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Chapter 4: Determination of the Concept of a Human Race (1785)
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Determination of the Concept of a Human Race (1785) Immanuel Kant Kant’s 1785 article, “Determination of the Concept of a Human Race” (Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace), first appeared in the Berlinische Monatsschrift, a leading liberal journal of the German Enlightenment (Aufklärung) published between 1783 and 1811. This is also the journal that must have been particularly favorable to the dissemination of the leading ideas of the critical philosophy, for Kant published no fewer than sixteen articles in this prestigious Berlin periodical between 1784 and 1797, including many of his most important article-length contributions from the 1780s. For example, in the years prior to and following the publication of this article, there appeared in the same journal no fewer than four of Kant’s most well-known articles—including, in 1784, “Idea for a World History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View” and “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” and, in 1786, “Conjectural Beginning of Human History” and “What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” But, as noted, Kant also chose this journal for significant article-length contributions to the further development of the critical philosophy in the 1790s—such as, in 1791, “On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy,” in 1792, “Concerning Radical Evil in Human Nature” (republished as the first part of Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone the following year), in 1793, “On the Proverb: That May be True in Theory But is of No Practical Use,” and, in 1794, “The End of All Things.” Among all of these articles, this one, from 1785, is clearly the least well known and most difficult to approach. The difficulty, however, stems not simply from the text itself, but from the fact that it was published during a period of significant creativity in Kant’s life during which he produced a 125 126 Immanuel Kant number of other works that are usually—for good reason—considered of far greater importance, including not only the four articles published in the same journal in the previous and following year already cited, but also, in 1783, the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as a Science, in 1785, the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and reviews of the first two parts of Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Reflections on the philosophy of the history of humankind), as well as, in 1786, the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. The need to focus on these few publications alone from the years 1783 to 1786 could then easily explain why no more attention has typically been given to this article than to the two other little-known contributions by Kant that also appeared in the Berlinische Monatsschrift in 1785, “Concerning Volcanoes on the Moon” and “On the Wrongfulness of the Unauthorized Publication of Books.” Moreover , the following four years, 1787 through 1790, were each marked by the publication (or completion) of works of comparable or arguably even greater significance than the 1781 first edition of the first critique—namely, in 1787, the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason; in 1788, the second critique, the Critique of Practical Reason; in 1789, the First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment (first published, 1914); and, in 1790, the third critique itself, the Critique of the Power of Judgment. For mainstream Kant scholars, it has, therefore, been easy either to overlook this article entirely or to dismiss Kant’s interest in formulating a rigorous definition of the notion of race as a remnant of concerns from the “precritical” works of the 1760s and 1770s, such as the 1764 Observations of the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, in the final section of which (“Of the National Characteristics, so far as They Depend upon the Distinct Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime”) Kant is generally well-known to have expressed—citing agreement with the views of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) on the same topic—some rather unflattering comments about “the Negroes of Africa,” including a reference to Hume’s claim (from a note added to the second, 1742 edition of his essay, “Of National Characters”) that “there never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation” (trans. Goldwaith [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960], 110–11), as well as the 1775 course announcement and 1777 article translated above...