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Skin color and phlogiston Immanuel Kant’s racism in context

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Abstract

Although much attention has already been paid to Kant’s ideas on race, more research is needed to determine the sources that he used to support his portrayal of non-white races. A comprehension of the intellectual context gives us the opportunity to see the way in which Kant wished to contribute to discussions on inheritable human characteristics and the inferiority of certain races. This article will emphasize the relevance of the views of Joseph Priestley and Alexander Wilson for Kant’s hypothesis on the relation between phlogiston and the black race. This allows us to comprehend the methodology that Kant prescribed for natural history and its consequences for his understanding of the inferiority of the black race.

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Notes

  1. Banton went even further than Montagu when he argued that in ‘in some quarters it is not race but racism that is the phlogiston of our time, a supposedly elemental force which is never clearly located in human psychology or social structure and which offers only circular explanations of racial discrimination’ (Banton 1983, 13).

  2. Robert Bernasconi had earlier pointed out that the ‘sources from which Kant drew his portraits of Native Americans and Blacks need to be studied more rigorously’ (Bernasconi 2002, p. 148).

  3. On Buffon’s idea of degeneration: Sloan (1973).

  4. On the importance of Kant's essays on race for his teleology: McFarland (1970, pp. 56–68) and Zammito (1992, pp. 199–213).

  5. Bernasconi has earlier written: ‘One could almost say that natural description without natural history is blind, and natural history without natural description empty’ (Bernasconi 2010a, p. 287).

  6. A German translation of Priestley’s essay appeared in 1778 (Priestley 1778b). The essay also appeared in the third volume of his Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air of which a German translation appeared in 1780 (with regard to the topic of blood, see: Priestley 1780, pp. 50–81).

  7. A German translation of Moscati’s essay appeared in 1780 (with regard to his discussion on the color of blood, see: Moscati 1780, pp. 46–47).

  8. Werner Stark has made the transcript available at http://kant.bbaw.de/base.htm/geo_volk.htm (accessed August 2019).

  9. One is therefore surprised to see the hypothesis reappear in Metzger’s Medicinisch philosophische Anthropologie für Aerzte from 1790 (Metzger 1790, p. 111).

  10. A German translation of Lind’s book appeared in 1773 (with regard to the quoted passage, see: Lind 1773, pp. 134–135).

  11. A German translation became available in 1778 (Volta 1778b).

  12. A German translation became available in 1778 (with regard to his findings on the color of blood, see: Priestley 1778a, pp. 189–195).

  13. I refer here in passing to Cruikshank’s (1795) treatise Experiments on the Insensible Perspiration of the Human Body, Shewing its Affinity to Respiration: ‘Experiments made since this Treatise went to the press, now fully convince me that oil and charcoal may be found incrustating the surface of the body, so as to make it as black as the skin of a Negro, to all appearance…. All this seems to prove that phlogiston is emitted from the pores of the skin’ (Cruikshank 1795, pp. 94–95; see also Tullett 2016, p. 313). As the passage already suggests, this conclusion was not part of the 1779 edition of Cruikshank’s text.

  14. Werner Stark has made the transcript available at http://kant.bbaw.de/base.htm/geo_bar.htm (accessed August 2019).

  15. Although Wilson exemplified his claim with a reference to the deforestation in North-America, as of the early 1780s Kant used the case of Madeira for the same purposes: deforestation diminished not so much the humidity of the air (as we read in earlier manuscripts of Kant’s lectures on physical geography) but the phlogiston in the air. At the end of the seventeenth century John Woodward had famously advocated for the deforestation of America because of the dangers of the humidity caused by forests (Woodward 1699, p. 209). Interestingly, the German translator of Woodward’s essay felt the need to add a reference to the improvement of the air of Madeira as a result of deforestation (Woodward 1748, pp. 47n–48n).

  16. Werner Stark has made the transcript available at http://kant.bbaw.de/base.htm/geo_doe.htm (accessed August 2019).

  17. Montesquieu had earlier criticized this reasoning (de Montesquieu 1748, pp. 393–394).

  18. A German translation of Schotte’s book appeared in 1786 (with regard to the quoted passage, see: Schotte 1786, p. 46).

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van Gorkom, J. Skin color and phlogiston Immanuel Kant’s racism in context. HPLS 42, 16 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-020-00311-4

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