation account of Genesis in ‘Muthmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte’—another dig at Herder—which appeared shortly thereafter in the same magazine.
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• Forster, ‘Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen,’ 80.
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• “Familien” appears in ‘Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen,’ 71; “zwoten Menschengattung” in ‘Beschluß…,’ 165–66. Forster recommends G. Th. Sömmering's Ueber die körperliche Verschiedenheit des Negers vom Europäer (Frankfurt und Mainz, 1785)—a book that Kant owned—in ‘Noch etwas…,’ 76. Sömmering's widely-cited book was in fact dedicated to Forster.
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• Forster, ‘Noch etwas…,’ 82.
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• There is something rather worrying about these claims, quite beyond the credence Kant gives to racist reports. Kant claims that unlike Americans, Africans and Indians are capable of work, but not of making themselves work. Robert Bernasconi has shown that Kant nowhere condemns chattel slavery, and in some places seems even to take it for granted. I have learned much from Bernasconi's ‘Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Racism’ (paper presented at the New School for Social Research, 17 April 1998).
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• This is a point that recurs throughout Kant's writings on India, as in 1775: ‘Alle orientalischen Völcker sind nicht im Stande eine einzige Eigenschaft der Moral oder des Rechts durch Begriffe auseinander zu setzen, sondern alle ihre Sitten beruhen auf Erscheinung’ (xxv.2 665).
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• 1796 . Ueber das kantische Prinzip für die Naturgeschichte. Ein Versuch diese Wissenschaft philosophisch zu behandeln Von D. Christoph Girtanner Göttingen : Vandenhoek und Ruprecht . (reprint Bruxelles: Culture et Civilisation [Aetas Kantiana], 1968). Although he follows Blumenbach on the number of races (59), Girtanner otherwise faithfully reproduces Kant's arguments. The final third of Girtanner's book tries to apply the Kantian definition of race also to animals and plants. (Kant discusses races of horses in Physical Geography, ix 321.)
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• 1974 . Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View trans. Mary J. Gregor [The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff . The name of the second part of (]), which contains the discussions of race and gender, as well as of temperament, physiognomy, national character, and the destiny of the species, is ‘Anthropological Characteristic,’ a phrase that places it squarely in a forgotten tradition of eighteenth-century German moralizing which focused precisely on ‘How to Discern Man's Inner Self from his Exterior’ (Kant's subtitle for this section). The subject is big and understudied. See, for a start, Hans Robert Jauß, ‘Zur Marginalität der Körpererfahrung in Kants Anthropologie und der in ihr vorgegebenen moralistischen Tradition,’ in Leib-Zeichen: Körperbilder, Rhetorik und Anthropologie im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Rudolph Behrens and Roland Galle (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1993), 11–21.
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• Between the paragraphs on Indians and whites, Kant has added “Chinese—Jews and gypsies,” with no further explanation.
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• “Alle racen werden ausgerotten werden (Amerikaner und Neger können sich nicht selbst regiren. Dienen also nur zu Sclaven), nur nicht die der Weissen” (A xv.2 878).
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• 1995 . Fortschritt und Vernunft: Zur Geschichtsphilosophie Kants Würzburg : Königshausen & Neumann . My understanding of Kant's philosophy of history is indebted to Pauline Kleingeld
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• Kant's Political Thought: Its Origin and Development Hans Saner pointed out many years ago that much of Kant's mature thinking on the working of human society is continuous with the views of natural processes in his early scientific work. See (originally Kants Weg von Krieg zum Frieden, Band I: Widerstreit und Einheit: Wege zu Kants politischem Denken), trans. E.B. Ashton (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1973). The work of Susan Meld Shell has recently made further continuities apparent. See The Embodiment of Reason: Kant on Spirit, Generation, and Community (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
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• Pope . An Essay on Man i 83–86. Cf. Hrn. B. H. Brockes…Aus dem Englischen übersetzter Versuch vom Menschen, des Herrns Alexander Pope…(Hamburg: Christian Herold, 1740), 11: “Der stets mit einem gleichen Auge, weil er der Schöpfer ja von allen,/Sieht einen Helden untergehn, und einen kleinen Sperling fallen,/Sieht eine Wasserblase springen, und eine ganze Welt vergehn” (quoted i 318). Jaki's translation: “Who, because he is the Creator of all, sees with the same eye/A hero go under and a small sparrow fall,/Sees a bubble burst and an entire world perish.”
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• Kant als Naturforscher Vol. 2 , 285 – 89 . Other writers' descriptions of extraterrestrials were quite different in this respect, emphasizing that things like the number of moons ensured that every planet was inhabitable by beings capable of rational appreciation of cosmic design. See Adickes, vol.
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• Keim Although my conjecture is in harmony with most of Kant's substantive anthropological claims, it seems to conflict with the claim with which the 1785 essay ends, according to which the white race represents the development of one at the expense of others, just like the others. However, one could argue that this claim must be understood as no more than part of Kant's effort in that essay to displace historical speculation on the origins of the races.
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• In this argument, Kant exploits ancient tensions in temperament theory. See my forthcoming ‘Substitutes for Wisdom: The Temperaments in Kant's Practical Thought.’
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• Correlating human varieties with temperaments was nothing new; Linneaus had added temperamental descriptions to his discussion of the main varieties of homo in 1758. Comparison with Linnaeus, whose phlegmatic Africans and sanguine Europeans were more in keeping with the commonplaces of the day, shows the originality and self-consciousness of Kant's view.
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• Keime I am grateful to John Zammito for reminding me that—despite Kant's own sloppy usage—the whole point of Kant's race theory is that the essence of the species, respresented by the is unchanging: races are not Ausartungen, and so Keime can be “extinguished” but not destroyed.
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• The same interpretive leeway seems denied by the later reformulation, “all rational beings stand under the law that each of them should treat himself and all others never merely as an end but always at the same time as an end in himself” (iv 433).
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• This maxim could presumably pass the test of universalization as a natural law (vi 421), too. For Kant it is a natural law that the races, once separated, should not come together again.
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