# 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:** 18\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2011, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/101 "2011-05-06T23:30:24Z")
> [@orcenio](#): > > In the end Kant’s moral failings prevent him from being correct; he’s not the first asshole to bend logic to justify his assholeness. Racists/sexists/bigots do this everyday. Hume’s. Hume was the one who had to try to justify slavery to keep his nation from being a bunch of immoral bastards. Kant’s Prussia didn’t keep slaves, and in fact, in his “The Science of Right”, Kant condemns slavery. From Chapter 3, Section III, On the Relation of a Master and Servant, on the difference between a servant and a slave: > [@](#): > > This contract, then, of the master of a household with his domestics, cannot be of such a nature that the use of them could ever rightly become an abuse of them; and the judgement as to what constitutes use or abuse in such circumstances the is not left merely to the master, but is also competent to the servants, who ought never to be held in bondage or bodily servitude as slaves or serfs. Such a contract cannot, therefore, be concluded for life, but in all cases only for a definite period, within which one party may intimate to the other a termination of their connection. Children, however, including even the children of one who has become enslaved owing to a crime, are always free. For every man is born free, because he has at birth as yet broken no law; and even the cost of his education till his maturity cannot be reckoned as a debt which he is bound to pay. Even a slave, if it were in his power, would be bound to educate his children without being entitled to count and reckon with them for the cost; and in view of his own incapacity for discharging this function, the possessor of a slave, therefore, enters upon the obligation which he has rendered the slave himself unable to fulfill. and later: > [@](#): > > No one can bind himself to such a condition of dependence, as he would thereby cease to be a person, and it is only as a person that he can make a contract. It may, however, appear that one man may bind himself to another by a contract of hire, to discharge a certain service that is permissible in its kind, but is left entirely undetermined as regards its measure or amount; and that as receiving wages or board or protection in return, he thus becomes only a servant subject to the will of a master (subditus) and not a slave (servus). But this is an illusion. For if masters are entitled to use the powers of such subjects at will, they may exhaust these powers– as has been done in the case of Negroes in the Sugar Islandand they may thus reduce their servants to despair and death. But this would imply that they had actually given themselves away to their masters as property; which, in the case of persons, is impossible. A person can, therefore, only contract to perform work that is defined both in quality and quantity, either as a day–labourer or as a domiciled subject. In the latter case he may enter into a contract of lease for the use of the land of a superior, giving a definite rent or annual return for its utilization by himself, or he may contract for his service as a labourer upon the land. But he does not thereby make himself a slave, or a bondsman, or a serf attached to the soil (glebae adscriptus), as he would thus divest himself of his personality; he can only enter into a temporary or at most a heritable lease. And even if by committing a crime he has personally become subjected to another, this subject–condition does not become hereditary; for he has only brought it upon himself by his own wrongdoing. Neither can one who has been begotten by a slave be claimed as property on the ground of the cost of his rearing, because such rearing is an absolute duty naturally incumbent upon parents; and in case the parents be slaves, it devolves upon their masters or owners, who, in undertaking the possession of such subjects, have also made themselves responsible for the performance of their duties. So while Kant did think that blacks were naturally inferior to whites, he believed that everyone, was entitled to natural right and dignity, and that slavery was only acceptable as punishment for a crime, and that only for the criminal himself, not for his children. ---
**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 6, 2011, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/102 "2011-05-06T23:37:26Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Hume’s. Hume was the one who had to try to justify slavery to keep his nation from being a bunch of immoral bastards. Kant’s Prussia didn’t keep slaves, and in fact, in his “The Science of Right”, Kant condemns slavery. > > From Chapter 3, Section III, On the Relation of a Master and Servant, on the difference between a servant and a slave: > > and later: > > So while Kant did think that blacks were naturally inferior to whites, he believed that everyone, was entitled to natural right and dignity, and that slavery was only acceptable as punishment for a crime, and that only for the criminal himself, not for his children. Thanks for the correction. Hume. ---
**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 6, 2011, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/103 "2011-05-06T23:43:42Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > > [@orcenio](#): > > > > In the end Kant’s moral failings prevent him from being correct; he’s not the first asshole to bend logic to justify his assholeness. Racists/sexists/bigots do this everyday. > > Hume’s. Hume was the one who had to try to justify slavery to keep his nation from being a bunch of immoral bastards. Kant’s Prussia didn’t keep slaves, and in fact, in his “The Science of Right”, Kant condemns slavery. > \ I would not say Kant’s moral failing was his claim of African inferiority (which, as I wrote upthread, he repudiated later anyway). It was his credulouslessness. That’s not a sin – not exactly – but it calls his moral judgment into question. As I wrote earlier, it would be as if an astrophysicist also believed in astrology. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2011, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/104 "2011-05-07T01:50:23Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I would not say Kant’s moral failing was his claim of African inferiority (which, as I wrote upthread, he repudiated later anyway). It was his credulouslessness. That’s not a sin – not exactly – but it calls his moral judgment into question. As I wrote earlier, it would be as if an astrophysicist also believed in astrology. Skald, and I’m note trying to pick on you here, but… You seem to be changing your story a lot. Honestly, you really sound like you have some deep-seated chip on your shoulder about this. I can’t think of anyone who could possibly survive the, err… “scrutiny” you focus on Kant. But I will take you at your word here, however many of my eyebrows youn raise. So, with that in mind… What? You honestly condemn him as a moral theorist (or moral analyst, anyway) because he formed a silly idea about the intellectual prowess of Africans based on second- or third-hand accounts? _Which he later corrected_? Everyone, great scientists and lowly, says and thinks stupid things. Kant’s only sin was writing his down so they could be picked apart on message boards three centuries later. I know of noone who doesn’t think some extremely stupid things, even about what they ought to be an expert on. And moral phislosophy has nothing to do with the abilities of Africans. No matter what morality demands of us, it doesn’t demand we take a specific view of someone’s capabilities. I would point tout that there is strong, if not completely overwhelming, evidence, that men and women have not only slightly different brains, but that men have a flatter intelligence distribution than women. Thus, you are more likely to find stupid men and very brilliant ones (along with some differences in intellectual specialty). And this mimics a pattern found in an awful lot of male-female distinctions, including genetic illness. It isn’t asolutely proven, but it’s hardly bad science. Yet Larry Summers, for example, was run out of Harvard for merely acknowledging this could be the case. Intellectual freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes, and hope they may be corrected. Kant did both. I see no reason to condemn him for a foolish error, particularly one which hardly hurt anyone, and which he himself decided was indeed an embarassing error. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2011, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/105 "2011-05-07T06:14:20Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > How could it be his failing - when the science which would have proved him wrong hadn’t been invented yet? > > Today’s racists are “blameworthy”, that is worthy of _moral_ judgment, because they are being willfully blind to the scientific and anthropological facts that demonstrate that human populations everywhere have equal capabilities. In short, they are _choosing_ to believe stuff they hnow or ought to know is wrong, in order to support a predetermined notion of superiority. Equal capabilities? If you mean there are smart people and not so smart people in all populations, sure. But in in terms of traits being identically distributed across populations, that is [less likely](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7265/full/461726a.html). Still, the existence of statistical differences shouldn’t lead to implications about individuals or that people should have certain rights regardless of ability. ---
**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 8, 2011, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/106 "2011-05-08T19:25:09Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Skald, and I’m note trying to pick on you here, but… > > You seem to be changing your story a lot. Honestly, you really sound like you have some deep-seated chip on your shoulder about this. I can’t think of anyone who could possibly survive the, err… “scrutiny” you focus on Kant. But I will take you at your word here, however many of my eyebrows youn raise. > > So, with that in mind… > > What? You honestly condemn him as a moral theorist (or moral analyst, anyway) because he formed a silly idea about the intellectual prowess of Africans based on second- or third-hand accounts? _Which he later corrected_? No, I don’t. I disliked Kant’s ethical theories before I knew about the racism. The reason I opened the thread was that, given my disapproval of his ethics, it’s difficult for me to form a worthwhile opinion on whether the naive racism of his youth renders his ethics suspect. Thus I asked the opinion of persons who _don’t_ come at Kant with distaste in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2011, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/107 "2011-05-08T19:43:28Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Pretty much. And I’m dubious of the utility of [deductive] logic to reach moral conclusions anyway; it’s too easily manipulated. How would you reach them? ---
**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 8, 2011, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/108 "2011-05-08T20:02:21Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > How would you reach them? Well, that’s a whole 'nother thread. But I’ll grant that I should have written that I’m dubious of the usefulness of deductive logic to generate moral principles. You can use such logic to decide on a moral action in a given case, but that requires restricting the moral statements to the major premises rather than the minor ones, among other things. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/109 "2011-05-09T03:27:32Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > No, I don’t. I disliked Kant’s ethical theories before I knew about the racism. The reason I opened the thread was that, given my disapproval of his ethics, it’s difficult for me to form a worthwhile opinion on whether the naive racism of his youth renders his ethics suspect. I hope you are satisfied by this point that it does not. ---
**Author:** ![Fluxuz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/2bfe46/32.png) [@Fluxuz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fluxuz)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/110 "2011-05-11T04:03:59Z")
Some aspects of the philosophy of bigots like Kant, Hegel, Heidegger and so forth are more directly related to their bigoted views than others. I think there is much worth thinking about… or at least much which has been of influence in all of their works, both for its potentially racist uses and for countering things like their very own racism. Interestingly, I think you can base a very convincing critique of racism against each using points of their very own philosophies. Or you can just ignore the lot of them based on their being bigots and find other interesting things to read from authors who aren’t such bigots. ---
**Author:** ![kennysolex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/43a26b/32.png) [@kennysolex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kennysolex)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2016, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/111 "2016-09-15T09:20:36Z")
Well, I’m not buying into all the bullshit about limitedness of knowledge due to time. Kant was absolutely a good guy, I mean, he knew his stuff. But we must accept that when such compartment of clean thinking, as in Kant’s, sits side by side with a mind littered with hate and myopism, then, the overall philosophy falls into the trap of logical inconsistency. He was simply a cold man. Come to think of it, are we saying here that all folks who lived in Kant’s days in Konigsberg invariably shared the same view on racism? I don’t think so! Kant didn’t give such inkling either. He is responsible for the existential inconsistency which he matched on his entire philosophy which unrepentantly courted universality. That universality, must be allowed to permeate and be brought to bear on his own ideas too. If you wish, you may carry out a little research on Williams Amo, a black thinker who lived in Germany in the same time as Kant and was brilliant to the fore. What baffles me is…where did this whole idea of “trifles” which he uses in describing the black come from? ---
**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:** [September 15, 2016, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/112 "2016-09-15T13:21:02Z")
Man, what happened to **Kimmy\_Gibbler**? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2016, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/113 "2016-09-15T13:22:34Z")
> [@kennysolex](#): > > Well, I’m not buying into all the bullshit about limitedness of knowledge due to time. Kant was absolutely a good guy, I mean, he knew his stuff. But we must accept that when such compartment of clean thinking, as in Kant’s, sits side by side with a mind littered with hate and myopism, then, the overall philosophy falls into the trap of logical inconsistency. He was simply a cold man. Come to think of it, are we saying here that all folks who lived in Kant’s days in Konigsberg invariably shared the same view on racism? I don’t think so! Kant didn’t give such inkling either. He is responsible for the existential inconsistency which he matched on his entire philosophy which unrepentantly courted universality. That universality, must be allowed to permeate and be brought to bear on his own ideas too. If you wish, you may carry out a little research on Williams Amo, a black thinker who lived in Germany in the same time as Kant and was brilliant to the fore. What baffles me is…where did this whole idea of “trifles” which he uses in describing the black come from? I believe post #101 above was pointing toward an answer for that: > [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Hume’s. Hume was the one who had to try to justify slavery to keep his nation from being a bunch of immoral bastards. Kant’s Prussia didn’t keep slaves, and in fact, in his “The Science of Right”, Kant condemns slavery. Which only prompts the question, why would IK import Hume’s racism wholesale, when IK had no system of slavery to try to justify? > [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I would not say Kant’s moral failing was his claim of African inferiority (which, as I wrote upthread, he repudiated later anyway). It was his credulouslessness. That’s not a sin – not exactly – but it calls his moral judgment into question. As I wrote earlier, it would be as if an astrophysicist also believed in astrology. Give it up for Skald, whose point here is cogent and germane to the question I posed above. That was a disappointing lapse of judgment on the part of IK, who could reasonably be expected to have known better. Maybe the day he wrote that chapter the publisher was pestering him to send in the manuscript already and on top of that he had a stress headache, so he thought “screw this” and submitted his notes without a revision, thinking he’d revise it later but never got to it? A guess hazarded. ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2016, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/114 "2016-09-17T17:51:44Z")
My take: The question here, it seems to me, is whether I would cease to use hammers, and switch back to large rocks for all pounding situations, if I discovered that the person who invented hammers was a sexual deviant of some sort. Or maybe, that he only came up with the idea of hammers, because he wanted to give them as gifts to the cute girls where he lived, and thought the funny shape would make them want to have sex with him. Or something. Anyway, unless the parts of what people have used Kant’s thinking to build upon, were entirely dependent on whether his racism was correct or not, there’s no reason to toss his “babies” out with his other disgusting “bathwater.” But then, I’m very practical. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2016, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/115 "2016-09-17T20:51:57Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I would not say Kant’s moral failing was his claim of African inferiority (which, as I wrote upthread, he repudiated later anyway). It was his credulouslessness. That’s not a sin – not exactly – but it calls his moral judgment into question. As I wrote earlier, it would be as if an astrophysicist also believed in astrology. That’s a really bad analogy. It’s more like if a 17th or 18th century astronomer also believed in astrology. And moreover, if his scientifically grounded views were summarily dismissed because of that fact. You might consider the case of Isaac Newton, whose foundational contributions to classical physics are beyond question, and who also believed in the occult and in alchemy. Because, like Kant, he lived a long time ago when people believed this shit. Kant’s “credulousness” is furthermore also irrelevant because, not only did it reflect the times in which he lived, but it was fundamentally irrelevant to the framework in which he developed his moral philosophy. Your disdain for a moral philosophy derived from logical principles is noted, but many people consider Kant’s Categorical Imperative to be a momentous intellectual achievement in the history of ethical theory. Another analogy I would offer is Albert Einstein, by all accounts a kind and gentle man, but that has no relevance to the inexorable logic through which he developed his theories of relativity. If he had turned out to be a hateful raving bigot, the math would still stand on its own merits. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2016, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/116 "2016-09-18T21:43:47Z")
No, **wolfpup** , **Skald** had it right already when he specifically questioned the discrepancy between the lump importation of Hume’s racism and everything else that is known of Kant. It stands out as anomalous and calls for an explanation instead of being casually waved away as _Oh those earlier centuries, whatcha gonna do, knowhatimean?_ We are questioning it in terms of Kant’s 18th-century Königsberg worldview itself. I read it as a lapse of judgment on Kant’s part, and a bad one. Since we haven’t been shown any evidence for racism elsewhere in Kant’s life and works, that passage is anomalous, and that bothers us, though it may not bother you. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2016, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/117 "2016-09-19T04:19:54Z")
I don’t know that there’s any particular “right” here; in the OP, **Skald** asks “for those of you inclined to think well of [Immanuel Kant] in other ways: does the above passage (and others like it) lessen your opinion of his philosophy?” My answer is “no, it doesn’t”. I’ve explained why. Then in the post preceding mine, **Skald** provides an analogy with an astrophysicist who believes in astrology. I explained why it’s a terrible analogy. Let me try again to explain why the quote in the OP is of no relevance to Kant’s philosophical contributions. My argument, if you read it carefully, is in two parts, and doesn’t rely solely on the racist quote from Kant either being excused as anomalous nor does it rely on it being excused on the basis of being widely shared at the time, as much as in fact it was. But I nevertheless mentioned it because I do think historical context is relevant. Kant lived barely a generation later than Newton himself, and Newton believed in a whole range of really stupid unscientific stuff. Is it really a stretch to think that unfounded unscientific beliefs in racial inferiority were common and widespread in Kant’s time, when half a century after his death African Americans were still being bought and sold as commodities in slave markets, and that this was happening in a culture that was explicitly founded on the principles of freedom and equality? No, it is not a stretch, nor is it difficult to reconcile this apparent contradiction, because it’s hard to overestimate just how different our thinking is today from what it was in the 18th and 19th centuries: Scholars have been aware for a long time of the curious paradox of Enlightenment thought, that the supposedly universal aspiration to liberty, equality and fraternity in fact only operated within a very circumscribed universe. Equality was only ever conceived as equality among people presumed in advance to be equal, and if some person or group fell by definition outside of the circle of equality, then it was no failure to live up to this political ideal to treat them as unequal. [http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/why-has-race-survived/?\_r=0](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/why-has-race-survived/?_r=0) That’s not even my main point, though. The quote in the OP when viewed in the modern context will of course be disagreeable to every civilized person, so implying that “it may not bother me” is baseless and also entirely irrelevant to assessing the value of Kant’s work, as I tried to show with my comparisons with Newton and Einstein. The point that **Skald** fails to acknowledge is that if it’s possible to develop a moral philosophy from objective logical principles, then that achievement stands on its own merits every bit as much as any mathematical theorem or empirical science. The problem that **Skald** has with this is that he seems to believe that any moral philosophy must inherently be subjective, and that Kant is therefore tainted by his personal moral failings. Yet that subjectivity is precisely what Kant rejected and tried to transcend when he developed the school of philosophical thought we know today as deontological ethics. Ultimately of course any moral philosophy can be used to justify evil by starting with really bad assumptions. But that’s not a failure of the moral philosophy – it’s a failure of the assumptions, the world view to which we choose to apply it, just like a disastrous carpentry project might be blamed on getting the initial measurements all wrong, but it cannot be blamed on a failure of mathematics. Kant gave us the mathematics. It’s up to us to know how to measure, and cut, and apply an objective moral philosophy consistently to a set of core beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2016, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731/118 "2016-09-19T05:47:55Z")
I never said and never meant that the racism of the statement wouldn’t bother you. It’s a given that it bothers all of us. There have been a few racist cranks posting a lot in Great Debates who would condone or endorse that vile crap—yous know who yous are—but of course I did not imagine you, **wolfpup** , among their number. I meant the _discrepancy_ as a problem worth questioning, and weighing how a single yet heavy lapse in judgment may or may not be reflected in other areas of judgment. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-immanuel-kants-racist-opinions-render-the-rest-of-his-philosophy-suspect/580731.md?page=5)