It must come from Europe‹

Transcrição

›It must come from Europe‹
The Racisms of Immanuel Kant
Wulf D. Hund
Abstract: The question of racism in Kant is predominantly discussed using the
example of the Kantian race theory. This is a far too narrow perspective which
neither gives consideration to the complexity and scope of racist arguments nor to
their use by Kant. In order to grasp his contribution to modern racism, his racerelated, antisemitic, antiziganist and orientalist thoughts and types of discrimination must be examined. The overall view shows that Kant advances a broadly
based cultural racism. This racism also shapes his contribution on race theory and
results in white supremacy. It prejudices Kant’s image of humanity to such a degree that he supposes that only Europeans can perfect the development of human
abilities and that other races either have to be guided by them or perish.
»All races will become exterminated
[. . . ], except for the whites«
(Immanuel Kant)
Whether or not Kant was a distinguished ›source of racism‹ in the process
of the ›German Invention of Race‹ is still disputed. Even more controversial is whether he participated in the construction of ›Untermenschen‹.1
I examine these questions against the backdrop of the hypothesis that
racism has always been more than the construction and hierarchisation
of races. Racism has drawn upon various cultural patterns of exclusion.
For that reason, Kant’s racism must not be analysed only with regard
to the newly developed human races. It should rather be researched as a
conglomerate of racial, antisemitic, antiziganist and orientalist arguments
and stereotypes.
To start with, I investigate the racist context, point to traditional patterns of racist discrimination in the eighteenth century and make the case
1
Cf. Robert Bernasconi: Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Racism; Sara Eigen, Mark
Larrimore (eds.): The German Invention of Race; Charles W. Mills: Kant’s Untermenschen.
In: Racisms Made in Germany,
ed. by Wulf D. Hund, Christian Koller, Moshe Zimmermann.
Berlin [et al.]: Lit 2011, pp. 69 98.
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Wulf D. Hund
for a complex and theoretically broad concept of racism. The category of
race is only one reference point of racism, which has appeared in different
historical shapes and has drawn upon several dichotomies, constructing
monsters, barbarians, inferiors, the impure, the cursed, savages and eventually coloureds.
Against this background, I explore the racism in Kant’s work. Initially, I consider the relation between race theory and the philosophy of
history in the concept of progress. Kant uses a dual idea of the nature
of human beings, allowing him to take a monogenetic position (one humankind) with regard to the past and a supremacist position (whites only)
with regard to the future. In the latter view, whites will perfect human
self-evolvement, while all the other races are expected to vanish.
Subsequently, I discuss the theory of races and point out the fact that
even in this context, racism is not restricted to ›race‹ but also perpetuates
earlier forms of discrimination. Notions of monstrous otherness are converted into aesthetic denigration, and the suspicion of impurity is transferred to olfactory idiosyncracy. The antagonism of the chosen and the
cursed survives in the hierarchy of races.
My further deliberations enhance the discussion with an analysis of
the dimensions antisemitism and antiziganism. I first examine the image of the Gypsies, which includes biological, socio-cultural and classspecific dimensions. Kant uses ›Gypsy‹ as a category of social deviance.
By calling Gypsies ›vagabonds‹, he identifies them as people who evade
labour and discipline. Additionally, Kant employs ›Gypsy‹ as a category
of race. He assumes that their ›Indian skin colour‹ reveals their origin.
Afterwards, I then address the slur against the Jews. Kant labels Jews
a ›nation of cheaters‹ who lack honour and morals. He backs this invective by describing the Jewish faith as ›actually not even a religion‹.
Characterisations such as these overlap with Kant’s perception of oriental people. Kant deems the legal emancipation of Jews to be insufficient
for actual betterment and demands the ›euthanasia of Judaism‹ prior to
it. He thus adds a culturalist racism to the latently racial arguments (in
connection with oriental people) and the ethno-political arguments (in
relation with the Jewish nation).
In summary, Kant’s racism unites a series of different patterns of discrimination. As can be proved using Kant as an example, racism, even
in the context of the evolving scientific race theories, was not restricted
to the term ›race‹. Culturalist arguments were central to its development.
Kant left it to the Jews to prove their potential racial membership by either assimilation or dissimilation. He considered Gypsies to be a mixture
71
of cultural incapability, social position and racial origins. Furthermore,
even Kant’s hierarchy of the human races was underpinned culturally.
Although skin colour was supposed to be hereditary, it constituted the
outward projection of both inward deficiencies and the lack of ability for
the perfection of humanity.
In a comment on the consequences of this image of humanity, I finally turn to the nemesis of Otaheite. Kant considers alienation to be a
necessary stage on the way to becoming human and supposes that only
whites will be able to surmount it successfully. On the utopian horizon
of the Kantian race theory, a purely ›white humanity‹ ascends which has
left the ›coloured races‹ behind in the night of history.
The Racist Context
Historically and systematically, racism has oriented the construction of
its categories to different opposites. People were thus either human or
monstrous, cultivated or barbaric, valuable or worthless, pure or impure,
chosen or cursed, civilised or savage, white or coloured. The invention
of races which could supposedly be distinguished by skin colours and
which finally gave racism its name is but one pattern of racist discrimination. These patterns only exist in parallel in ideal-typical descriptions.
Historically, they often mix and overlap and exchange or modify their
arguments.2
When the Spanish transport the barbarians of antiquity to the New
World, they simply apply Aristotle’s devaluation of uncultivated others to
its inhabitants.3 Moreover, they do not have trouble seeing the legendary
monsters there as well, who survive up to the century of the Enlightenment.4 The monsters live among savages who stem from the woods of
old Europe and seem to populate the whole New World.5 The ideology
of pure blood, another import from Spain, helps to detect impure people, whose defamation leaves its mark on the judgment of the mixture of
2
3
4
5
Cf. Wulf D. Hund: [Lemma] Rassismus; id.: Negative Societalisation; id.: Rassismus.
Cf. Lewis Hanke: Aristotle and the American Indians; David J. Weber: Bárbaros.
Cf. the illustrations in Gereon Sievernich (ed.): America de Bry, pp. 268 f. and Urs
Bitterli: Die ›Wilden‹ und die ›Zivilisierten‹, p. 351 – concerning the background see
John Block Friedman: The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought; Debra Higgs
Strickland: Saracens, Demons, Jews.
Cf. Richard Bernheimer: Wild Men in the Middle Ages; Roger Bartra: Wild Men in the
Looking Glass; Gustav Jahoda: Images of Savages; Kay Anderson: Race and the Crisis
of Humanism.
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Wulf D. Hund
Europeans with Americans and Africans.6 Cursed people increase enormously in number through the European expansion, too, while the alleged threat Jews and Muslims pose to Christians does not disappear. For
a while, it is assumed that the New World is full of devils.7 The construction of coloureds thus takes place in an atmosphere in which numerous
older patterns of devaluation exist and overlap.
There are already a number of creatures of other systems of classification in race nomenclature in the early stage of the construction of
races. Under the category ›Homo Sapiens‹, Carolus Linnaeus not only
assembles the ancestors of the future human races, ›Americanus‹, ›Europæus‹, ›Asiaticus‹ and ›Afer‹, but also ›Ferus‹ (as the group for the various known ›wild‹ children), ›Monstrosus‹ (including the ›Patagonians‹
and ›Hottentots‹) and ›Troglodytes‹ (with the ›Homo sylvestris Orang
Outang‹): »The Linnaean system mixed old myths with new science, ancient traditions, and contemporary evidence«.8
At the time of Immanuel Kant’s theoretical reflections on race, the
classification criteria are clearer and the arguments more rational.9 The
traditional patterns of racist discrimination have not at all become obsolete, however, but are partly continued, partly modernised, partly transformed. The ancient monsters, for example, are revealed to be mythical
creatures. However, their shadows become embedded in the development
of epigenetic thinking. Kant thus considers »Pliny’s one-eyed, hunchbacked, one-footed humans« to be »invented«. But he does not want to
completely dismiss bodily oddities in races he classifies as low – humans
»with a small appendage of a monkey tail« do not seem to be »invented
entirely« to him.10
6
7
8
9
10
Cf. Max Sebastián Hering Torres: Rassismus in der Vormoderne; María Elena Martínez:
Genealogical Fictions.
Jean Delumeau: Angst im Abendland; Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra: Puritan Conquistadors; Fernando Cervantes: The Devil in the New World; Joshua Trachtenberg: The Devil
and the Jews.
Julia V. Douthwaite: Homo ferus, p. 178; see Carolus Linnaeus: Systema Naturæ, pp. 28
f. (›Americanus‹ etc., ›Ferus‹, ›Monstrosus‹), 33 (›Troglodytes‹).
Although the Enlightenment and racism have for a long time been constructed as opposites, there are a number of relevant contributions on their interrelations now – cf.
among others Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (ed.): Race and the Enlightenment; Gudrun
Hentges: Schattenseiten der Aufklärung; Harold E. Pagliaro (ed.): Racism in the Eighteenth Century; Pierre Pluchon: Nègres et Juifs au XVIIIe siècle; Richard H. Popkin: The
Philosophical Basis of Eighteenth-Century Racism; Kaija Tiainen-Anttila: The Problem
of Humanity.
Immanuel Kant: Immanuel Kants physische Geographie, p. 315 (›Pliny‹) and 316
(›monkey tail‹) – all Kant quotations have been translated into English in accordance
with the relevant German editions AA and WW. I wish to thank Nadine Anumba for
the translation of my essay and Silvana Jenkins for her precise reading of the text.
73
Kant can base himself on Christoph Girtanner in this respect. Girtanner’s thoughts are so pertinent to him that he omits the chapter on
›race‹ in his anthropology. Instead, he refers to »what [. . . ] Girtanner
in his book (in keeping with my principles) has nicely and thoroughly
brought forward about it for elucidation and expansion«.11 This includes
»extremely credible« reports about »tail humans« who are considered to
be »deformities« and accused of »being in magical collaboration with
devils«. Furthermore, a »very credible writer« reported »that Negresses
who consorted with [. . . ] monkeys were impregnated by them and bore
monsters«.12
The willingness to move the monsters from the boundaries of the
known world to the boundaries between humans and animals is not only
the expression of a lack of order for growing knowledge. It also reflects
the implicit hierarchical rating scale of the new race nomenclature. In
combination with the tradition of racist purity thinking, it leads to the
rejection of so-called race mixture. Even though the capacity of the races
to procreate with each other is theoretically constitutive of Kant’s race
theory, he is sceptical of its practical consequences. »Mulattoes« are thus
not only children »blacks [. . . ] produce with whites«. Kant also writes
about the newly constructed races that »it is not good that they mix« –
for »half-breeds (mules) are not much good«.13
Obviously, older patterns of discrimination assert themselves here.
They reflect hierarchical differentiations of the most varied kinds, which
are shaped by »[p]ollution fear«.14 At its core, this fear is classist. But
it also helps the social classes to imagine themselves as a community
through the exclusion of ›untouchables‹ and ›stained people‹. With the
11
12
13
14
Immanuel Kant: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, p. 671; on Girtanner, see
among others Hans-Peter Tränkle: ›Der rühmlich bekannte philosophische Arzt und
politische Schriftsteller Hofrath Christoph Girtanner‹ (for his biography); Timothy
Lenoir: Kant, Blumenbach, and Vital Materialism in German Biology, pp. 96–99.
Christoph Girtanner: Ueber das Kantische Prinzip für die Naturgeschichte, pp. 254–
268 (›tailed humans‹), 275–281 (›sex with monkeys‹); the following quotations are on
pp. 266 f. (›tail humans‹), 279 f. (›monsters‹).
Immanuel Kant: Immanuel Kants physische Geographie, p. 313 (›Mulattoes‹); id.: Entwürfe zu dem Colleg über Anthropologie, p. 878 (›mix‹); id.: Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, p. 598 (›half-breeds›) – »Giverno« (ibid., p. 601) serves as proof of this thesis:
»a bastard from a half-breed of a Negro with an American Indian as father and a Negro
and a mulatto as mother« who is said to be »so malicious« »that one chases off their
parents when one knows that they have copulated«.
Robert Ian Moore: The Formation of a Persecuting Society, p. 95; for the following
see Rainer Walz: Der vormoderne Antisemitismus, pp. 740 f. (›limpieza‹ and breastfeeding); María Elena Martínez: Genealogical Fictions, pp. 56, 138 (›native or black
wet nurses in Creole families‹), 159 (›natal alienation‹).
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Wulf D. Hund
ideology of the ›limpieza de sangre‹ against converts to Christianity, it
culminates in a policy of othering which turns even the milk of a wet
nurse whose ancestors were of Jewish or Muslim faith into a contaminating taint for the Christian who has been breast-fed by her as a child.
Such ideas are transferred to the New World and, in connection with
transatlantic slavery, they lead to the »natal alienation« of children from
women labelled ›coloured‹. Moreover, the suspicion of impurity involved
is charged religiously: »Mestizaje – interbreeding – was perceived as one
of the weapons deployed by the devil to undermine the spread of Christianity in America«.15
The ›sistema de castas‹ which arises against this background, with
its mania for distinction between all possible combinations of African,
American and European parents and the meticulous naming of their descendents, is part of the knowledge of the newly developing race science
and conveys ideas of purification and contamination. Kant also noted
down elements of the Spanish mixture nomenclature – including a reference to »jump-backwards children«, whose skin colour is darker than
that of their parents.16
This is only superficially a description of the inheritance of skin
colours. Underneath lies the indelible stain of sin which the myth of Ham
recounts.17 Like the other types of discrimination, it has nothing to do
with ›race‹ but a lot to do with racism. It has served as the foundation for
the legitimisation of transatlantic slavery and it is still used for this purpose after the construction of human races. Africans are declared to be
the descendents of Ham, whom God is said to have condemned to eternal
servitude and coloured black as a sign of this.
Antisemitism is in the same ambiance, when it constructs Jews as a
people cast away by God. Both types of discrimination emphasise the
dichotomy of ›the chosen‹ and ›the cursed‹, which intones motifs of the
eschatological battle between good and evil.18 Whereas American slave15
16
17
18
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra: Puritan Conquistadors, p. 27.
Cf. Immanuel Kant: Immanuel Kants physische Geographie, p. 313 (›jump-backwards
children‹); see also Christoph Girtanner: Ueber das Kantische Prinzip für die
Naturgeschichte, pp. 60 ff., who devotes several pages to the enumeration of the different mixtures. On the ›sistema de castas‹, see Ilona Katzew: Casta Painting.
Cf. David M. Goldenberg: The Curse of Ham; Stephen R. Haynes: Noah’s Curse; Johnson, Sylvester A.: The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity;
David M. Whitford: The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era.
See Joshua Trachtenberg: The Devil and the Jews. Such ideological operations have
rightly been described as a »racist doctrine«: »The curses on Jews for the killing of
Christ and on blacks for the sin of Ham could serve as supernaturalist equivalent of
biological determinism for those seeking to deny humanity to a stigmatized group«
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holders still develop the story further in the eighteenth (and nineteenth)
century, Kant rejects it as a legend. The »black colour« is not a »sign
of the curse« but an expression of the »heat of the climate«.19 The dichotomy of the chosen and the cursed seems to have been overcome. In
actual fact, however, it has migrated to anthropology. There, its revenant
announces the historico-philosophical message of the white race’s chosenness.
The Concept of Progress
In his anthropology, Kant concludes that the human being »has a character which he himself creates« – »by being capable of perfecting himself
according to ends which he himself adopts«.20
These thoughts are committed to a humanism of the species: »With
all other animals, the individual reaches its destiny; with humans only
the species [reaches] the entire destiny of human nature«. In this respect
then, one must »consider the human species as a whole«, and it is not
about whether »humans of a certain race, e.g. that of whites [. . . ] with
the exclusion of the Negroes or Americans are blessed with this advantage, [. . . ] hence not about whether all humans progress, but whether they
progress as a whole; some may well stay behind«.
In all the progress of humankind is staged according to a script of
social discrimination.21 The leading parts are played by rich white men.
The supporting roles are reserved for the weaker sex, the lower classes
and the inferior races. Woman »[i]n the raw state of nature« is »a domestic animal« and can only develop her »weaknesses«, called »femininities«, in civilised times and dependence on the man. The »skillfulness
[. . . ] of the human species« must be achieved »by means of inequality«
anyway, as many take care of the »necessities« while a few, provided
with »leisure«, develop »science and art«. Thus »humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites. The yellow Indians already have
19
20
21
(George M. Fredrickson: Racism, p. 51).
Immanuel Kant: Immanuel Kants physische Geographie, pp. 313 f. (›Ham‹).
Immanuel Kant: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, p. 673; for the following
see id.: Entwürfe zu dem Colleg über Anthropologie, p. 887 (›animal/human‹) and id.:
Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, p. 650 (›race‹).
For the Enlightenment concept of progress cf. Annette Barkhaus: ›Rasse‹; Max
Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialektik der Aufklärung; Ronald L. Meek: Social
Science and the Ignoble Savage; Johannes Rohbeck: Die Fortschrittstheorie der Aufklärung; Larry Wolff, Marco Cipollini (eds.): The Anthropology of the Enlightenment.
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Wulf D. Hund
a lesser talent. The Negroes are much lower, and lowest of all is a part of
the American peoples«.22
When the Kantian human gets down to self-development, this work
is divided by the ›big three‹ of social discrimination: gender, class and
race.
Furthermore, humans have to surmount the huge obstacle of their
supposedly innate laziness. For in Kant, it is not only the »savage«, who
loves his »lazy independence«, not only the humans in the »hottest zone«,
thus »the Negro« or »the inhabitants of the Moluccas«, who are »lazy« –
»Tartars«, »Hottentots«, »Turks«, Spaniards or »noble peoples« are lazy,
too. And laziness not only refers to bodily but also mental indolence.
The »fainthearted way of thinking which awaits external help« as well as
»lazy philosophy« and even the »lazy reason« are idle, so that the only
general conclusion left is the insight that »the human being is lazy by
nature«.23
For the human being to »work his way up« and ascend from »the lowest level [. . . ] to the highest level of humanity« under such conditions, nature has not relied upon his »drive for action«.24 It is rather the »antagonism« of »antisocial sociality« which cures humans of their »tendency towards laziness« and through »ambition, imperiousness or avarice« incites
them to »throw themselves into labour and arduousness«.25 Moreover,
his »reason« tells him to »patiently shoulder the toil which he hates«.
Driven in such a way, he leaves the »futile state of the savages« behind
and moves through the stages of the hunters and gatherers, shepherds,
farmers and civil society towards perfection.
This conception of progress has class-specific undertones. Kant, who
etymologically connects the terms ›rabble‹ and ›idleness‹, distrusts the
22
23
24
25
Immanuel Kant: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, p. 649 (›woman‹ etc.), id.:
Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 554 (›human species‹ etc.), id.: Immanuel Kants physische
Geographie, p. 316 (›races‹).
Immanuel Kant: Entwürfe zu dem Colleg über Anthropologie, p. 878; for the preceding see ibid., pp. 890 (›savages‹), 877 (›lazy independence‹), 882 (›Spaniards‹), 856
(›noble peoples‹); id.: Immanuel Kants physische Geographie, pp. 316 (›hottest zone‹),
389 (›Moluccas‹), 402 (›Tartars‹), 408 (›Hottentots‹), 406 (›Turks‹); id.: Von den verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen, p. 23 (›Negro‹); id.: Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, p. 709 (›fainthearted way of thinking‹), id.: Träume eines Geistersehers, p. 939 (›philosophy‹), id.: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 596, 654 (›reason‹).
Immanuel Kant: Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht,
pp. 43 (›highest level‹), 49 (›work his way up‹); id.: Über den Gebrauch teleologischer
Prinzipien in der Philosophie, p. 158 (›drive‹).
pp. 37 ff.; for the following see ibid., p. 44 (›state of the savages‹), id.: Mutmaßlicher
Anfang der Menschengeschichte, pp. 92 (›reason‹ etc.), 96 f. (stages).
77
»populace« with »its tendency to enjoy and aversion to working for it«.
He is, however, ready to make a racist concession to the lower classes.
He follows David Hume’s idea of a difference between the races which
is supposed to exist in the fact that coloureds, especially blacks, do not
produce any culture, whereas »among the whites, there are always some
who swing themselves up from the lowest rabble and gain a reputation in
the world through excellent gifts«.26
The theory of the progress of humanity through stages of socioeconomic development is the historico-philosophical foundation of modern racism. Non-culturalist race theories do not exist. From Linné’s first
classification attempt onwards, the discussion, now increasingly held
in racial terms, combines the evaluative description of body, mind and
beauty to form an integrated hierarchical concept of the differentiation
between different categories of humans.
This involves the willingness to construct races, at least in theory, as
cross-class categories. In the sixteenth century, it is founded through the
inclusion of the lower classes in colonial land seizure, genocidal settlement policies and a plantation economy based on slavery. Moreover, it is
prepared linguistically as well as ideologically through their admission
to popular stagings of a contrast between ›black‹ and ›white‹ skin in Renaissance theatre. In the seventeenth century, science combines the views
on human groups of different skin colours with notions of cultural and
intellectual superiority. In the eighteenth century, this concept is systematised, synchronised with climate theoretical reflections on the relationship between environment and culture as well as historico-philosophical
ideas about the progress of humanity and finally incorporated in the race
theory formulated by Kant and others.
While progress thought and race theory develop in parallel, they are
systematically interwoven: ›Progress‹ has a skin colour. It is seen as an
expression of the cultural abilities of the white race. The coloured races,
in contrast, are seen to remain on the lower levels of societal development. There is no agreement on whether they can develop further under
the guidance and with the help of Europeans. Sceptical minds rather suppose that they have lost their way into evolutionary impasses from which
there is no escape.
26
Immanuel Kant: Über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen, p. 880; for the preceding see id.: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, p. 658 (›rabble‹, ›idler‹); id.: Der
Streit der Fakultäten, p. 293 (›populace‹ etc.); for the racism in Hume and the Scottish
moral philosophy cf. Wulf D. Hund: Negative Societalisation, pp. 66 ff., for the following see id.: Die weiße Norm and especially Gary Taylor: Buying Whiteness.
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At any rate, Kant declares that »[m]any peoples do not advance further by themselves«. Development is only driven by the white race.
Therefore, it is in the »Occident« where we must search for »the continuous progress of the human species towards perfection« and from where
progress will »spread on earth«.27
The Theory of Races
Kant’s conception of the human races corresponds to the roles he assigns them in his philosophy of history. His race theory has socio-cultural
bases. As in race science in general, entrenched types of discrimination are integrated with ideological beliefs, traditional paradigms, enhanced learning, circulating hearsay, empirical knowledge and experimental findings to form a classification of humankind which links bodily
characteristics to intellectual capacities and cultural abilities.28
The dilemma of race theory is not the contamination of scientific findings with customary prejudice, but the transformation of social, religious
and cultural patterns of discrimination (such as the construction of the
impure, the cursed or savages) into a scientific taxonomy. Kant plays a
significant part in this process and in addition gives philosophical sanction to it. Doing so, he uses various fragments of the contemporary discussion. The skin colour system of different human races is from Linné,
the characterisation of races as varieties which can interbreed follows
Buffon, the attribution of their formation to the development of potential capabilities in different environments goes back to Montesquieu and
27
28
Immanuel Kant: Entwürfe zu dem Colleg über Anthropologie, p. 789.
With regard to racism in Kant, the topic ›Kant and the races‹ has been discussed the
most thoroughly; from the extensive literature, cf. among others Bruce Baum: The Rise
and Fall of the Caucasian Race, esp. pp. 68 ff.; Robert Bernasconi: Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Racism; id.: Who Invented the Concept of Race?; David Bindman: Ape to
Apollo, esp. pp. 151 ff.; Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze: The Colour of Reason; John Gascoigne: The German Enlightenment and the Pacific; Gudrun Hentges, Schattenseiten
der Aufklärung, esp. pp. 90 ff. and 209 ff.; Thomas E. Hill jr., Bernard Boxill: Kant
and Race; Wulf D. Hund: Im Schatten des Glücks; Pauline Kleingeld: Kant’s Second
Thoughts on Race; Raphaël Lagier: Les Races humaines selon Kant; Marc Larrimore:
Sublime Waste; Rudolf Malter: Der Rassebegriff in Kants Anthropologie; Thomas A.
McCarthy: On the Way to a World Republic?; Charles W. Mills: Kant’s Untermenschen; Joseph Pugliese: Indigeneity and the Racial Topography of Kant’s ›Analytic
of the Sublime‹; Tsenay Serequeberhan: Eurocentrism in Philosophy; Susan M. Shell:
Kant’s Conception of a Human Race; Alex Sutter: Kant und die ›Wilden‹; John H.
Zammito: Policing Polygeneticism in Germany.
79
the connection of race and progress is influenced by the Scottish moral
philosophers.29
Against empiristic objections (such as those by Buffon that »nature
knows neither classes nor species« or by Blumenbach that the division
of humanity into races draws »very arbitrary boundaries«), Kant points
out that ›race‹ does not occur as a »word« in the »description of nature«
or as a »thing« in »nature« but that it is »well founded« in »reason« as
a »concept«.30 Even though he uses the term »prejudice« in the context
of his discussion of races and warns not to »carry« one’s own »ideas into
the observation«, his reflections are influenced by just that.
The racist prejudices of Kant’s age find their way into his philosophical work from the beginning. They even reach as far as into space. Kant
supposes that the intelligence of creatures on different planets depends on
the distance of the planet from the centre of gravity: the closer the planet
is to the sun, the mentally lazier its inhabitants are. If one imagines our
solar system and intelligent creatures on Saturn, the Earth and Mercury,
the latter will be rather stupid, humans will occupy a middle place and
the former will have to be tremendously bright.
In order to illustrate this, Kant uses a comparison which is obvious to
him: To the Mercurians, the earthly »Greenlanders or Hottentots« appear
like a »Newton«, the real Newton, in contrast, seems like a »monkey«
to the Saturnians.31 Stripped of its cosmic dimension, what is left of this
comparison is dull idiosyncrasy. Applied to the Earth, it shows that ›Newton‹ is used in a secret syllogism to compare ›Greenlanders‹ as well as
›Hottentots‹ with ›monkeys‹.32
29
30
31
32
Cf. Wulf D. Hund: Die weiße Norm, p. 187.
Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon: Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière,
p. 437, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach: Beyträge zur Naturgeschichte, p. 81, Immanuel
Kant: Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der Philosophie, p. 144; for the
following cf. ibid., p. 142 (›ideas‹) and id.: Von den verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen, p. 25 (›prejudice‹).
Immanuel Kant: Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, p. 387; that
Greenlanders and Hottentots were racist stereotypes became apparent later, when Kant
attributed »timidity«, »laziness« and »superstition« to one of the groups, imputed ›laziness‹ to the other as well and accused the latter of being extremely unclean, of smearing
themselves with »cow dung« and »urine« and of eating their numerous lice – cf. id.: Immanuel Kants physische Geographie, p. 317 (›Greenlanders‹), 408 (›Hottentots‹).
When Kant wrote down this extraterrestrial comparison, there was an extensive discussion about the relationship between apes and humans. Africans were often brought close
to apes – cf. Raymond Corby: The Metaphysics of Apes, pp. 36–59; Kaija TiainenAnttila: The Problem of Humanity, pp. 103–111. ›Greenlanders‹ and ›Hottentots‹ at
that time were common stereotypes to designate people in Greenland and the south
of Africa who were classified as primitive – cf. Thomas Nutz: ›Varietäten des Menschengeschlechts‹, pp. 300 ff.
80
Wulf D. Hund
Even before Kant develops his race theory, philosophy and arrogance
have combined to form its culturalist basis. »Blacks« do not have any
»talents« according to it and are worlds apart from »whites«: »the difference between these two human kinds [. . . ] appears to be as big in view
of the mental faculties as when judged by colour«.33 The combination
of skin and faculties rather openly refers to the connection between body
and mind which is conjured up in the race sciences from Linné onwards
and which Kant uses as the basis of his theoretical reflections on race as
well.
His first considerations still carry a considerable aesthetic load. The
racial classification of 1775/77 makes use of a system of skin colours
which is not yet complete. The division of humanity into »four races«
starts from the assumption of two clearly discernible »basic races«, the
»race of the whites« and the »Negro race«, which is characterized by its
»black colour«. The »Hunnish (Mongolian or Kalmuckian) race« and the
»Hindu or Hindustani race« follow. While the latter can supposedly be
identified by its skin colour again, specified as »olive yellow«, the former
is distinguished by physiognomic traits.34
The reference to »blinking eyes« and a »flattened nose« in the description of Mongols and Kalmucks already suggests an aesthetic prejudice which is taken to the fullest with regard to the humans called ›Negroes‹: They are said to have »a thick turned-up nose and thick lips [literally: sausage lips]«. The disdain this shows is intensified further through
the conviction that »all Negroes stink« and are »lazy, soft and trifling«.
When Kant revises and systematises his race concept in 1785, a number of assumptions and ascriptions are removed. Moreover, Kant now
takes an unequivocal monogenetic position and declares that there are
»no different species of humans«.35 From this, scholars have wrongly
concluded that »[i]n Kant’s later years [. . . ] the hierarchical [. . . ] concept of race disappears in his published writings«.36 For Kant still perceives the »odour of Negroes« in 1785, and he continues to arrange the
races by their cultural abilities. Three years later, in his argument with
Georg Forster, this finds expression in his assertion that the »inhabitants
of America« are »unfit for any culture« and that »this race« stands »far
33
34
35
36
Immanuel Kant: Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen, p. 880.
Immanuel Kant: Von den verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen, pp. 16 (›basic races‹),
14 (›whites‹, ›Negroes‹), 24 (›black colour‹), 14 (›Hunnish‹ and ›Hindustani‹ race), 16
(›physiognomy‹, ›olive yellow‹); for the following see pp. 21 (eyes, nose), 22 (›thick
lips‹, ›odour‹).
Immanuel Kant: Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrasse, p. 75.
Sankar Muthu: Enlightenment Against Empire, p. 183.
81
below the Negro [. . . ], who holds the lowest of all remaining levels by
which we have designated the different races«.37
Kant’s skin colours are taxonomic criteria and cultural stigmata
rolled into one. The division into »whites«, »yellows«, »blacks« and
»copper reds« is at the same time a description for hierarchically ordered
human capacities for culture. The uneven distribution of these capacities
among the races is not claimed to have always existed. Rather, »the first
human phylum«, according to Kant, had »various germs and natural predispositions«, which in the course of early human history were »either
unfolded or restrained«. In the development of races, however, the original germs of the whole species are held to evolve according to different
environmental conditions. The racial characteristics which thus come into
being then become fixed and »obliterate [. . . ] all the remaining« germs.38
›Races‹, therefore, are not only external peculiarities but the immutable fixing of the originally universal human capacity for development. Together with their differences in skin colour, races also pass on
dissimilar cultural capabilities:
»1) The people of the Americans don’t embrace culture. It has no
motivating force, for it lacks affect and passion. They [. . . ] do not take
care of anything either and are lazy. 2) The race of the Negroes [. . . ] is
completely the opposite [. . . ]; they are full of affect and passion, [. . . ]
can be cultivated but only as servants, that is they can be trained [. . . ].
3) The Hindus [. . . ] can [. . . ] be cultivated to the highest degree but only
in the arts and not in the sciences. They never achieve the level of abstract concepts, [. . . ] always stay the way they are; they never go further,
though they started to cultivate themselves much earlier. 4) The race of
the whites contains all motivating forces and talents in itself [. . . ]. Whenever revolutions occurred, they were always brought about by whites, and
the Hindus, Americans, Negroes never had a part in it«.39
37
38
39
Immanuel Kant: Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrasse, p. 79 (›odour‹), id.:
Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der Philosophie, p. 159 f. (›America‹).
Immanuel Kant: Von den verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen, pp. 25 (›human phylum‹), 19 (›germs‹ etc.); id.: Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrasse, p. 82
(›obliterate‹); for the racist consequences of Kant’s germ theory cf. among others
Thomas McCarthy: On the Way to a World Republic?, pp. 228, 231: »It seems that
Kant’s chief motivation in developing this theory of race was to defend monogenesis
[. . . ]. The costs of doing so via a theory of biologically based racial differentiation
were [. . . ] much too high. [. . . ] [T]he subdivision of the races for biological purposes
is linked with fateful differences at the level of ›mental powers‹ and ›culture‹«.
Immanuel Kant: Die Vorlesung des Wintersemesters 1781/82 [?], pp. 1187 f.; for the
preceding see id.: Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrasse, pp. 67 f. (›whites‹
etc.).
82
Wulf D. Hund
The Image of the Gypsies
Kant writes little but pertinently about the subject ›Gypsies‹.40 He probably acquired at least part of his knowledge on it from conversations with
his friend Christian Jakob Kraus.41 This includes the conviction that Gypsies stem from India, their social classification as pariahs, the use of their
skin colour as proof of the immutability of races and the reference to their
nomadic lifestyle.42
Kant employs these ideas to synchronise the Gypsy question with the
race question. This is a thoroughly modern operation and shows that he
was a supporter of the new race-oriented Gypsy stereotype, based on a
decisive paradigmatic change. The conception it supersedes was summarised in the entry »Ziegeuner [Gypsies]« from Zedler’s Universal Encyclopaedia as late as in 1749. The article states that in the fifteenth century, wandering strangers appeared in Europe. However, they either left
again or disappeared into the local rabble. The text concludes »that these
Gypsies are nothing but gathered wicked riffraff who do not want to work
but turn idleness, stealing, whoring, gorging, boozing, playing and so on
into a profession«.43
This diagnosis of a socially nonconformist character of the Gypsy
is reinforced through the denunciation of two classic ascriptions of
strangeness, appearance and language, as mere pretence. The dark colour
is alleged to be an artificial trait smeared on their skin to deceive and
conceal their true identity. The supposedly incomprehensible language is
claimed to be nothing but a collusive jargon which both serves to appear
strange as well as interesting and enables them to communicate without
being understood by others.
Until the middle of the eighteenth century, the Gypsy stereotype developed into a category which serves to identify socially nonconformist
behaviour. The accusations of vagabondage and statelessness, which recur again and again and are strained intensely in Zedler, are part of this.
The mere masses of people without a permanent home and subordination
40
41
42
43
There are only a few contributions on the topic ›Kant and the Gypsies‹ – cf. Wulf
D. Hund: Das Zigeuner-Gen; Kurt Röttgers: Kants Zigeuner – Röttgers suggests that
Kant »kept quiet about« (p. 84) the Gypsies, but his diagnosis of a »suppression of
knowledge« (p. 63) is missing Kant’s most important statement on the subject.
Cf. Werner Stark: Kant und Kraus; Kurt Röttgers: Kants Zigeuner.
Cf. Christian Jakob Kraus, quoted in Kurt Röttgers: Kants Kollege und seine
ungeschriebene Schrift über die Zigeuner, pp. 56 f., 58.
[Johann Heinrich Zedler]: Ziegeuner, p. 525; for the following see ibid., pp. 525 f. (›skin
colour‹, ›language‹), 538 f. (›vagabonds‹, ›stray riffraff‹); see also Wulf D. Hund: Das
Zigeuner-Gen, pp. 23 ff.; Iris Wigger: Ein eigenartiges Volk, pp. 39 f.
83
to rule who are considered to be riffraff constitute a constant source of
annoyance for the biopolitical population management of the developing modern state. Even though the English workhouses, French hôpitals,
German Zuchthäuser and Italian alberghi dei poveri flourish at that time,
they do not get the problem under control.44 The transformation of the
term Gypsy from a social into a racial category turns those into strangers
who refuse to become part of the system.
The colouring of the Gypsy concept by the new race science may
also have been an expression of ethnological interest. However, it mainly
reflects the determination to turn one’s former own wandering, unproductive no-goods and beggars into alien parasites on the level of primitive nomads. Besides the pertinent and immediately often-cited study
by Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann,45 Kraus’ ideas are significant in
this respect as well. He did not publish them, but one can safely presume
that he discussed them with Kant. This assumption is mainly supported
by two crucial arguments.
Kraus thinks that the topic ›Gypsies‹ is suitable to advance the hitherto »dark research on human races«. After all, he claims, they are a
»people« which has been living in Europe for at least sixteen generations
and whose »[o]live-yellow colour« continues to show »fully the bodily
natural livery of the Indostans at the Ganges«.46 In addition, Kraus links
inner characteristics with external appearance: the inability to form »abstract thoughts« with an »un-European body«.
These exact ascriptions can also be found in Kant and are connected
systematically by him. »Olive yellow« as »the true Gypsy colour« already becomes the characteristic feature of the »Hindustani race« of the
»Indians« in the first paper on race. Ten years later, the »Gypsies« serve
as proof of the constancy of races in the second race paper. They are described as »Indians« by origin and to »not in the least have degenerated
from the appearance of their ancestors« despite their three-hundred-year
stay in Europe.47
Even in terms of race theory, Gypsies (as members of the ›yellow
44
45
46
47
Cf. Fernand Braudel: Sozialgeschichte des 15.–18. Jahrhunderts. Der Handel.
München: Kindler 1990, pp. 564 ff.
Cf. Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann: Die Zigeuner; see Katrin Ufen: Aus Zigeunern
Menschen machen.
Letter by Christian Jakob Kraus from 28 December 1784, quoted in Kurt Röttgers:
Kants Kollege und seine ungeschriebene Schrift über die Zigeuner, p. 57; the following
statements can be found ibid., pp. 63, 55.
Immanuel Kant: Von den verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen, pp. 24 (›olive yellow‹),
14 f. (›Hindustani race‹) and id.: Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrasse, p. 81
(›Gypsies‹ etc.).
84
Wulf D. Hund
race‹) do not get off lightly. In Kant’s hierarchy of human races, the
boundary between creative and uncreative races runs between ›whites‹
and ›coloureds‹, and »[t]he Asian nations have reached a standstill where
the development of their perfections had to come from concepts and not
merely from intuitions«. Prefiguring the Aryan myth, Kant thus supposes
that »their skills originated from a northern race«.48 Moreover, he adds
class-specific arguments to race-related discrimination. Gypsies are not
only claimed to stem from India but also from a socially degraded condition. They are said to be descendents of »pariahs« and come »from the
scum of the earth«.
Against such a background, Kant discusses the relationship between
external racial features and cultural capacities. In this case, the outward
appearance is the »Indian skin colour«, which the »Gypsies« have kept
even though they have been in Europe for centuries. This skin colour,
however, is merely a sign of the specific development of original predispositions. They existed as possibilities in the first humans, and then developed in relation to the world regions in which their descendents came,
thus contributing to the formation of different races. Fixed in this way,
the predispositions became immutable hereditary traits.49
Among these traits, according to Kant, is not only outward appearance but also the unequal capacity for culture. This capacity for culture
is maintained to be as immutable as skin colour. In order to underline
this, the philosopher points to members of those races which were driven
from a warm to a cold climate. Their descendents, Kant claims, did not
lose their original characteristics. As proof, he cites »the Creole Negroes«
in America and the »Indians« who are called »Gypsies« in Europe: They
»have never been able to bring about a type that would be fit for local
farmers or manual labourers«. If one allows them to act freely, he asserts,
they remain »good-for-nothings«, among whom none shows any signs of
that »which one could properly call work«.
48
49
Immanuel Kant: Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, p. 597; for the following see id.: Die
Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, p. 804 (›pariahs‹).
Cf. Immanuel Kant: Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der Philosophie,
pp. 155 (›skin colour‹), 148 (fixing of race differences); the following quotations can
be found ibid., pp. 157 (›farmers‹, ›labour‹), 158 (›drive to activity‹), 159 (›America‹).
Christoph Girtanner: Ueber das Kantische Prinzip für die Naturgeschichte, p. 119, in
full accordance with Kant, cited the ›Gypsies‹ as proof of the halt of history which is
contained in the race concept – they serve »as evidence [. . . ] that all later transplantations and relocations to another climate cannot change a race once it has developed«.
On Kant’s germ theory, which asserts that the original human phylum contained the
capacity for diverse developments as the potential to adapt to different environments,
cf. Susan Meld Shell: The Embodiment of Reason, pp. 194 ff.
85
This outline of the problem is followed by a statement which is only
seemingly formulated as a question (and consequently lacks a question
mark): »Should one not conclude from this that, in addition to the faculty
to work, there is also an immediate [. . . ] drive to activity [. . . ] which is
interwoven especially with certain natural predispositions, [. . . ] and that
this inner predisposition extinguishes just as little as the externally visible
one«.
Since in the same breath and in addition, the »inhabitants of America« are declared to be a »race« which is »too weak for hard labour, too
indifferent for industry and incapable of any culture«, this is the cultural
revocation of the unity of humankind. In Africa, Asia and America, humans developed into races whose predispositions do not allow for real
work and who therefore lack the bases for cultural advancement. Kant
defends the biological unity of the human species against polygenetic
speculations in his essays on race. At the same time, however, in his
philosophy of history, he relegates all non-white races to an ahistorical
condition of cultural sterility.50
As external signs and internal qualities, the two arguments form an
inseparable whole. All humans belong to one species because they can
interbreed and produce fertile offspring. However, not all races participate in the development of humanity, in whose course the human faculties unfold completely. Their skin colours are not only signs of the
adaptation to different climates. They also signal the talent for further
human advancement. The non-white races have lost this capability. Their
evolvement into a race ends in an evolutionary impasse in which not only
are the skin colours fixed, but the races’ capacity for development is also
extinguished.
›Gypsies‹ serve as a striking example of this state of stagnating humanity. Kant makes them wander unchangeably, like historico-cultural
fossils, through the centuries of the European emergence into the modern
age. He thus claims to prove that their development has not been arrested
temporarily by an unfavourable environment. Rather, their racial characteristics are held responsible for their inability to evolve further in any
environment.
The Slur against the Jews
In contrast to the coloured races Kant discriminates against, he does not
deny the whiteness of the Jews. However, he uses other topoi of racist
50
Cf. Raphaël Lagier: Les Races humaines selon Kant, pp. 128 ff.
86
Wulf D. Hund
devaluation in relation with them.51 The Turks, for instance, are treated
similarly; they belong to the »race of whites« but are nonetheless »barbarians« (which is why they cannot achieve civil liberty) and members of
the »oriental peoples« (who are not able to perfect themselves). Furthermore, like the Jews, they are characterised by »religious arrogance« and
believe »that all others are cursed«.52
The (barbarous) inability to attain true liberty as well as the (oriental)
inability to perfect themselves are – at least as suspicion – also applied
to Jews. Kant once even goes so far as to mention them (together with
Gypsies and the Chinese) in the context of his Asian race.53 What is
meant is made clear by Christoph Girtanner when he extensively draws
on Kant verbatim in his reflections on the immutability of human races:
the »Gypsies [. . . ] have not yet become farmers and manual labourers
[. . . ] in almost four hundred years now«; of the »Negroes [. . . ] in England
and America, not a single one [. . . does] a business [. . . ] which one could
properly call work«; the »Jews, a type of white humans habituated to the
oriental clime, even now in Europe and notwithstanding their long stay
among us, remain disinclined to all real work and appear to be wholly
incapable of it«.54
According to an account by the theologian Johann Friedrich Abegg,
Kant correspondingly argues in one of his table talks that Jews are »vampires of society« and cannot, »as long as the Jews are Jews and get
circumcised«, become useful members of civil society.55 From Kant’s
own hand, this reads only a little more moderately. He accuses Jews of
»busy idleness« and declares them to be a »nation of cheaters« and »merchants«, who belong to the »non-producing members of society«.56
51
52
53
54
55
56
The topic ›Kant and the Jews‹ has been examined from different perspectives – cf.
among others Klaus L. Berghahn: Grenzen der Toleranz; Micha Brumlik: Deutscher
Geist und Judenhaß; Michael Mack: German Idealism and the Jew; Paul Lawrence
Rose: Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner; Bettina
Stangneth: Antisemitische und antijudaistische Motive bei Immanuel Kant?
Immanuel Kant: Die Vorlesung des Wintersemesters 1781/82 [?], pp. 1188 (›whites‹),
1181 (›oriental‹); id.: Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, pp. 595 f. (›barbarians‹), 590
(›cursed‹); id.: Bemerkungen zu den Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und
Erhabenen, p. 115 (›religious arrogance‹).
Cf. Immanuel Kant: Entwürfe zu dem Colleg über Anthropologie, p. 878.
Christoph Girtanner: Ueber das Kantische Prinzip für die Naturgeschichte, p. 157 (like
Kant, Girtanner sees ›Gypsies‹ as members of the ›olive-yellow race‹, ibid., p. 76, ›Negroes‹ as members of the ›black race‹, ibid., p. 74, and ›Jews‹ as members of the ›white
race‹, ibid., p. 70).
Johann Friedrich Abegg: Reisetagebuch von 1798, p. 190; cf. Rudolf Malter: Kants
Tischgesellschaft nach dem Bericht von Johann Friedrich Abegg.
Immanuel Kant: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, p. 438 (›idleness‹) as well
as id.: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (AA), pp. 205 f. (this long antisemitic
87
The diagnosis which the philosophy of progress implies, that real humans are only those who develop through their own work, which has been
synchronised with the hierarchy of race theory through the culturalistracist discrimination of ›vagabonding Gypsies‹, ›lazy Negroes‹ and ›Indians unfit for work‹, makes the ›unproductive Jews‹ appear in a flat light
despite their whiteness. In addition, Kant calls Jews »[t]he Palestinians
who live among us« in this context and thereby turns them into members
of a foreign nation, whose home he situates in the Orient.
Jews are ›white‹ in Kant’s race theory, but culturalist arguments separate them from ›whites‹ and maintain that they can only rank among
them when they renounce their cultural identity. On the one hand, Kant
asserts what will considerably later be integrated into race theory, that is,
the suspicion that Jews are not quite white or not white enough.57 On the
other hand, he demonstrates the flexibility of a race theory which appears
naturalist by opening the seemingly clear boundary between the races in
a culturalist manner.58
Theoretically, this does not only hold good for groups constructed as
in-between peoples, such as the Jews, but also for American Indians, for
example, who are clearly conceptualised as a single race. Kant’s contemporary Thomas Jefferson, for instance, makes extensive use of this way
of race thinking. He judges ›blacks‹ to be incompatible with ›whites‹,
who are his yardstick, whereas ›reds‹ are said to have good prospects of
merging into them. Therefore, ›blacks‹ should only be freed from slavery
provided that one can completely separate them from ›whites‹. ›Reds‹, in
contrast, are called upon to adopt the lifestyle of ›whites‹ and in return
enjoy being allowed to mix with them. If they refuse to do so, they are
57
58
footnote has been omitted in the WW edition without comment); for the following cf.
ibid. (›Palestinians‹) – at the same time, Kant talks about »the futile plan to moralise
this people with regard to the point of deceit and honesty« (ibid.) and thus expresses
fundamental scepticism about the policy of the emancipation of the Jews.
Cf. Karen Brodkin: How Jews Became White Folks and Eric L. Goldstein: The Price
of Whiteness; for the ›inbetweenness‹ mentioned in the following, see also David R.
Roediger: Working Toward Whiteness, esp. pp. 50 ff., 70 ff., 119 ff.
In addition, Kant was not averse to letting the difference between Jews and other
›whites‹, which he based on culturalist arguments, hold good with respect to physiognomy as well. This was not unusual among his enlightened contemporaries. Even
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach opined that »the Jewish race [. . . ] can easily be recognized everywhere« and that the »nation of the Jews [. . . ], under every climate, remain
the same as far as the fundamental configuration of the face goes« (quoted in Jonathan
M. Hess: Jewish Emancipation and the Politics of Race, p. 206). Kant himself, when
he was not satisfied with a portrait of him that a Jewish artist had painted, quoted a
»good connoisseur of paintings« with the words: »a Jew always paints another Jew,
whose nose he recreates« (Immanuel Kant: Brief an Carl Leonhard Reinhold vom 12.
5. 1789).
88
Wulf D. Hund
also referred to the logic of the racially tinged theory of progress – they
will be chased by ›whites‹ and their civilisation and have to perish.59
The racially ›white‹ but culturally suspicious Jews are given a similar option: the »euthanasia of Judaism«.60 In order to achieve it, Judaism
has to become a »religion« and engage in the »formation of a close relationship with Christianity«. Up to now, Judaism is not a »religion« but
merely an »association« of people »under political laws« who belong »to
a special tribe«. Therefore, Jews constitute »only a political, not an ethical community«.61
By Kant’s standards, this is a cultural degradation of Judaism. As religion can ultimately only be based on reason and only in this way make
moral behaviour possible, Jews are both unrepentant and unreasonable.
Moreover, as they conceive their God as a mere »political sovereign« and
at the same time wait for the re-establishment of their »merely worldly
state« without moralising themselves, their »superstition« and their »usurious spirit« enable the »outwitting« of the nations among which they
live.
In combination with the alleged Jewish hope »to one day rule over
all nations (goyim)«, this results in the image of a people which despite
its whiteness, is limited orientally. This not only fails to perfect itself
but instead maintains itself parasitically and above all strives for world
domination. The predominantly culturalist nature of this construct shows
that even during the development of the race paradigm, racism is not
restricted to the biological stigmatisation of others which this paradigm
involves.
59
60
61
Cf. Thomas Jefferson: Notes on the State of Virginia, who with respect to African slaves
explains that their emancipation is only possible if they can at the same time be brought
»beyond the reach of mixture« (p. 270). In regard to American Indians, he states that
»they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens of the United States, or remove
beyond the Mississippi« (id.: Letter to Governor William H. Harrison, p. 1118).
Immanuel Kant: Der Streit der Fakultäten, p. 321; by »euthanasia«, Kant understands a
»gentle death« and among other things metaphorically speaks of the »euthanasia [. . . ]
of all morals« (id.: Die Metaphysik der Sitten, p. 506) or the »euthanasia of pure reason«
(id.: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 401). The remark that ›euthanasia‹ at that time was
seen as a self-determined as well as happy way of dying (cf. Kurt Flasch: Was hieß
bei Kant ›Euthanasie des Judentums‹?, pp. 358 ff.) misses the heart of the problem: the
demand for cultural self-abandonment. The »shock of this metaphor« consists in the
fact that it is about »death« (Klaus J. Berghahn: Grenzen der Toleranz, p. 220).
Immanuel Kant: Vorarbeiten zum Streit der Fakultäten, p. 441 (›religion‹, ›formation
of a close relationship‹); id.: Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft,
pp. 790 f. (›association‹ etc.); for the following see ibid., pp. 772 (›political sovereign‹),
790 (›worldly state‹); id.: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, pp. 205 f. (›superstition‹, ›usurious spirit‹); id.: Vorarbeiten zur Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der
bloßen Vernunft, p. 112 (›goyim‹).
89
The Nemesis of Otaheite
Despite all their differences, Kant’s racist types of discrimination group
around the gravitational field which the sun of work creates in the constellation of progress. Human nature virtually consists in forcing itself
in the very orbit around this sun which first enables humans to develop.
Since the perfection of this development takes thousands of years, becoming human is a task of the species anyway. However, apart from that,
it is also carried out by humans who are distinguished as races whose
ability to progress is unequal. The perfection of humanity thus becomes
the privilege of the most talented human race.
In contrast to this race, the other races have lost their historical opportunities because of a lack in drive. ›Gypsies‹ and ›Negroes‹ in Europe and
America are constructed as examples of the utter laziness of the yellow
and black races and the impossibility to make them give up their idleness
even through good examples. The genocidal dimension of the conquest
of America finds expression in the image of ›Indians‹ as a red race unfit
for life and doomed to extinction. The suspicion of oriental indolence applied across the races even admits the separation of parts of the white race
from its hard-working core and the accusation against ›Jews‹ of obstinate
backwardness and a parasitical existence.
The effort required to develop oneself is, of course, not a pleasure for
the white race either, for its members share as a »special misfortune of
humans that they are so inclined to inactivity«.62 The sociological core
of this anthropological imperative is unmistakable – it mainly applies to
the »populace« and »its tendency to enjoy and its aversion to working for
it«.63
Since Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s criticism of hierarchical societalisation, this attitude has a popular representative: the Caraib. In Kant, however, the Caraib loses his function as the contrast to an alienated life as
well as his role as noble savage and now sits around dully for he lacks
»the sting of activity«.64 The same holds true for other inhabitants of
alleged insulae fortunatae, the most popular of whom are »the happy inhabitants of Otaheite« in the age of Kant. The Tahitians have to put up
with the question »why they exist at all, and whether it would not have
62
63
64
Immanuel Kant: Über Pädagogik, p. 729.
Immanuel Kant: Der Streit der Fakultäten, p. 293.
Immanuel Kant: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, p. 553; the pertinent comparison between l’»homme Sauvage et l’homme policé« is drawn in Jean-Jacques
Rousseau: Discours sur l’origine et les fondemens de l’inégalité parmi les hommes,
pp. 192 f.; see also Bernard R. Boxill: Rousseau, Natural Man, and Race; Francis Moran
III: Between Primates and Primitives.
90
Wulf D. Hund
been just as good to have this island populated with happy sheep and
cattle as with human beings who are happy with mere pleasure«.65
According to Kant, the »inhabitants of Otaheite« remain »children all
their lives«.66 They are thus relegated to the early times of humanity and
constructed as humans without history. Since they do not advance, they
fail to follow their actual vocation as humans. Concomitantly, they serve
as a deterring example of what happens when humans give in to their
latent laziness and shirk their duty to develop themselves.
In this sense, Kant uses ›Otaheite‹ to denounce all criticism of alienation, which he decries as »empty longing« and the »shadowy image of
[. . . ] the Golden Age« that promises »contentment with the mere satisfaction of natural needs, the complete equality of human beings« and
»everlasting peace«. To Kant, this is nothing but the imagination of the
»pure enjoyment of a carefree life, dreamt away in laziness or trifled away
in childish play; – a longing which makes [. . . ] voyages to the South Sea
Islands so attractive«.67
The South Sea Islands and their chimera Otaheite on the one hand
serve as a distorted panorama. Against this background, Kant stages his
ontology of a human nature that develops through alienated labour. The
coercion this involves is legitimised with reference to the sheepish nature
of those who do not want to force themselves. On the other hand, this
comparison is racialised and made the crux of the Kantian race theory.
This theory in fact knows only one race which is able to fully develop the
human powers: white Europeans. According to Kant, all »human history
certainly goes [back] to the race of whites only«. This is even truer for
the future: »It must come from Europe«.
The optimistic version of this projection of the future of humanity is
the Enlightenment programme of progress. Human history perfects itself
in Europe and through Europeans and this »part of the world« will »prob-
65
66
67
Immanuel Kant: Rezension zu Johann Gottfried Herders Ideen, p. 805; see Vanessa Agnew: Pacific Island Encounters and the German Invention of Race; Harry Liebersohn:
The Travelers’ World.
Immanuel Kant: Über Pädagogik, p. 712. Part of the interrelationship between different
types of discrimination in this context is the comparison with groups who are alleged to
have similar dispositions. It results in such enumerations as »children, savages, women«
(id.: Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, p. 101), »children, the common people, savages«
(id.: Entwürfe zu dem Kolleg über Anthropologie, p. 693) or »children, savages, stupid
people« (id.: Reflexionen zur Metaphysik, p. 713).
Immanuel Kant: Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte, pp. 100 f.; the following quotations are from id.: Entwürfe zu dem Colleg über Anthropologie, pp. 879
(›history‹), 781 (›Europe‹).
91
ably one day give laws to all others«.68 What is not certain, however, is if
the rest of the world will be able to follow them. Therefore, there is also
a pessimistic variant of the theory of progress. Whites do not appear as
patriarchal teachers of coloureds in it but nolens volens assume the role
of Nemesis, who has to tell the other races that they have missed their
vocation as humans by their own fault.
Since Tahiti is an island, Kant considers it an ideal setting for this
variant of human history. He symbolically lets the island sink in the sea:
»Humans have such a drive to perfect themselves that they even consider
a people which has finished its development and merely enjoys itself to be
superfluous and think that the world would lose nothing if Otaheite went
down«.69 The idea of races that are doomed to extinction, which would be
supported by supposed natural laws through social Darwinism, is in fact
already included in the formation of race theory. From the start, it argues
in such a hierarchical manner that the identification of historical progress
and white supremacy contains the possibility that the others vanish. Kant
put this into words at least as a note: »All races will become exterminated
[. . . ], except for the whites«.
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