It's Not about Race: Good Wars, Bad Wars, and the Origins of Kant's Anti-Colonialism

Valdez, Inés

doi:10.1017/s0003055417000223

Cited by 50 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…As a consequence it becomes too easy to associate certain works, concepts, or thinkers with a transhistorical, non-Western perspective. To be fair, it is only relatively recently that political theorists have begun to situate the writings of canonical Western thinkers in relation to their social world (see Valdez, 2017). What such an approach can reveal is that claims to epistemic difference are not entirely new, but have resonances with past political efforts to integrate ethno-culturally different societies into a connected and unequal world order.…”

Section: The Imperial Division Of the Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imperial dialectics and epistemic mapping: From decolonisation to anti-Eurocentric IR

Murray

2019

European Journal of International Relations

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What would it mean to construct a post-imperial discipline rather than a ‘post-Western’ one? ‘Post-imperial’ means addressing the ways in which colonial empires divided the world into separate realms of human capability and thought. The binary categories of Western and Eastern, or Western and non-Western, represent one such way of dividing the world according to an imperial imaginary. Rather than merely excluding, these divisions created justifications for local universalisms and power structures. Yet, many anti-Eurocentric scholars now make use of these categories in order to argue for fixed epistemic differences between Western and non-Western populations. Accordingly, I critique the imperial division of the world by drawing on the intellectual trajectories of two thinkers who struggled against empire in the 20th century: WEB Du Bois and Frantz Fanon. Du Bois and Fanon were both aware of how ethnic and cultural foundations for politics could reproduce imperial order, and, therefore, offer potential alternatives to Western/non-Western ontologies. This includes recognising that representations of difference are processual, determined by strategic necessity, and subject to incentives to represent difference within hierarchical institutions. This article builds on recent studies in International Relations and other disciplines to think through the legacies of empire in knowledge production, and to push towards more historical and relational approaches to world political and social inquiry.

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Section: The Imperial Division Of the Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imperial dialectics and epistemic mapping: From decolonisation to anti-Eurocentric IR

Murray

2019

European Journal of International Relations

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“…I would like to address the question of race briefly. One recent interpretation (Valdez 2017) argues that Kant’s concern with colonialism is the infighting between European powers on occasion of their disputes over holdings and on colonial land(s). 46 Kant may, it turns out, harbor racist attitudes and level his objections against colonialism since his target in criticizing colonialism is not so much its practice but the infighting it leads to.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

States of Nature in Immanuel Kant’s Doctrine of Right

Kellner

2019

Political Research Quarterly

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From an analysis of Kant’s states of nature in each division of the Doctrine of Right—the state of nature in general and the international state of nature—this paper reinterprets Cosmopolitan Right and the duty to exit the state of nature as more colonial than previously recognized. Kant places “savages” in the state of nature, depicting them and their lawless condition as bellicose. As such, states may force them to exit the state of nature; those who encounter hostile peoples on foreign lands may be justified in aggressing. Having shown that colonial features of the Doctrine of Right cannot be wrested from the text, this paper unsettles the interpretive dominance of the established view that Kant is staunchly anti-colonial. Nevertheless, anti-colonial features of the text remain. The paper shows that interpreters must accept that Kant’s text is both colonial and anti-colonial. Kant’s global vision remained too statist to appropriately include indigenous politics. The paper closes by briefly indicating a path for future research whereby contemporary Kantian cosmopolitan projects become more attuned to—and modified in light of—the political agency and particular struggles of indigenous peoples.

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“…Kleingeld counters that Kant "categorically and repeatedly condemns chattel slavery [and the slave trade]" in those texts (2007:586-88). Despite Bernasconi's forceful pushback against this counter (2011; also see Valdez 2017), 6 the conclusion that Kant belatedly but unmistakably adopted a more racially egalitarian position seems to be the one that has staying power (Kleingeld 2019:8-9;2021:356-57). Although Kleingeld's original intention might not be to redeem Kant (she was more critical of his racist views and took them more seriously than most scholars were), her conclusion has been treated as a redemptive one.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kant and Slavery—Or Why He Never Became a Racial Egalitarian

Lu‐Adler

2022

Critical Philosophy of Race

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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.

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It's Not about Race: Good Wars, Bad Wars, and the Origins of Kant's Anti-Colonialism

Abstract: T his article offers a new interpretation of Kant's cosmopolitanism and his anti-colonialism in

Cited by 50 publications

References 57 publications

Imperial dialectics and epistemic mapping: From decolonisation to anti-Eurocentric IR

Imperial dialectics and epistemic mapping: From decolonisation to anti-Eurocentric IR

States of Nature in Immanuel Kant’s Doctrine of Right

Kant and Slavery—Or Why He Never Became a Racial Egalitarian

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