Arguments for slavery reparations have fallen out of favour even as reparations for other forms of racial injustice are taken more seriously. This retreat is unsurprising, as arguments for slavery reparations often rely on two normatively irregular claims: that reparations are owed to the dead (as opposed to, say, their living heirs) and that the present generation inherits an as yet unrequited guilt from past generations. Outside of some strands of Black thought and activism on slavery reparations, these claims are widely rejected. I develop an argument for slavery reparations around those foundational claims by adopting the normative framework of Immanuel Kant. On what I call the Basic Argument for slavery reparations, the application of Kant’s retributivist theory of punishment to slavery justifies reparations as a kind of proportional punishment for slavery. I also show that Kant’s philosophy offers reparations theorists resources to overcome several contemporary objections to slavery reparations.

尽管更认真地对待其他形式的种族不公正的赔偿，但对奴隶制赔偿的争论却不受欢迎。这种退缩并不令人惊讶，因为有关奴隶制赔偿的论点通常依赖于两个规范性的非常规主张：赔偿是死者的（而不是他们活着的继承人），并且这一代人继承了前几代人至今未曾感到过的罪恶感。除了布莱克关于奴隶制赔偿的思想和行动主义之外，这些主张被广泛拒绝。通过采用伊曼纽尔·康德（Immanuel Kant）的规范性框架，我为围绕这些基本主张的奴隶制赔偿提出了论点。在我所说的关于奴隶制赔偿的基本论据上，康德的分配主义惩罚理论在奴隶制中的应用证明赔偿是对奴隶制的一种比例惩罚。我还表明，康德的哲学为赔偿理论家提供了资源，以克服当代对奴隶制赔偿的异议。