ABSTRACT

LeBlanc’s article interprets Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787) in light of his texts on race. It shows that, when Kant’s less canonical work on race is considered, his racial neutrality in this so-called ‘first critique’ becomes flawed. The first part of LeBlanc’s argumentation suggests that Kant’s monogenetic conception of the human species is compatible with the universalism of the transcendental deduction, and explains how this is largely supported by the fact that Kant himself diminished the importance of his work on race. It is in this broader context that LeBlanc concludes this first section by asserting that the categories of the human understanding, as explained in the transcendental deduction, would be applicable to the whole human species if we followed Kant’s logic. The second part of this paper starts from the Kantian idea that only white European peoples can produce science. It demonstrates that this Kantian idea broadens the function of the transcendental deduction in the first critique with regard to the history of modern science—namely, to give legitimacy to Newton’s science—to exclude non-Whites from the work of science in general. It is thus the juxtaposition of Kant’s analysis of modern European scientific culture on the one hand, and his account of human races on the other, that indicates a possible implicit racism in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The colour of the transcendental deduction in its function of scientific legitimation is thus revealed to be potentially white, although LeBlanc’s article still admits that other interpretive perspectives are reasonable and possible. His conclusion aims to make suggestions about the future of Kant studies in a global context in which postcoloniality can no longer be avoided, and the work of scholars such as Robert Bernasconi and Charles W. Mills, among others, should be taken as crucial.

摘要

勒布朗文章解读康德《纯粹理性批判》中范畴的先验演绎(1781, 1787) 根据他关于种族的文本。这表明，当考虑康德关于种族的不那么规范的工作时，他在这种所谓的“第一批判”中的种族中立性就变得有缺陷。勒布朗论证的第一部分表明康德关于人类物种的单基因概念与先验演绎的普遍主义相容，并解释了康德本人削弱了他关于种族的工作的重要性这一事实如何在很大程度上支持了这一点。正是在这个更广泛的背景下，勒布朗通过断言，如果我们遵循康德的逻辑，先验演绎中所解释的人类理解的范畴将适用于整个人类物种，从而结束第一部分。本文的第二部分从康德的思想开始，即只有欧洲白人才能产生科学。它表明，这种康德思想扩大了关于现代科学史的第一次批判中的先验演绎的功能——即赋予牛顿科学合法性——将非白人排除在一般科学工作之外。因此，康德一方面对现代欧洲科学文化的分析，另一方面对人类的解释并置，表明康德的观点中可能存在隐含的种族主义。纯粹理性批判。因此，尽管勒布朗的文章仍然承认其他解释性观点是合理且可能的，但其科学合法化功能中的先验演绎的颜色因此被揭示为潜在的白色。他的结论旨在为康德研究在后殖民化不可避免的全球背景下的未来提出建议，罗伯特·伯纳斯科尼 (Robert Bernasconi) 和查尔斯·W·米尔斯 (Charles W. Mills) 等学者的工作应被视为至关重要。