KANTIANISM AND THE MASTER RACE

Christopher Richard Wade Dettling (2019)

These introductory comments should well demonstrate their importance, not only for discussions of Kant’s role in the formative development of our modern concept of race, but also for our understanding of the development of the critical philosophy itself. There is much in these texts that does not make for pleasant reading; but perhaps the recognition of what seems so wrong to us in these texts — especially with regard to the theory of race that Kant does undeniably sketch in them — should make us that much more appreciative of the fact that Kant distanced himself from these views as far as he arguably did in the ethical and political works he published in the 1790s. Jon M. Mikkelsen¹

Immanuel Kant produced the most raciological [racialist and racist] thought of the eighteenth century. Earl W. Count²

It is now known that unlike Kant, Hegel was despised by the Nazis.³

Kant distanced himself from these [racialist and racist] views … in the ethical and political works he published in the 1790s, — Jon M. Mikkelsen: Kant’s racism is a “theory of race,” i.e., racialism, — but racialism is not profound error and falsehood? We must pose this question in light of the great evils of the twentieth century. Kant distanced himself from his theory of race in the 1790s, he therefore distanced himself, not from his racist sophistry, but his racialist views: What therefore is this historical fact that Kant “distanced” himself from racialism and racism (i.e., that which “does not make for pleasant reading”), — but another Kantian view? Kant’s theory of race is racialism, his racist views are not error and falsehood, but perspectives, outlooks and viewpoints: The historical fact that Kant “distanced himself from these views,” the historical fact that he distanced himself from racism, is an historical truth, maintains Jon M. Mikkelsen, but no mere Kantian point of view, similar to Kant’s racism, his theory of racialism. For the Kantian historical view that Kant is not a racist must answer the question of why, in the first place, Kant really needed to distance himself from such “views,” and must therefore uphold the conceptual distinction between good and bad views, and conceptualize what an historical fact really and truly is, or at least conceptualize the difference between views that require “distance” and views which do not: Otherwise Kant was a racist, a theoretician of racialism (someone who upholds the sophism of superior and inferior human races), but in the 1790s only from a distance, — and whether the distance is great or small, Kantianism is still racism, especially the transcendental Anthropologie.

My first question’s razor sharp fangs are the historical truth and reality, the absolute historical certainty of the Holocaust. We must therefore ask ourselves how is it that we come, really and truly, to know what views exactly that Immanuel Kant, the historical personage, distanced himself from, — in the Mikkelsenian cannons of biographical psychology: At least we must advance a rational argument which purports to demonstrate why such and such texts are really and truly trustworthy, and others are not so, with regards to their veracity as historical windows into the inner mental states that Immanuel Kant once possessed, — but is not such a psychologistic and solipsistic endeavor historically futile (as the basis of a refutation of the racialism and racism of Kantianism, i.e., a refutation of the charge that the critical philosophy is sophistry), by the very Kantian definition of views, perspectives and outlooks, in a word, opinions? Kantian defenses of Kantianism flounder upon relativism, subjectivism and irrationalism: The same remark holds good of Kantian defenses designed to exculpate Kantianism from the charge of racialism and racism. Shall we therefore conclude that the Kantian salvaging of Kantianism, the critical “philosophy,” from the charge of racialism is itself a twenty–first century form of racism?

Of course, our questions are not designed to suggest that the board of the State University of New York is in the business of perpetuating racism and racialism, only in protecting its intellectual reputation from the charge of modern European irrationalism, — thereby sustaining its endowments. Americanism, in stark contradistinction to Eurocentrisme as Liberal Internationalism, at least in the doctrines of Henry Kissinger, is a Harvard institution.

Kantians hold that Kant is a great philosopher, while anti–Kantians hold that Kant is a Sophist. Those who maintain that Kant is a great philosopher, and that they disagree with his philosophy (and that therefore they are anti–Kantians), really mean that they disagree with a certain interpretation of Kantianism: Precise examination of their “philosophies” proves that they are actually Kantians in disguise, pushing Kantianism, or some version thereof, under some other name, i.e., existentialism, phenomenology, empiricism, and so forth, wherein are covertly imported transcendental arguments and distinctions under new names, — a tactic calculated to avoid serious criticism of their doctrines, which allows them to pass themselves off as intellectual innovators, especially in the arena of politics and economics. The reason these Kantian and semi–Kantian idéologues possess their government sinecures, especially during Nazidom, is not from intelligence, but rather from their political and family connexions: Of course they will argue that such behavior is evidence of intelligence, but only in mortal degeneration are corruption and criminality ever named as enlightenment.

The phantasizing over what kind of mental states once occurred in the mind of Immanuel Kant at such and such a time and place, is itself evidence of the complete bankruptcy of Kantianism in the world of today. The extremely influential Kantian sophism that there exists a transcendental (certain and incorrigible) differentiation between superior and inferior human races is the fountainhead of modern European raciology, especially in the arena of politics and economics: The downplaying of Kantian racism and racialism (raciology) as merely Kant’s views or opinions, i.e., the transcendental sophism of superior and inferior human races, especially in modern world history, is unenlightenment.

ENDNOTES

1. Jon M. Mikkelsen, “Recent Work on Kant’s Race Theory,” Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth–Century Writings, Jon M. Mikkelsen, translator and editor, New York, State University of New York Press, 2013, 1–40; 40. [Italics added]

See: “[Kant] is best understood not as a ‘system builder,’ but as a systematic philosopher — that is, as a thinker who was ever reexamining the conclusions he had come to within each component part of the critical project both with respect to the conclusions he had previously established for the other component parts of the project as well as to his most favored ‘core’ beliefs. He was, in other words, not the sort of philosopher who never revised his views on the many topics that interested him, and he clearly endeavored to keep himself informed of developments in every imaginable field of investigation of his time. Consequently, to consider any narrowly [2] defined topic within the scope of the critical philosophy, such as Kant’s race theory or his philosophy of biology, could lead to a reconsideration of every other part of the critical project. We should then hardly find it surprising that significant interest in the texts by Kant included in this volume has, in the years since the volume was originally conceived, also increased among scholars concerned primarily with Kant’s political philosophy — or, more specifically, with his role in the formative development of a view that is difficult to define but commonly referred to as liberal internationalism. Thus it would be no exaggeration to suggest that what is at stake in these discussions is not simply Kant’s views on specific topics but a complete reassessment of his contribution to the ‘project of modernity,’ inasmuch as Kant’s contribution to the construction of liberal internationalism is viewed as a core element of that project as famously sketched by Jürgen Habermas in his 1980 Adorno Prize lecture, ‘Modernity versus Postmodernity’… Kant did indeed write numerous texts concerned with issues of race which had otherwise been almost universally ignored by English–language Kant scholarship in the past two centuries … [3] Who — half a century, or even a couple of decades ago — would ever have thought of Kant as a major contributor to the formative development of either race theory or the philosophy of biology? For the Kant we knew then was typically presented as a figure who had contributed so much to the development of modern liberal internationalism that it was inconceivable that he could ever have written or uttered comments that could be construed as racist or have even concerned himself with any of the problems of race theory — except, perhaps, in ways that directly contributed to the construction of modern concepts of human rights. Now, however, with new knowledge of the texts by Kant included in this volume and a reexamination of related texts and other source materials, there can be no doubt about the fact that Kant was not only deeply concerned with the analysis of the concept of race but that he gave expression to views both in print but in his private notebooks that are clearly racist not only in tone but also in spirit, if not, necessarily, in ideological intent … [5] [Earl W. Count] chided scholars for forgetting ‘that Immanuel Kant produced the most raciological [racist] thought of the eighteenth century’ … [10] ‘in spite of Kant’s avowed cosmopolitanism … evident in such essays as his ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,’ one also finds within his philosophy expressions of a virulent and theoretically based racism, at a time when scientific racism was still in its infancy’ … [13] Whatever definition of race is ultimately attributed to Kant — whether or not Bernasconi can make good on his claim that Kant was, in some sense or other, the inventor of the concept — it is clear from the references provided in the final section of the second of these articles that Kant was indeed generally ‘opposed to the mixing of races’ and that his views on this matter are recorded in texts dating from the 1760s through the late 1790s.”

Jon M. Mikkelsen, “Recent Work on Kant’s Race Theory,” Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth–Century Writings, Jon M. Mikkelsen, translator and editor, New York, State University of New York Press, 2013, 1–40; 1–2–3–5–10–13.

See also: “In The Myth of the Twentieth Century: An Evaluation of the Spiritual–Intellectual Confrontation of Our Age, Rosenberg’s claims that Kant’s religious philosophy was so popular with the Germans that ‘Kant’s words’ about ‘the starry heavens above us and the moral law within us’ (an allusion to the conclusion of Critique of Practical Reason) are in danger of being ‘reduced to triviality’ (197). That Rosenberg’s observation has some merit is clear from comments Adolf Eichmann made at his trial. During a police examination, Eichmann ‘declared with great emphasis that he had lived his whole life according to Kant’s moral precepts, and especially according to a Kantian definition of duty’ … Prominent Nazis such as Eckart, Alfred Rosenberg, and Adolf Eichmann read Kant, but most people from the Nazi period, [45] including Nazi élites, derived their view of Kant mainly from Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who is considered ‘the spiritual founder of National Socialist Germany,’ which is why Paul Gilroy rightly claims that ‘we can interpret Chamberlain’s work as he wanted it to be understood: As a strong bridge between Kant and Hitler.’ It is this link between Kant and the Nazis that has led prominent scholars to say that the German philosopher bears some responsibility for the Holocaust. As Berel Lang says: ‘Certain ideas prominent in the Enlightenment [and he specifies Kant] are recognizable in the conceptual framework embodied in the Nazi genocide.’ Or, as Charles W. Mills claims: ‘The embarrassing fact for the white West (which doubtless explains its concealment) is that their most important moral theorist [Kant] of the past three hundred years is also the foundational theorist in the modern period of the division between Herrenvolk and Untermenschen, persons and subpersons, upon which Nazi theory would later draw.’ Given Chamberlain’s comprehensive vision of religion, politics, and Germany, Rosenberg ‘hailed him as a pioneer and spiritual forerunner and viewed himself as Chamberlain’s true successor.’ In 1923, Joseph Goebbels read the Foundations, and when he met Chamberlain in 1926, he indicates in his diary how important Chamberlain was to National Socialism by referring to [46] him as a ‘spiritual father,’ dubbing him a ‘Trail blazer, pioneer!’ Chamberlain’s biographer, Geoffrey G. Field, notes that Hitler read the Foundations. But more importantly, Field indicates how crucial Chamberlain was by describing Hitler’s response to the famous writer’s public endorsement. After getting word of Chamberlain’s support, members at the Nazi party headquarters in Munich were euphoric, and Hitler was so giddy that he was supposedly ‘like a child’ … Hitler considered National Socialism to be based on [Kantian] idealism.”

Michael Lackey, “The Fictional Truth of the Biographical Novel: The Case of Ludwig Wittgenstein,” The American Biographical Novel, New York, Bloomsbury, 2016, 35–82; 44–45–46–49.

2. Earl W. Count (1950) in Jon M. Mikkelsen, “Recent Work on Kant’s Race Theory,” Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth–Century Writings, Jon M. Mikkelsen, translator and editor, New York, State University of New York Press, 2013, 1–40; 5. [Italics added]

See: Earl W. Count, editor, “Introduction,” This is Race: An Anthology Selected From the International Literature on the Races of Man, New York, Schuman, 1950, xiii–xxviii.

3. Yitzhak Y. Melamed & Peter Thielke, “Hegelianism,” New Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Game Theory to Lysenkoism, vol. 3, Maryanne Cline Horowitz, editor in chief, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005, 975–977; 977.

KANT AND RACISM: SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Isaiah Berlin, “Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism (Original lecture, 1972),” The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History, Henry Hardy, editor, (London: Chatto and Windus, 1996), 232–248.

Isaiah Berlin, “Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism (Original lecture, 1972),” The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History, Henry Hardy, editor, (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997), 232–248.

Robert Bernasconi, editor, “Who Invented the Concept of Race: Kant’s Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race,” Race, (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001): 11–36.

Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 145–166.

Robert Bernasconi, “Will the Real Kant Please Stand Up: The Challenge of Enlightenment Racism to the Study of the History of Philosophy,” Radical Philosophy, 117(2003): 13–22.

Robert Bernasconi, “Kant’s Third Thoughts on Race,” Reading Kant’s Geography, Stuart Elden & Eduardo Mendieta, editors, (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2011), 291–318.

Bernard R. Boxill & Thomas E. Hill Jr., “Kant and Race,” Race and Racism, Bernard R. Boxill, editor, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 448–471.

Ernst Cassirer, “Neo–Kantianism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th edition, vol. 16, (Chicago: The University Press, 1945), 215–216.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Immanuel Kant: Die Persönlichkeit als Einführung in das Werk, Dritte Auflage, (München: F. Bruckmann, A.–G., 1916). [1905 & 1908]

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Immanuel Kant: A Study and a Comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato and Descartes, 2 vols., John Lees, translator & Algernon Bertram Freeman–Mitford (1st Baron Redesdale/Lord Redesdale, 1837–1916), introduction, (London/New York/Toronto: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1914). [1910]

Earl W. Count, editor, “Introduction,” This is Race: An Anthology Selected From the International Literature on the Races of Man, (New York: Schuman, 1950), xiii–xxviii.

Herman Jan de Vleeschauwer (Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, 1899–1977/1986?), “Kants invloed op Duitschlands geest,” Jong Dietschland: Tijdschrift Voor Kunst & Letteren, 4.32(1930): 500–501.

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, La déduction transcendantale dans l’oeuvre de Kant, (Antwerpen/Paris/‘S–Gravenhage: De Sikkel–Édouard Champion–Martinus Nijhoff, 1934–1937).

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, La déduction transcendantale avant la Critique de la Raison Pure, tome 1, (Antwerpen/Paris/‘S–Gravenhage: De Sikkel–Édouard Champion–Martinus Nijhoff, 1934).

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, La déduction transcendantale de 1781 jusqu’à la deuxième édition de la Critique de la Raison Pure (1787), tome 2, (Antwerpen/Paris/‘S–Gravenhage: De Sikkel–Édouard Champion–Martinus Nijhoff, 1936).

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, “Een paar pamfletten van Kant uit zijn laatste periode,” Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte en Psychologie (Antwerpen), 30(1936): 2–15.

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, La déduction transcendantale de 1787 jusqu’à l’opus postumum, tome 3, (Antwerpen/Paris/‘S–Gravenhage: De Sikkel–Édouard Champion–Martinus Nijhoff, 1937).

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, “La philosophie contemporaine et le criticisme kantien,” Les Études Philosophiques (Paris), 11(1937): 9–14.

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, L’évolution de la pensée Kantienne: L’histoire d’une doctrine (Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine), (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1939).

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, “Rond Kant’s Opus Postumum,” Tijdschrift voor Philosophie (Gent), 3(1941): 155–167.

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, The Development of Kantian Thought,(Edinburgh/London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962).

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, “Études Kantiennes contemporaines,” Kant–Studien, 54(1963): 63–119.

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, “Wie ich jetzt die Kritik der reinen Vernunft entwicklungsgeschichtlich lese,” Kant–Studien, 54(1963): 351–368.

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, La Nachricht von der Einrichtung seiner Vorlesungen in dem Winterhalbenjahre von 1765–1766 d’Immanuel Kant, (Mededelings van die Universiteit van Suid–Afrika, No. C 57), (Pretoria, 1965).

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, “La doctrine du suicide dans l’ethique de Kant,” Kant–Studien, 57(1966): 251–265.

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, “Entwurf einer Kant–Bibliographie,” Kant–Studien, 57(1966): 457–483.

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, “Immanuel Kant,” Histoire de la Philosophie, tome 2, Yvon Belaval, direction, (Paris: Gallimard, Collection Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, 1973), 794–852.

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, “La Cinderella dans l’oeuvre Kantienne,” Akten des 4. internationalen Kant–Kongresses, Sonderheft der Kant–Studien, Gerhard Funke, Hrsg., (Mainz, 1974), 6–10.

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, “Kantianism,” Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropædia, 15th edition, vol. 22, (Chicago: The University Press, 1991), 495–499.

Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (1963–2007), “The Color of Reason: The Idea of ‘Race’ in Kant’s Anthropology,” Anthropology and the German Enlightenment: Perspectives on Humanity, Katherine M. Faull, editor, (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1995), 200–241.

Samuel Fleischacker, “Introduction: A Different Side of Kant,” What Is Enlightenment? (New York: Routledge, 2013), 32–40.

Katrin Flikschuh & Lea Ypi, editors, Kant and Colonialism: Historical and Critical Perspectives, (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 2014).

Ronald Judy, “Kant and the Negro,” Society For the Study of African Philosophy (SAP–INA) Newsletter, 3(Janury–July, 1991): ?

Todd Hedrick, “Race, Difference, and Anthropology in Kant’s Cosmopolitanism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 46.2(2008): 245–268.

Immanuel Kant, Imanuel Kant’s vermischte Schriften, Zweiter Band, Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk, hrsg. (Halle: In der Rengerschen Buchhandlung, 1799).

Imanuel Kant, “Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace, 1785,” Imanuel Kant’s vermischte Schriften, Zweiter Band, Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk, hrsg., (Halle: In der Rengerschen Buchhandlung, 1799), 633–660; 653.

Imanuel Kant, Lose Blätter aus Kants Nachlass, erstes heft, mitgetheilt von Rudolf Reicke, hrsg., (Konigsburg in Pr.: Verlag von Ferd. Beyer’s Buchhandlung, 1889).

Stephan Körner (1913–2000), Kant, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1960). [1955]

Stephan Körner, “Neo–Kantianism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th edition, vol. 16, (Chicago: William Benton, 1967), 213–214.

Jon M. Mikkelsen, “Recent Work on Kant’s Race Theory,” Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth–Century Writings, Jon M. Mikkelsen, translator and editor, (New York: State University of New York Press, 2013), 1–40.

Jon M. Mikkelsen, “Acknowledgements,” Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth–Century Writings, Jon M. Mikkelsen, translator and editor, (New York: State University of New York Press, 2013), vii–x.

Charles W. Mills, “Kant’s Untermenschen,” Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy, Andrew Valls, editor, (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 2005), 169–193.

Christian Neugebauer, “The Racism of Kant and Hegel,” Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy, H. Odera Oruka, editor, (New York: Brill, 1990), 259–272.

Claude Obadia, “Kant and Nazism: The Strange Passion of Michel Onfray,” Le Philosophoire, 2.30(2008): ?

L.F. Schön, Philosophie transcendantale ou système d’Immanuel Kant, (Paris: Chez Abel Ledoux et Chez Alex Johannot, 1831).

Violetta L. Waibel, Max Brinnich, Sophie Gerber & Philipp Schaller, editors, Detours: Approaches to Immanuel Kant in Vienna, in Austria, and in Eastern Europe, (Gottingen: Vienna University Press, 2015).

Hans–Joachim Waschkies, Physik und Physikotheologie des jungen Kant: Die Vorgeschichte seiner Allgemeinen Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, (Amsterdam: Verlag B.R. Grüner, 1987).

©2019 Christopher Richard Wade Dettling, Kantianism and the Master Race. All rights reserved. This work is only for MEDIUM and the MEDIUM CORPORATION and its users: Users are not permitted to mount this writing on any network servers. No part of this writing may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author, except for reading and browsing via the World Wide Web.

We wish to thank our benefactors over the years for their goodwill: Humanity benefits greatly from the rise of Americanism in the world.