The art of scandalizing is inexhaustible. In Kant’s Anthropology, there are a few remarks familiar to anyone who has studied Kant. According to the standards of the spirit our time, one could characterize those as racist. That media attention can be sparked from this today is known since the leveling of similar accusations at Shakespeare and Mark Twain. Hegel praised war, Nietzsche proclaimed the necessity of slavery, the hypersensitive Walter Benjamin made use of the word “gypsy.” One could endlessly extend the proscription list of scandalous thinkers. For the block warden of thought, there is really not a single great mind before 1968 with whom some racist, militaristic, or misogynistic remark could not be substantiated.
One could call what is happening here tribalization of the past. Political correctness is spreading to thought itself and deep into history. In this connection, the hatred for old white men is now concentrated on old wise men. This is surely the most extreme form of cultural revolution since Mao. Steadfast, the guardians of virtue replace thinking with intolerance and self-righteousness. The victim status renders with its pathos of indignation any argumentation superfluous. The new Jacobins no longer content themselves here with language-hygienic measures. We are currently witnessing phase 2 of political correctness: fanatical iconoclasm. As though the past were still unfinished, history is being rewritten. Children’s books are being expurgated or censored; a gender-sensitive Bible frees God of the stain of being a father; streets are being renamed, holidays corrected, and statues toppled. The Taliban are among us.
In America, the word “woke” has come to serve as the trademark of this movement. This means that the moralistic standards of “snowflakes” are also being applied to the past. This woke and cancel culture is the most authoritarian that we have seen since the Second World War. One no longer wishes to understand, but to condemn. In this way, Zola’s “J’accuse” has become the global uniform of political agitation. “Racist” functions in this way worldwide as a passe-partout word that opens up for the new Jacobins access to media and politics. And unfortunately this also applies to scientists, who rely on brightly sparkling research funds.
The fact that it is now Kant, philosopher of the Enlightenment, who has fallen victim to the tribunalizers, should make it clear to everyone that the fate of occidental rationalism is at stake here. One can put Kant up “to debate,” without reading him. For reading Kant is very exacting—and this is something that even with the best of intentions can be avoided. After all, the tribunalization of the past has an important alleviating effect. A label is stuck to a great mind, and one no longer needs to deal with him. “Putting up for debate” replaces studying.
Translated by Daniel Steven Fisher, www.dsftranslations.com.
This is true in general. I totally agree about the Jacobinism etc. But the case that there is a racist substructure in Kant’s thought not unconnected to his critical project as such can be seriously made. The geography does seem racist, the aesthetics of the sublime and the beautiful are linked to this geography and the critical project assumes this (originally pre-critical) project, not the other way round as usually said. Such a deconstruction is controversial but not evidently silly. Kant I would suggest is a particular case (though Nietzsche is another, and Darwin yet another). It’s obvious that slavery has nothing to do with the core of eg Hume’s project. But with Kant and race it may be less clear.
Sorry correction: assumes this pre-critical aesthetics.
There is an argument that could be made insofar as “racist” could be used as purely a descriptive term, but the meaning of this term today designates a form of heresy to be condemned, and not a form of thought to be examined; anyone attempting an objective inquiry would in fact be treated as suspicious according to the principle of contamination: one cannot innocently “read” heretical books. Is it in fact possible to disentangle these two modes? Anything, in fact, can be connected to forbidden things, according to the supernatural logic of association which is driving the phenomenon, but what is the direction of the enterprise? With respect to Kant, supposing arguendo that this case is made, what then?
I commend the author for having the courage to address a rather contentious point, namely the attack on Kant’s philosophy based on some of his questionable beliefs about race. Whether some of Kant’s philosophical views are conditioned by his beliefs about race could be a worthwhile investigation. But dismissing or “canceling” Kant’s substantive philosophical contributions because of some of his racist beliefs seems to be a clear non sequitur argument, or at best an ad hominem attack. The arrogance of scholars defending “presentism” against contextualism is beyond the pale. Some might think that they and only they have a monopoly on present virtuous behavior and scholars from the past are seen as just vicious because they held certain questionable beliefs. I am afraid that none of us are “beyond good and evil,” and we need to learn how to be critical but also humble about the past, as the author seems to suggest.
‘One can put Kant up “to debate,” without reading him.’
Indeed. One can also sneer at the critics of Kant’s place within the racist canon of Euro-American academia without reading or engaging with these critics’ works whatsoever, as it very much appears this author has done.
Once upon a time, Telos was home to serious intellectual debate, not this hysterical, journalistic ‘culture wars’ race baiting.
When I first begin graduate school I felt the frustration of constantly being told that I needed to read this one or that one and felt, truly, that my attempts at thinking through a thing were being effaced or in need of validation by this or that European thinker.
Then, I encountered Victor Villanueva’s _Bootstraps_ and all of that changed. Because I was interested in aesthetic formations around the ideas of Black musical/artistic productions I was essentially told that I would need to seriously engage, very nearly, an entire canon of continental thinking. Came to find out, that years before, Dr. John Henrik Clarke had already confirmed that fact.
With no disrespect intended, Mr. Norbert Bolz almost displays his own lack of study by making such an argument as he advances here. Sure, we’ve all encountered grad students who might pick up a few tid-bits of problematic lines of thought in many thinkers from a tradition premised on the fundamental erasure of entire populations and epistemologies. But, here is the thing: as far as we know, no one coaxed Hegel into asserting the entire ontological and epistemological insignificance of an entire continent. Now, I can recognize a thing & realize that thing as folly, and still deal with and learn much from a systematic thinker of the likes Hegel. The same goes for Kant. And, even if it boils down to learning what not do, so to speak, there is still learning to be gained from engaging these thinkers full-on.
I agree to some extent with all of the sentiment expressed by each of the five commenters, and do think that simply calling a person out for their racism and completely dismissing their contributions, is short-sighted.
However, completely dismissing, occluding, eclipsing entire traditions of civilizations (existing two-hundred & twenty thousand years before Europe was even a conceit) before even considering or evaluating their contributions, philosophical or otherwise, has been the practice of West, to be completely frank about the matter.
Because of this, the question can be fairly proffered: where is the critique of that practice from Europe’s own?
The cost is simply too high to dismiss Kant, his predecessors, and antecedents. I am reminded of something Dr. Arturo Alfonso Schomburg told Dr. John Henrik Clarke (paraphrasing): “Young man, study Europe and what they have done throughout their brief history. Learn your enemy.”