2. Culture and Human Development

It is easy to assume a sort of ‘off-the-cuff’ conception of culture as it is deployed in Kant’s account of race. One might naturally understand ‘culture’ in such contexts as referring to a particular way of life: the behavior of a people, the social organization in which they find themselves, their customary practices and traditions, and their history. This natural, pre-theoretical understanding of culture is commonly assumed by scholars examining Kant’s claims about the cultures of races, including Louden (Reference Louden2000: 99–100), Allais (Reference Allais2016: 18–9), and Eberl (Reference Eberl2019: 406). This is especially noteworthy in the case of Louden, as elsewhere in the same book he discusses the technical notion of culture from KU, from which my own interpretation derives (Reference Louden2000: 40, 93).

This understanding, however, muddles Kant’s categorical denial of culture to Indigenous Americans. Certainly, Kant recognizes Indigenous Americans as possessing a way of living. Kant praises Indigenous Americans for their courage (ZeF, 8:365) and for having a ‘sublime character of mind’ and ‘strong feeling of honor’ (GSE, 2:253–4). In the published version of his lectures on physical geography, Kant includes a detailed discussion of various aspects of Indigenous American societies, mentioning practices of hunting, spiritual beliefs, modes of transportation, body modification, reports of geronticide among Inuit peoples, forms of governance and justice, practices of warfare, and tobacco ceremonies (PG, 9:428–35). All in all, there is ample evidence that, were culture properly understood as encompassing the characteristic beliefs, practices, and customs of a people, Kant would have recognized Indigenous Americans to possess culture.

Kleingeld, for her part, suggests that by ‘culture’, Kant could mean agriculture, thus when he denies Indigenous Americans’ culture, he is merely denying their use of agriculture (Reference Kleingeld2007: 574n, 587). Kleingeld proffers no textual support for this suggestion, however, and the reading makes little sense of Kant’s claims that Black individuals possess the ‘culture of servants’ and that Asians have the ‘culture of art’. Unless we could make sense of an ‘agriculture of servants’ or an ‘agriculture of art’, this suggestion likewise ought to be dismissed.

Furthermore, ‘culture’ possesses a perfectly coherent, technical meaning in Kant’s philosophy; there would need to be compelling evidence to read it non-technically, as Louden, Allais, Eberl, and Kleingeld do. When Kant elsewhere comments on culture in his corpus, he describes it not as a way of life or as related to agriculture but as an aspect of the development of the human species. According to Kant, there are three intertwined phases of human development: culture, civilization, and moralization, the last of which is the highest and ‘final end’ (Endzweck) for humanity (Anth, 7:324–5; IaG, 8:26; Refl 1524, 15:896–7; V-Anth/Mensch, 25:1197–8; V-Anth/Mrong, 25:1426–7). (For more on the place of culture in Kant’s teleology, see Wood (Reference Wood1991), Louden (Reference Louden2000, 40), and Marwah (Reference Marwah2012; Reference Marwah2019: 45–9). For a perspective on culture’s pivotal role in KU, see Bremner (Reference Bremner2022).) Perhaps the clearest description of the historical conception of culture appears in the Doctrine of Method of the Critique of Teleological Judgment, in which Kant describes culture as the ‘ultimate end [letzter Zweck] of nature’ (KU, 5:429–34) and specifies that ‘the production of the aptitude of a rational being for any ends in general (thus those of his freedom) is culture’ (5:431; see Wood Reference Wood1991: 341–3). According to the picture that Kant develops in §83 of KU, nature aims at the development of human predispositions to their highest degree, so that humans become able to set and to achieve whatever ends they desire (see Reath Reference Reath and Robertson2009: 199–200n). In the Pädagogik Kant reiterates that culture is ‘the procurement of skillfulness’, which is ‘the possession of a capacity [Vermögens] which is sufficient for the carrying out of whatever purposes’ (Päd, 9:449, translation modified). This understanding of culture is reiterated in various contexts by Kant. According to student notes from his lectures on metaphysics, ‘culture of skillfulness’ is ‘necessary, because we use it for all ends’ (V-Met-L₂/Pölitz, 28:534). In other notes from lectures on anthropology we find the claim that ‘Culture [is] the enlargement [Vergrösserung] of our talents’ (V-Anth/Busolt, 25:1511). Similar descriptions are found in student notes from Kant’s theology lectures, where culture is characterized as the development of one’s talent and as requiring the overcoming of a ‘raw’ state in which one is driven merely by instinct (V-Phil-Th/Pölitz, 28:1077; V-Th/Volckmann, 28:1187).

According to Kant, nature primarily employs unsocial sociability to drive human beings to develop their predispositions to the highest degree, that is, to achieve culture (Anth, 7:321–2; IaG, 8:20–1; KU, 5:432–4). By means of the tension between our need to be around other human beings and the conflicts that inevitably thereby arise, we humans are forced to develop our abilities (Wood Reference Wood1991). The development of human capacities (achievement of culture) makes possible civilization and moralization, that is, the attainment of justice and morality in society. To achieve these rarefied heights of human development, nature’s tools—like unsocial sociability—are no longer the primary driver. Rather, the ‘final end of nature’, that is, ‘the human being […] as a moral being’ (KU 5:435), is set as an end by human reason and is to be pursued via human beings’ cultivated predispositions. As Wood (Reference Wood1991: 343) famously puts it: in the ‘epoch of nature’, nature aims at its goal of developing human predispositions, which culminates in the achievement of the ultimate end of nature, viz., culture. Upon realizing the capacity to set and to achieve our own human ends, thus begins the ‘epoch of freedom’, in which humans aim their developed predispositions at the final end of nature: ‘a human society free from antagonism, where every rational being is treated as an end and […] free development of each has become the condition for the free development of all’ (Wood Reference Wood1991: 345; see also Refl 1521, 15:882–92). Ernst Cassirer (Reference Cassirer1944) likewise articulates this progressive conception of culture: ‘Human culture taken as a whole may be described as the process of man’s progressive self-liberation. Language, art, religion, science, are various phases in this process. In all of them man discovers and proves a new power—the power to build up a world of his own, an “ideal” world’ (1944: 228).

Nevertheless, insofar as different kinds of ends that rational agents may set require different aptitudes to achieve them, there are accordingly distinct components of culture. So, for instance, Kant distinguishes the ‘culture of skill’ and the ‘culture of training (discipline)’ (KU, 5:431–2). On the one hand, discipline, for Kant, consists in an agent’s ability to not be drawn uncritically or irrationally by instincts or desires. In that sense, it is a ‘negative’ condition of culture: in order to set ends for oneself and act according to maxims to achieve those ends one must be disciplined. This is why Kant sometimes distinguishes discipline as an antecedent, historical stage of development and condition of cultivation (KrV, A709–10/B737–8; Päd 9:449). If one is merely pushed and pulled by appetite, one cannot satisfy the first condition of culture: the setting of ends. On the other hand, the culture of skill is a positive, technical disposition; it involves the ability to manipulate objects for the achievement of one’s ends (Anth, 7:322).

But the analysis of culture does not end with the distinction between the culture of skill and that of discipline. Kant’s corpus is replete with mentions of different sorts of culture, including cultures of ‘spirit’ (Geist) (Päd, 9:470), ‘mind’ (Gemüth) (Anth, 7:152), ‘reason’ (KrV, A817/B845; MS, 6:484), ‘taste’ (Anth, 7:297; KU, 5:170; Refl 993, 15:438; V-Anth/Collins, 25: 187–96), ‘memory’ (Anth, 7:328; Päd, 9:474), ‘soul’ (Seele) (Päd, 9:469), and ‘power of judgment’ (Urteilskraft) (V-Anth/Mensch, 25:973). As Kant explains in the Pädagogik, these particular cultures are capacities to achieve particular kinds of ends, whereas culture in the general sense, outlined above, is a general aptitude to achieve ends of whatever sort (Päd, 9:475). Cultivation of these individual capacities does not just involve strengthening one’s mental faculties: it is important, for instance, to rein in an overactive imagination (Päd, 9:476). There are, hence, for Kant, a wide variety of particular cultures, concerning distinct capacities and types of ends.

So, to conclude and elaborate the connections among these notions, culture, in general, is the state of possessing actualized human predispositions, adequate for the achievement of whatever ends one may set. To an extent, however, this state is a mere ideal; as Kant puts it, ‘because of the multitude of purposes, skillfulness becomes, as it were, infinite’ (Päd, 9:449–50). During the advance toward this state, human predispositions are developed piecemeal, and particular cultures are achieved, which progressively expands the horizons of one’s ends. In the ideal endpoint of cultivation, one would have developed all particular cultures and thus achieved the ultimate end of nature, that is, general culture, ‘the aptitude of a rational being for any ends in general’ (KU, 5:431). However, a precondition for the possession of or development of culture, whether general or particular, is the capacity to set ends for oneself, a capacity that is equivalent to the possession of humanity (see section 4).

3. Cultural Inaptitude

With the teleological understanding of culture described, I return to spelling out Kant’s views on the cultures of the races. I note that this content may be upsetting to read. According to the preceding interpretation of culture, the claim that Black people can achieve only the culture of servants means that they have developed predispositions to achieve certain kinds of ends, namely those ‘of servants’. Which, then, are the ends of servants? I contend the best explanation of Kant’s view is that the culture of servants involves proficiency to achieve ends that another—namely a master—sets for them.

Although I produce more positive evidence for my thesis below, support for my interpretation of the culture of servants is found in ruling out a competitive interpretation. According to this understanding, those possessing the culture of servants are proficient at the sorts of physical labor with which servants are commonly tasked: field work, milling, spinning, and so forth. There is, indeed, some evidence that Kant thought this way. As Lu-Adler puts it, Kant believed that Black people possessed an ‘animalistic excellence’ (Reference Lu-Adler2022: 275), a physical aptitude outstripping the other races. In student notes from Kant’s lectures on physical geography, we find assertions that plainly support that view (V-PG, 26:93; see also VvRM, 2:438).

But, while Kant clearly believes that Black persons have physical aptitude for manual labor, I contend that this is not what he had in mind when describing them as possessing the culture of servants. First and foremost, Kant had other terminology to identify Black individuals’ alleged physical prowess. This sort of physical aptitude could have been called the ‘culture of skill’ (KU, 5:432) or even ‘physical education’ (Päd, 9:466–9). More speculatively, a proficiency with the activities commonly undertaken by servants could be titled a ‘culture of (physical) labor’. But Kant did not use this terminology; he wrote instead of a culture of servants. What distinguishes servantry from a particular set of skills, a physical education, or a kind of labor? The conditions of the activity: the relation to a master who sets the ends of activity. Hence, when Kant assigns Black people the culture of servants, he does not mean to spotlight physical prowess (though he also believes in this prowess and that it makes Black people capable servants and slaves), but rather he means they are proficient at achieving the ends that masters set for them.

What, however, does it mean to restrict Black individuals to the ‘culture of servants’ and Indigenous Americans to ‘no culture’, whatsoever? One implication is clear and well-trodden in the literature on Kant’s racism: being limited to these preliminary aspects of development entails that, for Kant, Black and Indigenous American people have no place in the future civilization and moralization of humanity (Larrimore Reference Larrimore1999; Bernasconi Reference Bernasconi2003: 19–20; Marwah, Reference Marwah2019: 102–9; Lu-Adler Reference Lu-Adler2022: 276–80). In the remainder of the section, I argue that Kant’s restriction of the cultural horizons of people of these races further entails that they are incapable of setting their own ends.Footnote ⁵

First, this interpretation fits the technical understanding of culture, discussed above. Since culture, in general, is the capacity to achieve ends of any sort and particular cultures are capacities to achieve ends of particular sorts, the categorical denial of Indigenous Americans’ culture is to deny that they can achieve ends of any sort. Likewise, Black people are capable only of the servant’s culture for Kant, meaning that they can achieve only those ends that are set for them by a master. Indeed, the direct opposition of the culture of servants to that of the master (Herr) in V-Anth/Starke II (119) supports this understanding. Such a culture of servants is, however, culture in a degenerate sense. Being limited to this culture of servants entails that other possible ends—like those set by a Black individual themself—cannot be achieved.

Second, more direct textual support for this interpretation can be found throughout Kant’s writings on the topic, atrocious as they are. For example, Kant emphasizes that Black people ‘are incapable of leading themselves’ and that ‘Americans and Negroes cannot govern themselves [and] serve therefore only as slaves [Sclaven]’ (Refl 1520, 15:877–8). Relatedly, in V-Anth/Matuszewski appears the claim that ‘He [the Negro] appears to be made for this purpose, to serve others, however never to be civilized’ (447; see also V-Anth/Dohna, 352). In virtue of being ‘incapable of leading themselves’, according to Kant, Indigenous Americans and Black people are lacking in a condition for culture: namely, that of setting their own ends. Thus, he claims, they must have ends set for them in the context of a master-slave/servant relationship. Relatedly, in two of Kant’s lecture notes, the ‘culture of servants’ or ‘formation of servants’ he assigns to Black persons is glossed as follows: ‘i.e., they can be trained [tressiren/abrichten]’ (V-Anth/Mensch, 25:1187; V-Anth/Petersburg, 315), here suggesting that the cultural deficiency involves a need to be directed, dominated, or tamed.

Additional evidence is found in Kant’s claim that Indigenous Americans are less capable slaves than Africans (VvRM, 2:438n). This is, for Kant, because Indigenous Americans are incapable of culture, even the culture of servants. The minimal culture of Black individuals—the ability effectively to achieve the ends that others set for them—makes them, according to Kant, more competent as slaves, a difference chalked up to Indigenous Americans’ lack of discipline. Discipline, as I explain above, is a prerequisite to culture for Kant. ‘Discipline […] changes animal nature into human nature’ (Päd, 9:441), making possible the overcoming of instinctual drives, setting and achieving ends, and attaining culture (Päd 9:450; Refl 1497, 15:771). Black Africans, according to Kant, are capable of being disciplined and are therefore capable of the rudimentary culture of servants, meaning that they are more proficient at achieving those ends set for them than Indigenous Americans.

Third, Kant regularly depicts Black and Indigenous American people as congenitally listless, which provides further support for my interpretation. For instance, Kant describes Black people as such in a notorious footnote from his third race essay, in which he approves of James Tobin’s denunciation of free Black laborers. Tobin’s essay is a response to James Ramsey’s abolitionist book, which was paraphrased in Sprengel’s Beiträge zur Völker und Länderkunde, to which Kant refers (Bernasconi Reference Bernasconi, Ward and Lott2002: 148):

It is liberation from slavery that, according to Kant, leads Black people astray. Instead of finding and dedicating themselves to constructive ends, they are found in random, frivolous endeavors. This depiction suggests, that, for Kant, outside the confines of slavery—in which slaves are directed toward others’ ends—Black people are desultory and rudderless. When freed, on his view, Black former slaves are found languid because they are incapable of setting and achieving their own ends. Furthermore, this passage implies that the culture of servitude is not a merely conditional aspect of Black persons. Kant goes on to suggest that the low drive to activity, or ‘impetus’ [Antriebe], which explains freed Black slaves’ inability to adapt to their liberated condition, is ‘received from nature’, is passed down from generation to generation, and does not become ‘extinguished’ (ÜGTP, 8:174n.).

Kant likewise describes Indigenous Americans as by nature passive. According to Kant, Indigenous Americans ‘have a great indifference in their character’ (V-Anth/Collins, 25:233); are ‘insensitive’ (Refl 1520, 15:877; V-Anth/Brauer, 194; V-Anth/Parow, 25:409, 451), which means that they are unmoved by affect; have ‘no passions’ (Refl 1520, 15:877; V-Anth/Starke II, 119; V-Anth/Petersburg, 315); and possess ‘no incentives’ [Triebfeder] (V-Anth/Mensch, 25:1187). Kant additionally is attributed the view that nothing ‘causes a drive [Trieb]’ in Indigenous American and Black individuals (V-Anth/Parow, 25:409). In virtue of Indigenous Americans’ insensitivity and indifference, ‘nothing affects them, they are disturbed neither through promises nor threats’ (V-Anth/Brauer, 194; V-Anth/Parow, 25:451) and ‘they can stand longest in deep thought, they do either totally nothing or commit themselves to luck and games of chance’ (V-Anth/Collins, 25:233). Collectively, such passages indicate that nothing appears to Indigenous Americans, and arguably, to Black people, as valuable or so as to be set as an end. Herein lies, by Kant’s lights, the fundamental cultural deficiency: members of these races are incapable of effectively achieving their ends because nothing can be incorporated as an end into their decision making.

Lastly, a variety of passages attest that Black and Indigenous American persons are incapable of further historical development, implying that their cultural deficiencies cannot be overcome. For instance, the following passage from student notes to Kant’s anthropology lectures attributes to him the sentiment that Black and Indigenous American peoples’ development has stalled out.

This sentiment, that Black people cannot achieve civilization is reiterated elsewhere: ‘The Negro can be disciplined and cultivated, never however genuinely civilized. He lapses from himself into savagery [Wildheit]’ (Refl 1520, 15:878). Relatedly, in student notes from Kant’s lectures on anthropology, it is stated that ‘The Negroes and Americans will hence never be capable of founding an orderly civil society for themselves’ (V-Anth/Starke II, 119; see also V-Anth/Mensch, 25:1181). Such passages suggest that these cultural deficiencies are, for Kant, unchangeable and part of their racial nature.

Mikkola (Reference Mikkola2011: 99), borrowing from Louise Antony, distinguishes between an individual bearing a property ‘by nature’ either determinatively—the individual’s bearing of the property cannot be changed—or normatively—the individual’s bearing the property is desirable. In Kant’s view, Indigenous Americans and Black people are determined by nature to possess their cultural deficiencies.

That much is also implied by Kant’s underlying theory of racialization (VvRM, 2:434–43). According to Kant, the initial, ‘phyletic’ human beings, who existed prior to the development of the races, possessed natural predispositions to adapt to their environments as they migrated across the globe. Such environmental conditions were the (occasional) cause of racialization, according to Kant: upon being exposed to various environments, over time, humans of various communities developed distinct characteristics, like skin colors, which were subsequently invariably passed down generation upon generation. However, the predispositions that cause adaptation to environments became inert after this initial stage of racial formation. That is, subsequent to racialization, environmental conditions can no longer activate predispositions to effect adaptation or another racial transformation. Racial features are ‘unfailingly hereditary’ (VvRM, 2:430; BBM, 8:100–1), according to Kant; they are fixed, unchanging, and invariably inherited.

Racial characteristics, however, include not only skin color. Kant maintains that a wide variety of features are racialized, including cognitive aptitude, physical ability, sociability, temperament, and sensitivity. Among these racial characteristics, for Kant, are the limitations of culture exhibited by persons of color, which entail that they suffer from inability to set and to achieve their own ends. On his view, the lack of culture of Indigenous Americans and the limited culture of Black individuals, like other racial characteristics, are based on the respective natures of the races, not on their mere contingent circumstances, and are therefore permanent.

While Kant’s racist views depicted in this section are odious and distressing to read, my intent in presenting them is to support the redress of racial injustice, especially by clarifying the history of racism and its place in the philosophical canon. In the following, I describe the way that these commitments hang together in Kant’s philosophical system, highlighting their moral ramifications.

4. Humanity and Moral Worth of the Uncultured

Thus, with a more thorough understanding of Kant’s views on culture, I come to the pressing question of their moral implications. To be clear, I do not mean to imply that the moral context is the only or the most important context for discussing Kant’s racist ideology and its implications on our reception of his thought. For instance, there is excellent scholarship on the implications of Kant’s racism for contemporary political theory, such as Mills (Reference Mills2018), Huseyinzadegan (Reference Huseyinzadegan2019), and Basevich (Reference Basevich2020). But some of the most prominent debates about Kant’s racism relate to moral philosophy, the egalitarian character of which appears to conflict with Kant’s racial hierarchy: see Eze (Reference Eze1995), Hill and Boxill (Reference Hill, Boxill and Boxill2000), Mills (Reference Mills and Valls2005, Reference Mills2014), Bernasconi (Reference Bernasconi, Ward and Lott2002, Reference Bernasconi2003, Reference Bernasconi, Elden and Mendieta2011), Kleingeld (Reference Kleingeld2007), and Allais (Reference Allais2016). In this section, I explain why on Kant’s view the capacity to set one’s own ends is essential to moral worth, which has the consequence that Black people and Indigenous American people lack moral worth, for Kant, thereby supporting the Untermensch interpretation.

The following passage from the Metaphysik der Sitten weaves together the concepts of ends-setting, culture (in the technical sense), and humanity. In this section, ‘humanity’ refers to the set of characteristics described by Kant as distinguishing human beings from mere animals in a moral context, and, hence, that which gives agents their moral worth. In the following section, I distinguish this moral concept of humanity from the biological concept of humanity (qua species). Most importantly for the argument of this section, Kant is clear that the status of humanity—a necessary condition for moral worth—involves an ability to set ends for oneself.

Several themes in this passage are notable (see Reath Reference Reath and Robertson2009: 199–200). First, Kant is clear that human beings have a duty to achieve culture, that is, to develop their capacities to achieve ends of all different sorts. Second, the reason that humans possess this duty is that the capacity to set ends is an essential part of their humanity, that which distinguishes them from mere animals. Unlike mere animals, humans are not simple agents of instinct; they set goals, rationally direct their behavior, develop and frame their life projects, and, fundamentally, act for reasons. So, crucially for my purposes, humanity, according to Kant, involves the ability to set ends for oneself (see Wood Reference Wood1999: 118–20). As Korsgaard puts it, ‘Kant takes the characteristic feature of humanity, or rational nature, to be the capacity for setting an end’ (Reference Korsgaard1986: 187). Further, Kant maintains that humanity is an objective end of absolute, non-relative worth, a commitment most clearly exhibited in the Formula of Humanity of the Categorical Imperative: ‘So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means’ (GMS, 4:429; see also KpV, 5:86–7). Humanity, for Kant, is the end in itself, whereas ‘all the objects of the inclinations have only a conditional worth’ (4:428). Yet this absolute worth of humanity depends on its ‘characteristic feature’, its being the capacity for setting ends.

This line of reasoning, coupled with our conclusion about Kant’s views in section 3, that persons of color lack the capacity for ends-setting, has a further heinous consequence: individuals who cannot set ends for themselves—Indigenous Americans and Black people—do not possess absolute moral worth. They lack the humanity that is to be respected as an end. Kant himself suggests precisely this, namely, that some peoples have not developed their humanity: ‘though they may be in service of Europeans for a long time, they can never grow accustomed to the European way of life. […This] is a certain raw state that the animal in this case has so to speak not developed the humanity inside itself’ (Päd, 9:442). Indeed, Kant’s descriptions of the crudity of Indigenous Americans (GSE, 2:253; Päd, 9:444; PG, 9:432; Refl 1497, 16:771; V-Anth/Fried 25:622, 512; V-Anth/Matuszewski, 331; V-Anth/Mensch, 25:1190; V-Anth/Mrong, 25:1251; V-Anth/Starke II, 119) and Black people (Refl 1520, 15:878 (above); V-Anth/Mrong, 25:1251) as well as his mention of those ‘in service of Europeans for a long time’ show that it is precisely these persons of color that he takes to lack actualized humanity. Thus, analysis of Kant’s comments on the racial manifestations of culture supports the Untermensch interpretation of his views on the moral dimensions of race.

5. Supporting the Untermensch Interpretation

As mentioned above, although scholars disagree about the appropriate reaction to and understanding of Kant’s racism, many, including Hill and Boxill (Reference Hill, Boxill and Boxill2000), Kleingeld (Reference Kleingeld2007), Bernasconi (Reference Bernasconi, Elden and Mendieta2011), and Allais (Reference Allais2016), oppose the Untermensch interpretation. The apparent crux of their opposition is the proposition that there is no conceptual space in Kant’s system for human beings who fall short of moral humanity. In this section, I offer rejoinders to these accounts, particularly as voiced by Allais and Kleingeld.

On one hand, Allais criticizes the idea that nonwhite individuals lack moral personhood, for Kant, on the following grounds.

Where Allais goes wrong is in tacitly assuming a pretheoretic conception of culture. If ‘culture’ referred merely to a way of life, then, indeed, lacking a particular sort of culture or even lacking culture, full stop, would be no barrier to moral worth. However, as I have shown by analyzing passages from Kant above, when particular cultures are understood technically as the state of actualization of one’s predispositions for particular sets of ends, the restricted cultures of Black people and Indigenous Americans have precisely the implication Allais claims to be requisite for the Untermensch interpretation.

On the other hand, Kleingeld (Reference Kleingeld2007: 584) argues that the Untermensch interpretation fails, because, while it supposes that nonwhite individuals are not humans (since humanity is the condition for moral worth), Kant explicitly claims members of each race belong to the same human species (VvRM, 2:429–30; BBM, 8:99). Indeed, this was one of the explicit aims of Kant’s account: to detail a monogenetic theory of race. In response, Mills (Reference Mills2014: 140) iterates that Kleingeld’s response rests on an equivocation: she assumes the identity of humanity as a biological concept and humanity as a moral concept. That is, she mistakenly infers that since individuals of each race belong to the same species (biological concept), they must all possess the same capacities and, hence, moral worth (moral concept). In the remainder of this article, I provide additional support for Mills’ rejoinder by clarifying the biological concept of humanity and by illustrating the division between these concepts.

First, consider Kant’s biological concept of humanity. In VvRM (2:429–30), Kant distinguishes between two methods of classifying species: that characteristic of Carl Linnaeus and that of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. In his influential taxonomy, the Systema Naturæ, Linnaeus classified organisms based on observable similarities. In contrast, Buffon, in his Histoire Naturelle, argued that we ought to classify species based on unity of origin. Kant is clear in his preference for Buffon’s approach, claiming that, whereas Linnaeus’ approach provides a ‘system for memory’, Buffon’s ‘provides a natural system for the understanding’ that ‘bring[s the species] under laws’ (VvRM, 2:429). Kant faults the Linnaean approach as providing us only ‘nominal species’, but Buffon’s approach carves nature at its joints, describing ‘real species’ (BBM, 8:102). Of course, it is difficult to determine whether given individuals share a generative history, humans being unable to survey the entire history of organisms’ ancestry.Footnote ⁶ To this end, Kant proposes that we utilize ‘Buffon’s Rule’ to determine unity of origin and thus identity of species: ‘animals which produce fertile youth with one another (whatever difference in shape there may be) still belong to one and the same physical species’ (VvRM, 2:429). Kant goes on to utilize this standard to infer that individuals of every race belong to one and the same species, for those of different races may have fertile offspring.Footnote ⁷

It is important to recognize, as Mills suggests, that belonging to the same biological species—possessing a shared generative history—does not entail that individuals possess the same mental or moral capacities. Just because an individual (biological) human being may produce fertile offspring with others does not imply that they share in the capacity to set and to achieve their own ends. Indeed, the evidence on offer indicates that this is precisely Kant’s position: Black and Indigenous American people are biological humans, sharing a unity of origin with whites and Asians, while being incapable of setting their own ends and, thus, not achieving the status of moral humanity.Footnote ⁸

A second line of response to Kleingeld’s interpretation highlights Kant’s own descriptions of human beings who lack capacities that are prerequisites to moral worth. That is, Kant believes there to be individuals who fall under the biological concept of humanity but not the moral concept of humanity. He includes those with mental disabilities in this category, as shown by the following quote, which may be distressing to read as it expresses Kant’s ableism.

In this passage, Kant asserts that human beings may be so severely mentally disabled that they only act mechanically, mimicking the labor of animals, and, for that reason, lack a soul.Footnote ⁹ Because one with ‘complete mental deficiency’ would act merely mechanically, they would be incapable of setting their own ends, meaning that they do not satisfy the criterion for inclusion in humanity as a moral concept. Such an individual is human in the biological sense, as they share a generative history with others of the biological class, but not in the moral sense, as they lack the requisite ends-setting capability. Indeed, as mentioned above, Kant sometimes indicates that members of nonwhite races face substantial cognitive deficiencies, suggesting a deeper connection between his racism and his ableism. For instance, he asserts that ‘indifference indicates stupidity’ (Refl 601, 15:258) and that ‘indifference from insensitivity is stupidity’ (V-Anth/Fried, 25:561), where, as I address above, ‘the character of all Americans is insensitivity and the indifference that derives from it’ (V-Anth/Parow, 25:451).

Kant makes related claims about children. In the Pädagogik, Kant explains that the first task of education is to instill discipline, where ‘[d]iscipline or training changes animal nature into human nature’ (Päd, 9:441). Training (Zucht), which produces discipline, ‘is therefore merely negative, that is to say, it is the action by means of which man’s tendency to savagery is taken away’, where ‘[s]avagery is independence from laws’ (Päd, 9:442). Although children share a generative history with other human beings and therefore belong to humanity as a biological concept, inclusion in this species does not immediately entail their mental and moral development. To achieve rationality requires a process of training, education, and maturation, which allows one to overcome the drive of one’s animal nature. This case is particularly analogous to those of Indigenous Americans and Black persons (see, again, Reflexion 1520, 15:877). The difference, for Kant, is that, whereas white children can overcome their state of immaturity, Indigenous Americans and Black people are permanently developmentally stunted.

These instances exemplify the mismatch between the biological and moral concepts of humanity for Kant, contradicting Kleingeld’s response to Mills.Footnote ¹⁰ It is therefore not only possible, but, given the evidence on offer, probable that Kant thought Indigenous Americans and Black people fall short of moral humanity while nonetheless being biologically human.