Kant's Race Theory, Forster's Counter, and the Metaphysics of Color

This article argues for an understanding of Kant's race theory as an integral part of his idea of nature and of humans in nature as presented in his Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790). It places an examination of Kant and Forster's debate over race, which was ignited in 1785 upon the publication of Kant's second essay on race, "Definition of a Concept of a Human Race" ("Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace"), in the context of an illumination of the connections between aesthetics and anthropology in Kant's Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen, 1764) and Forster's Voyage round the World (Reise um die Welt 1777). Forster responded to Kant's new "race" classifications, which were based essentially on skin color, with "Still More about the Human Races" ("Noch etwas über Menschenraßen," 1786). This article shows that Kant then developed his scientific theory and his idea of a teleological nature as presented in his Critique of the Power of Judgment, at least in part, in order to provide a unifying theoretical basis for his race theory so that it could withstand the scrutiny of an empirical scientific method based on deductive logic, such as that advanced by Forster. While Forster's strict empiricism, perspectivism, and rejection of "race" as a scientific classification reflect an underlying, distinctly modern, concept of the natural world, Kant's nature, as presented in his third Critique, reveals a metaphysically-based structure supporting a universal cosmopolitanism, but veils a particular European perspective that allows a damaging global authority on difference.