TELEOLOGY AND RACISM: IS KANT THE PIONEER OF “SCIENTIFIC RACISM”?

This essay examines the theory, advanced by authors such as Bernasconi, Gray, and Lu-Adler, that Kant establishes a “scientific racism” based on the teleological principle. First, we summarize the grounds for these authors’ argument that Kant initiated scientific racism. Second, we examine the role of the teleological principle in Kant’s writings on race and in the Critique of Judgment. Although we argue that teleology cannot provide a basis for scientific racism, we find that Kant used this principle to evaluate the capacity of human beings to cultivate themselves. This shows that teleology, as a principle for realizing freedom in history, still have a specific discriminatory role that is relevant to politics and rights within Kantian philosophy