Know Your Place, Know Your Calling: Geography, Race, and Kant’s “World-Citizen”

Autores

  • Huaping Lu-Adler Georgetown University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5380/sk.v21i2.92101

Palavras-chave:

anthropology, embodiment, geography, human progress, moral destiny, race, world-knowledge (Weltkenntniß), world-citizen (Weltbürger)

Resumo

Anthropology and physical geography were among Kant’s most popular and longest running courses. He intended them to give his students the world-knowledge (Weltkenntniß) that they needed in order to be effective world-citizens (Weltbürgern). Much of this indoctrination amounted to teaching Occidental white men, Kant’s default audience, to perceive themselves as uniquely entitled and obliged to work as agents of human progress on the assumption that they, thanks to their geographic location on Earth, were naturally formed as an exceptional race. I trace this perception to a combination of Kant’s lectures and publications. He already indicated it in some of his works from the 1750s and 1760s. He subsequently fleshed it out through a theory of race based on his geography course in conjunction with a pure moral theory, a pragmatic anthropology that complements the moral theory, and a theory of education that builds on those three.

Biografia do Autor

Huaping Lu-Adler, Georgetown University

Huaping Lu-Adler is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. 

Referências

Allison, Henry. 2011. Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ameriks, Karl. 2012. Kant’s Elliptical Path. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Baumeister, David. 2022. Kant on the Human Animal: Anthropology, Ethics, Race. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Bernasconi, Robert. 2014. “Silencing the Hottentots: Kolb’s Pre-Racial Encounter with the Hottentots and Its Impact on Buffon, Kant, and Rousseau.” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 35 (1–2): 101–24.

Linnaeus, Carl. 1735. Systema Naturæ, sive regna tria naturæ systematice proposita per classes, ordines, genera, & species. Leiden: Haak.

Linnaeus, Carl. 1758. Systema Naturæ per regna tria naturæ, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis, vol.1, 10th ed. Holmiae: Laurentii Salvii.

Louden, Robert. 2000. Kant’s Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lu-Adler, Huaping. 2022a. “Kant on Lazy Savagery, Racialized.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 60 (2): 253–75.

Lu-Adler, Huaping. 2022b. “Kant and Slavery - Or Why He Never Became a Racial Egalitarian.” Critical Philosophy of Race 10 (2): 263–94.

Lu-Adler, Huaping. 2023a. Kant, Race, and Racism: Views from Somewhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lu-Adler, Huaping. 2023b. “Not Those Who ‘All Speak with Pictures’ - Kant on Linguistic Abilities and Human Progress.” In Kant on Language, edited by Konstantin Pollok and Luigi Filieri, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Marwah, Inder. 2012. “Bridging Nature and Freedom? Kant, Culture, and Cultivation.” Social Theory and Practice 38 (3): 385–406.

Mills, Charles. 2014. “Kant and Race, Redux.” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 35 (1–2): 125–57.

Mikkelsen, Jon. 2013. Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth-Century Writings. Albany: SUNY Press.

Schiller, Friedrich. 1972. “The Nature and Value of Universal History: An Inaugural Lecture [1789].” History and Theory 11 (3): 321–34.

Shell, Susan. 2006. “Kant’s Conception of a Human Race.” In The German Invention of Race, edited by Sara Eigen and Mark Larrimore, 55–72. Albany: SUNY Press.

Shell, Susan. 2015. “Reading Kant’s Lectures on Pedagogy.” In Reading Kant’s Lectures, edited by Robert R. Clewis, 277–98. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Stark, Werner. 2011. “Kant’s Lectures on ‘Physical Geography’: A Brief Outline of its Origins, Transmissions, and Development: 1754–1805.” In Reading Kant’s Geography, edited by Stuart Elden and Eduardo Mendieta, 69–85. Albany: SUNY Press.

Wilson, Catherine. 2014. “Kant on Civilization, Culture and Moralisation.” In Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology: A Critical Guide, edited by Alix Cohen, 191–210. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wilson, Holly. 2006. Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology: Its Origin, Meaning, and Critical Significance. Albany: SUNY Press.

Yab, Jimmy. 2021. Kant and the Politics of Racism: Toward Kant’s Racialised Form of Cosmopolitan Right. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Downloads

Publicado

2023-11-20

Como Citar

Lu-Adler, H. (2023). Know Your Place, Know Your Calling: Geography, Race, and Kant’s “World-Citizen”. Studia Kantiana, 21(2), 81–96. https://doi.org/10.5380/sk.v21i2.92101

Edição

Seção

Artigos