Kant's Second Thoughts on Colonialism (original) (raw)
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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's Second Thoughts on Race
Philosophical Quarterly, 2007
During the 1780s, as Kant was developing his universalistic moral theory, he published texts in which he defended the superiority of whites over non-whites. Whether commentators see this as evidence of inconsistent universalism or of consistent inegalitarianism, they generally assume that Kant's position on race remained stable during the 1780s and 1790s. Against this standard view, I argue on the basis of his texts that Kant radically changed his mind. I examine his 1780s race theory and his hierarchical conception of the races, and subsequently address the question of the significance of these views, especially in the light of Kant's own ethical theory. I then show that during the 1790s Kant restricts the role of the concept of race, and drops his hierarchical account of the races in favour of a more genuinely egalitarian and cosmopolitan view.