Kant’s Anthropology in the Context of the Debates on Racism in the History of Philosophy

Abstract

The paper focuses on the origins and history of the academic and public discussion on the supposedly racist aspects of Immanuel Kant’s anthropology. The first part contains a selection of key passages that are at the core of the discussion: fragments of lectures on anthropology and physical geography, excerpts from Kant’s minor works of the 1770s and 1780s and the paragraph on races in “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View”. In the second part, I outline the main arguments of the three stages of the discussion, starting with the acknowledgement of the problem by academic scholars in the 1990s and ending with the recent debates in German mass media in summer and autumn 2020. While providing a critical account of the arguments from all sides of the discussion, I also present my point of view: there are, indeed, racist statements and classifications in Kant’s minor works and lectures, although they do not affect the main elements of his critical philosophy; in his late works of the 1790s, Kant abandons his discriminatory approach to the description of races in the light of his idea of ​​cosmopolitanism. In the final part, I briefly discuss some conclusions – from the historical and analytical point of view and from the contemporary perspective which is being significantly reshaped by the Black Lives Matter movement.