From Baconian Natural History to Kant’s Racialization of Human Differences

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter explains the originality of Kant’s theory of race and its practical relevance. Countless predecessors paved the way for him. These include seventeenth-century philosophers such as Bacon and Boyle, who initiated an orderly global data collection that provided massive cross-referenceable reports about extra-Europeans, and eighteenth-century philosophers such as Linnaeus and Buffon, who systematically classified humans on the basis of such reports and studied their differences as natural effects. Although Kant is indebted to all those philosophers’ work for his raciology, the resulting theory is clearly original. His most ingenious creations include a new conception of natural history, a new model of monogenism, and a teleology that bridges his race theory and his vision of human progress. These are not just sophisticated theoretical accomplishments. They have serious racist implications within Kant’s complex philosophical system, including treating “Negroes” as natural slaves and tolerating race-based chattel slavery as a mere chapter of human history.