# Do Immanuel Kant's racist opinions render the rest of his philosophy suspect? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 4, 2011, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731 "2011-05-04T18:51:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2011, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/21 "2011-05-04T23:32:26Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Well, Kant wasn’t a particularly well traveled man. > > Let’s keep in mind we’re talking about a man who died in Prussia in 1804, in the same town he was born in 79 years prior. In fact he never went more than a day’s ride away from his home town in the 79 years he was on this earth. > > So I think we can perhaps forgive Kant for holding views that are a bit **wrong** about a people he probably never had any interaction with in his entire life. How many Africans came through Königsberg in the 18th century? Yeah, this. And the man did not have the benefit of all the lessons of all the people whose shoulders we stand on today to know that it is just a pigmentation difference. We also benefit from 205 years of debate on just that subject that occurred after Kant died. Kant may have been a sonofabitch who could not communicate a simple thought to save his life, but his mistake on a line of reasoning he had little qualification on doesn’t call into question his more complicated thoughts on subjects he followed to their logical conclusion. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2011, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/22 "2011-05-04T23:34:26Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Now, I have ranted long and boringly on my contempt for Kant in general . . . For his character, or for the content of his philosophy, or for having the presumption to teach geography when he never in his life traveled twenty miles from Konigsberg? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2011, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/23 "2011-05-04T23:37:22Z")
Does Kant’s philosophy have any implications relevant to racism/racial prejudice/race relations, and, if so, are those implications in any way implied by the attitude reflected in the quote in the OP? Serious question. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2011, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/24 "2011-05-04T23:44:26Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > For his character, or for the content of his philosophy, or for having the presumption to teach geography when he never in his life traveled twenty miles from Konigsberg? Just the middle one. I’d only recently (read: last week) learned more about his biography. And it’s not the entirety of his philosophy I have the issue with; not even the majority. Just his ethics. But then, I’m a contxtual moralist, so that’s not surprising. Incidentally, before anyone complains about me asserting that the end justifies the means, that is not what I mean. I mean that no action has any moral value outside its context; that you cannot judge whether something is right or wrong if you divorce it from its predictable, knowable, likely consequences. Tellingthe truth is not always right; killing is not always wrong. Deontology is always crap, though. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2011, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/25 "2011-05-04T23:55:27Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > In _Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime_, Kant writes: > > Now, I have ranted long and boringly on my contempt for Kant in general, so for me this tidbit just gives me another reason to put him on my time-travel-[del]assassination[/del] murder list. But for those of you inclined to think well of him in other ways: does the above passage (and others like it) lessen your opinion of his philosophy? > > Please note that I don’t mean his character, by the way. It’s your opinion of work that interests me. It seems to me from that extract that Kant is swallowing his opinion of Blacks whole from Hume. Certainly that makes him excessively credulous in matters of anthropology, but I see no reason to thereby doubt his _philosophy_. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/26 "2011-05-05T00:54:39Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Deontology is always crap, though. I dunno. The Belmonts never did that well without him. ---
**Author:** ![Jaledin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/27 "2011-05-05T03:35:07Z")
IIRC there is some pretty sly antisemitism in the KU/CJudg too. And in his _Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view_ I think he claims that people who smoke pipes/cigars are really just bored/basically stupid, if they don’t keep to a strict schedule like the Vater himself. Hegelian speculative thought, mediated by people like Fichte, is of a piece with Kant in his racism as well as his pernicious philosophy. Remember all that jazz about dark Africa and stuff in the greater Phenomenology? ---
**Author:** ![Jaledin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/28 "2011-05-05T03:38:05Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Just the middle one. I’d only recently (read: last week) learned more about his biography. His biography and early writings are utterly fascinating, though. Essentially, he was a failed fiction writer who came to philosophy in a state of despair. My main source for such tidbits is Jean-Luc Nancy’s _Logodaedalus : La philosophie de la syncope_ (I think that’s what it’s called) – I don’t know if it’s been translated from French, but if so, or if you have French, it’s worth the short time it takes to read it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/29 "2011-05-05T05:24:32Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Just the middle one. I’d only recently (read: last week) learned more about his biography. And it’s not the entirety of his philosophy I have the issue with; not even the majority. Just his ethics. But then, I’m a contxtual moralist, so that’s not surprising. > > Incidentally, before anyone complains about me asserting that the end justifies the means, that is not what I mean. I mean that no action has any moral value outside its context; that you cannot judge whether something is right or wrong if you divorce it from its predictable, knowable, likely consequences. Tellingthe truth is not always right; killing is not always wrong. Deontology is always crap, though. There’s only one way to settle the logically irreconcilable conflict between contextual and deontological systems of ethics. Thunderdome. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/30 "2011-05-05T05:39:26Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > In _Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime_, Kant writes: > > Now, I have ranted long and boringly on my contempt for Kant in general, so for me this tidbit just gives me another reason to put him on my time-travel-[del]assassination[/del] murder list. But for those of you inclined to think well of him in other ways: does the above passage (and others like it) lessen your opinion of his philosophy? No, not really. Those opinions are similar to those of Jefferson, Lincoln, Albert Schweitzer, Voltaire & Gandhi. ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/31 "2011-05-05T10:16:59Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > No, not really. Those opinions are similar to those of Jefferson, Lincoln, Albert Schweitzer, Voltaire & Gandhi. Albert Schweitzer? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/32 "2011-05-05T12:09:00Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I won’t rant on Kant here. I’ll just say that I think his work on ethics is useless, because it is utterly impractical. I don’t think any ethical system which, if followed, predictably and regularly produces results I’ll deem bad (telling the truth to a prospective murderer about his victim’s location) is pointless. Ethics, it seems to me, has to concern itself with real-world results. Nitpick: AFAIK, Kant doesn’t require you to tell the truth, he just requires you not to lie. Silence on the matter of the victim’s location would be permissible, I think. ISTR that part of Kant’s argument in “Supposed Right to Lie” involves an observation that we are typically not in a good position to know what the consequences of our actions will be. Because of this, what we have to go on is not consequences but the nature of our act in itself. Probably not convincing, but not as boneheaded as it may seem at first. Still you’re right, I think, that Kant would argue that the right thing to do is the right thing to do damn the consequences, even if you did know exactly what the consequences would be. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/33 "2011-05-05T13:59:50Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > No, not really. Those opinions are similar to those of Jefferson, Lincoln, Albert Schweitzer, Voltaire & Gandhi. “The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the trifling.” **Gandhi** would have nodded?! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/34 "2011-05-05T14:01:41Z")
[quote=] The religion of fetishes so widespread among them is perhaps a sort of idolatry that sinks as deeply into the trifling as appears to be possible to human nature. A bird’s feather, a cow’s horn, a conch shell, or any other common object, as soon as it becomes consecrated by a few words, is an object of veneration and of invocation in swearing oaths. [/quote] Oh, white people would never do that _cough_eucharist_cough_. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/35 "2011-05-05T14:07:04Z")
Anti-abortion folks say the same thing about Margaret Sanger, despite the fact that none of her writings reveal her to be a true racist. She was against “Negroes” having more babies because of the conditions the ones they alread had were forced to live in–poverty, overcrowding, poor medical care. It is often very wrong the judge philosophies of the past against our modern standards. The best example of this is Joe McCarthy’s Communist witchhunt. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/36 "2011-05-05T15:38:46Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > There’s only one way to settle the logically irreconcilable conflict between contextual and deontological systems of ethics. > > Thunderdome. Are you posting from an alternate world in which I wouldn’t cheat? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/37 "2011-05-05T15:50:23Z")
We stand on the shoulders of midgets. > [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > It is often very wrong the judge philosophies of the past against our modern standards. The best example of this is Joe McCarthy’s Communist witchhunt. Uh, what? That was a horrible idea then _and_ now. It doesn’t make a difference whose standards you judge it by. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/38 "2011-05-05T18:08:28Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Are you posting from an alternate world in which I wouldn’t cheat? Are you posting from an alternate post-Apocalyptic Australia where Thunderdome has rules? ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/39 "2011-05-05T18:57:26Z")
It depends. A person can be a racist and still be correct about any number of other things. If the obviously wrong claims about race are part of some larger whole, then the whole is wrong. The quoted text is so willfully ignorant that any conclusions drawn from it must be ignored. First, because the premise is wrong. Second, because the author is obviously making shit up as he couldn’t actually know those things even if they were true. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/40 "2011-05-05T19:00:37Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Are you posting from an alternate post-Apocalyptic Australia where Thunderdome has rules? Someone dueling in favor of deontological ethics is going to be constrained by some stupid rule or other. “Play fair.” “Don’t throw sand in your opponent’s eyes.” “No ripping off people’s genitals and forcing them down the victim’s throats, as that is obviously overkill as well as sadistic.” I, on the other hand, believe in bringing RPGs to knife-fights. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731.md?page=3)