"European Savages": Kant's Defence and Critique of Colonialism, in Historische Urteilskraft 05 (2023) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Kant's Second Thoughts on Colonialism
Kant is widely regarded as a fierce critic of colonialism. In Toward Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals, for example, he forcefully condemns European conduct in the colonies as a flagrant violation of the principles of right. His earlier views on colonialism have not yet received much detailed scrutiny, however. In this essay I argue that Kant actually endorsed and justified European colonialism until the early 1790s. I show that Kant’s initial endorsement and his subsequent criticism of colonialism are closely related to his changing views on race, because his endorsement of a racial hierarchy plays a crucial role in his justification of European colonialism. He gave up both in the mid 1790s while he was developing his legal and political philosophy, and he adopted a more egalitarian version of the cosmopolitan relationship among peoples.
Notre Dame Philosophical Review, 2015
Although colonialism is only a marginal topic in Kant's writings, his remarks on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of colonial practices have naturally attracted much attention. As Kant is a main representative of enlightenment thinking and a herald of emancipatory theory, any putative endorsement or critique of colonialism on his part would seem to have far reaching implications: Kant's stance, whatever it turns out to be, could be understood as representative of the ways in which Western Enlightenment might be complicit with or, on the contrary, offer a resource for overcoming colonial oppression. This volume does not address the broader question of the general relation of enlightenment and colonialism directly but rather turns to the more limited task of getting clear about Kant's actual position regarding colonialism.
This article offers a new interpretation of Kant's cosmopolitanism and his anti-colonialism in Toward Perpetual Peace. Kant's changing position has been the subject of extensive debates that have, however, not recognized the central place of colonialism in the political, economic, and military debates in Europe in which Kant was writing. Based on historical evidence not previously considered alongside Perpetual Peace, I suggest that Kant's leading concern at the time of writing is the negative effect of European expansionism and intra-European rivalry over colonial possessions on the possibility of peace in Europe. Because of the lack of affinity between colonial conflict and his philosophy of history, Kant must adjust his concept of antagonism to distinguish between war between particular dyads, in particular spaces, and with particular non-state actors. I examine the implications of this argument for Kant's system of Right and conclude that his anti-colonialism co-exists with hierarchical views of race.
Kant's Criticism of European Colonialism. A Contemporary Account of Cosmopolitan Right
This paper tackles Kant's juridical arguments for criticizing European colonialist practices, taking into account some recent accounts of this issue given by Kant scholars as Ripstein, Cavallar, Fliks-chuh, Stilz and Vanhaute. First, I focus on Kant's grounding of cosmopolitan union as a juridical requirement stemming of the systematic character of the rational doctrine of right. Second, I pay attention to Kant's remarks about how the European nations ought to establish commercial relations with other nations in the world and how they should approach non-state people. I draw the conclusion that Kant's juridical-political writings should be consider as a forerunning corpus for furthering an anti-colonialist mind in the European philosophy of Enlightenment.
Kant and Slavery--Or Why He Never Became a Racial Egalitarian
Critical Philosophy of Race, 2022
According to an oft-repeated narrative, while Kant maintained racist views through the 1780s, he changed his mind in the 1790s. Pauline Kleingeld introduced this narrative based on passages from Kant's Metaphysics of Morals (1797) and "Toward Perpetual Peace" (1795). On her reading, Kant categorically condemned chattel slavery (and colonialism) in those texts, which meant that he became more racially egalitarian. But the passages involving slavery, once contextualized, either do not concern modern, race-based chattel slavery or at best suggest that Kant mentioned it as a cautionary tale for labor practices in Europe. Overall, Kant never explicitly considered chattel slavery as a moral problem to be addressed on its own. Rather, he treated it primarily in terms of its function in human history. If he ended up expressing some qualms about its practices, it was likely because they threatened to deepen intra-European conflicts and undermine the prospect of perpetual peace. The humanity of the enslaved "Negroes" was never part of the reasoning. This was not a casual oversight on Kant's part. It reflects the complexity of his philosophical system: everything he did or did not say about chattel slavery begins to make sense once we connect his philosophy of history and his depiction of "Negroes" as natural slaves.
Kleingeld, Bernasconi and Kant's colonialism sept
African Century Journal, 2019
Kleingeld has argued forcefully and repeatedly that Kant had a change of mind after 1792. On being challenged primarily by Bernaconi she has referred to changes in Kant's expressions. This note reminds everyone that French revolutionary troops had stormed the Rhineland 1792 bringing with them their revolutionary ideals and were met by mass local uprisings in support. Slavery was abolished in France and her empire in 1794. This was ignored. It is also argued that Kleingeld exaggerates Kant's early racism in order to support her thesis that he had a change of mind. It is argued that if Kant's theories are correctly understood they remained largely consistent throughout.
This chapter examines the relation between colonialism and commerce in Kant’s philosophy, linking his thought on these issues to the teleology that developed from his 1784 essay on universal history to the Critique of Judgment and later political writings. Starting by discussing the place of race and commerce in Kant’s earlier political writings, and linking it to the account of germs and dispositions in his philosophy of biology, the chapter illustrates how Kant’s thought moves from a positive evaluation of the contribution of the commercial spirit to the development of moral dispositions to one of increasing scepticism towards the unregulated expansion of trade and subsequent colonialism. It is argued that this development coincides with Kant’s increased emphasis on the conscious role played by human agents in historical transformation and a more nuanced, reflective account of the relation between natural teleology and the process of moral development of human beings.
Peace Studies Journal
There has been a persistent misunderstanding of the nature of cosmopolitanism in Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace,” viewing it as a qualitative break from the bellicose natural law tradition preceding it. This misunderstanding is in part due to Kant’s explicitly critical comments about colonialism as well as his attempt to rhetorically distance his cosmopolitanism from traditional natural law theory. In this paper, I argue that the necessary foundation for Kant’s cosmopolitan subjectivity and right was forged in the experience of European colonialism and the (pre-Kantian) theory it engendered. It is in this context that we witness the universalization of subjectivity and the subjectivization of right, emerging from the justificatory needs of extra-national jurisdiction and resource appropriation. This form of cosmopolitanism, whose emergence necessarily tracks the rise of global capitalism, continues to exert great and often uncritical influence on theories and practices of peace today.