Kant’s Views on Race as “Pure” Philosophy?: Discussing Huaping Lu-Adler’s “Kant, Race, and Racism” (chapters 3 and 4)

Abstract This article discusses Huaping Lu-Adler’s book Kant, Race, and Racism, in particular the third and fourth chapters. These chapters undertake a double contextualization of Kant’s writings on race: first, within Kant’s work and, second, within the naturalists’ discussions of his time. The engagement with these chapters focuses on the relationship between philosophy and its “outside.” This relationship is discussed in three dimensions: first, in the relationship between philosophy and natural science (Naturforschung); second, in the relationship between philosophy and prejudice; and third, in the relationship between philosophy and practice. All of these dimensions revolve around the problem of how to grasp the specific meaning and role of philosophy in its historical social context—a systematic question that can be derived from Lu-Adler’s analysis, even if it is not explicitly central to her work. The main conclusion is that the problem expressed in Kant’s views on race is not so much that he succumbs to the particular, limiting, and prejudiced ways of thinking of his time but rather that, in doing so, he also relies on an understanding of philosophy that cannot conceive of its own situatedness; a philosophy that sees itself as detached from the world and cannot grasp its own practical implications.