This essay develops Kant’s theory of reform to theorize racial justice reform. I assess the function of Kant’s philosophy of race as part of his nonideal theory of justice, which offers a racist pragmatic anthropology that uses the concept of race to determine the practical effectiveness of legislative reason. His philosophy of race defends a teleological account of the natural history of the human species to fulfill the requirements of justice and assumes that certain racial groups have failed to develop (...) their innate capacity for legislative reason. I show that we need an alternative Kantian nonideal theory of justice that demonstrates how legislative reason actualizes practical freedom. Rather than appeal to anthropology, I expand Kant’s model of public reason to advance racial justice reform under the conditions of partial compliance to the requirements of justice in a profoundly nonideal republic such as the U.S. I then showcase the promise—and limits—of the a priori ideals of citizenship and publicity for racial justice reform and introduce the ideal of interracial civic fellowship to guide the public use of reason in nonideal circumstances. (shrink)

The Metaphysics of Morals is Kant's major work in applied moral philosophy in which he deals with the basic principles of rights and of virtues. It comprises two parts: the 'Doctrine of Right', which deals with the rights which people have or can acquire, and the 'Doctrine of Virtue', which deals with the virtues they ought to acquire. Mary Gregor's translation, revised for publication in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series, is the only complete translation of the (...) whole text, and includes extensive annotation on Kant's difficult and sometimes unfamiliar vocabulary. A new introduction by Roger Sullivan sets the work in its historical and philosophical context. This volume will be of wide interest to students of ethics and of legal and political philosophy. (shrink)

The Moral Habitat offers a new and systematic interpretation of Kant's moral and political philosophy. Herman introduces the idea of a moral habitat to examines the dynamic system of duties that exists between individuals and civic institutions.

This Element examines Kant's innovative account of labour in his political philosophy and develops an intersectional analysis of Kant. By demonstrating that Kant's analysis of slavery, citizenship, and sex developed in inter-linked ways over several decades, culminating in his development of a 'trichotomy' of Right, the author shows that Kant's normative account of independence is configured through his theory of labour, and is continuous with his anthropological accounts of race and gender, providing a systemic justification for the dependency of women (...) and non-whites embedded in his philosophy of right. By examining Kant's arguments about slavery as intertwined with his account of domestic labour, the author argues that his ultimate rejection of slavery may owe more to his changing conceptualization of labour than to his theory of race, and that his final arguments against slavery rehearse strategies for embedding intersectional patterns of domestic dependence in his account of the rightful state. (shrink)

Sex, Love, and Gender is the first volume to present a comprehensive philosophical theory that brings together all of Kant's practical philosophy — found across his works on ethics, justice, anthropology, history, and religion — and provide a critique of emotionally healthy and morally permissible sexual, loving, gendered being. By rethinking Kant's work on human nature and making space for sex, love, and gender within his moral accounts of freedom, the book shows how, despite his austere and even anti-sex, cisist, (...) sexist, and heterosexist reputation, Kant's writings on happiness and virtue (Part I) and right (Part II) in fact yield fertile philosophical ground on which we can explore specific contemporary issues such as abortion, sexual orientation, sexual or gendered identity, marriage, trade in sexual services, and sex- or gender-based oppression. Indeed, Kant's philosophy provides us with resources to appreciate and value the diversity of human ways of loving and the existential importance of our embodied, social selves. Structured on a thematic basis, with introductions to assist those new to Kant's philosophy, this book will be a valuable resource for anyone who cares about these issues and wants to make sense of them. -/- Alternatively: Sex, Love, and Gender identifies a set of possibilities that define human beings’ sexuality. These sets come with their own concepts, which specify how the possibilities are realized and what effects they have on our lives lived together. Partly the task is descriptive. The description has to be plausible. Plausibility comes from the phenomenology (and not the other way around). Partly the task is normative. The normative content also has to be plausible. Plausibility here comes from vindicating the principles that underwrite the possibilities that define human beings’ sexualities and sexual experiences and behaviors lived by human beings and from the philosophical explanations and conclusions that follow. Overall plausibility, then, comes from discursive analysis of alternatives, from a priori argument, and, in the evaluative case, from showing how the Kantian account of a good life fits with reasonable conceptions of goodness consistent with the phenomenology of human lives. Although this exploration leads us, as we will see, to most corners of Kant’s practical philosophy, including his metaethics and metaphysics, the main focus is on an account of human sex, love, and gender explored explicitly with respect to happiness and ethics (virtue) and justice (right). It is because of this focus that the book is divided into two parts: Part 1 (“Human Sexuality and Virtue”) and Part 2 (“Human Sexuality and Right”). (shrink)

What justifies state-sponsored supports for individual welfare within a Kantian political system, as well as the purpose and extent of such supports and the form they may take, are vexed questions. This Element characterizes and assesses main contenders by examining the competing interpretations of Kant's larger political theory that found their social welfare claims. It then develops and defends an alternative based in civic respect. This emphasizes the perspective and institutional commitments that Kant's model of citizenship entails and what is (...) required to respect each as both a person and a participant in joint governance. (shrink)

Liberalism is the political philosophy of equal persons, yet liberalism has denied equality to those it saw as black sub-persons. In Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism, political philosopher Charles Mills challenges mainstream accounts that ignore this history and its current legacy in the United States today.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

In this article I critically engage some of the philosophical ideas Kleingeld presents in Kant and Cosmopolitanism, namely patriotism, poverty and global justice. Against Kleingeld, I propose, first, that perhaps democracy is less important and affectionate love more so to both Kant himself as well as to an account that can successfully refute a Bernard Williams style objection to Kantian patriotism; second, that guaranteeing unconditional poverty relief for all its citizens is constitutive of the minimally just state for Kant; and, (...) third, that there seem to be more disanalogies between the domestic and the global public authorities in Kant's account of right than Kleingeld's interpretation allows for. (shrink)

In ‘What is Enlightenment?’, Kant claims that no women are currently enlightened. Here I argue that this exclusion is due to certain legal restrictions guiding Kant’s conception of enlightenment. As enlightenment is intended to take place in society, it appears that Kant has a specific legal context in mind that affects its enactment. His twofold conception of citizenship and the dimension of subordination he puts forward by restricting the private use of reason will prove useful in clarifying those legal restrictions. (...) It thus seems unlikely that Kant intended women to take an active part in enlightenment. (shrink)

Kant makes and elaborates upon a distinction between active citizenship and passive citizenship. Active citizens enjoy the right to vote and rights of political participation generally. Passive citizens do not, though they still enjoy the protection of the law as citizens. Kant’s examples have left commentators puzzling over how these distinctions follow from his stated rationale or justification for active citizenship, namely, that active citizens possess a kind of political and economic self-sufficiency. This essay focuses on one subset passive citizenry (...) – that of traveling blacksmiths, barbers, and day laborers in order to examine Kant’s distinctions. I argue that these examples show that Kant’s concerns regarding dependence are, at least in some cases, pragmatic rather than political. (shrink)

Charles Mills makes visible in the world of mainstream philosophy some of the crucial issues of the black experience.

This essay tries to develop a “black radical Kantianism”—that is, a Kantianism informed by the black experience in modernity. After looking briefly at socialist and feminist appropriations of Kant, I argue that an analogous black radical appropriation should draw on the distinctive social ontology and view of the state associated with the black radical tradition. In ethics, this would mean working with a (color-conscious rather than colorblind) social ontology of white persons and black sub-persons and then asking what respect for (...) oneself and others would require under those circumstances. In political philosophy, it would mean framing the state as a Rassenstaat (a racial state) and then asking what measures of corrective justice would be necessary to bring about the ideal Rechtsstaat. (shrink)

Whereas several commentators have held that Kant’s argument for the postulate of private right fails insofar as it begs the question, I argue here that this criticism misses the mark. Critics have...

According to an oft-repeated narrative, while Kant maintained racist views through the 1780s, he changed his mind in the 1790s. Pauline Kleingeld introduced this narrative based on passages from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals and “Toward Perpetual Peace”. On her reading, Kant categorically condemned chattel slavery in those texts, which meant that he became more racially egalitarian. But the passages involving slavery, once contextualized, either do not concern modern, race-based chattel slavery or at best suggest that Kant mentioned it as a (...) cautionary tale for labor practices in Europe. Overall, Kant never explicitly considered chattel slavery as a moral problem to be addressed on its own. Rather, he treated it primarily in terms of its function in human history. If he ended up expressing some qualms about its practices, it was likely because they threatened to deepen intra-European conflicts and undermine the prospect of perpetual peace. The humanity of the enslaved “Negroes” was never part of the reasoning. This was not a casual oversight on Kant’s part. It reflects the complexity of his philosophical system: everything he did or did not say about chattel slavery begins to make sense once we connect his philosophy of history and his depiction of “Negroes” as natural slaves. (shrink)

While there are many points of opposition between the political philosophies of Marx and Kant, the two can greatly benefit from one another in various ways. Bringing the ideas of Marx and Kant together offers a promising way forward for each view. Most significantly, a powerful critique of capitalism can be developed from their combined thought: Kant’s political philosophy offers a robust idea of freedom to ground this critique, while Marx provides the nuanced understanding of social and political power structures (...) under capitalism that allows this idea of freedom to be properly applied. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine the compatibility of Kantian cosmopolitanism and patriotism. In response to recent literature, I first argue that in order to discuss this issue fruitfully, one should distinguish between three different forms of patriotism and be careful to make clear when patriotism is obligatory, permissible, or prohibited. I then show that Kantians can defend the view that civic patriotism is a duty, but that attempts to also establish nationalist patriotism and trait-based patriotism as Kantian duties fail. Showing (...) that civic patriotism is a duty does not by itself show that it is compatible with cosmopolitanism, however, and I therefore examine the relationship between different duties in more detail, arguing that there is no conflict of duties here. Finally, I argue that Kantianism provides even a bit of room for nationalist and trait-based patriotism to count as having moral worth, although this room is very narrowly circumscribed. (shrink)

This article has two purposes. The first speaks to the compatibilist quality of Charles Mills’ Black Radical Kantianism (BRK), its strengths and weaknesses and the pertinence of W. E. B Du Bois to it. BRK turns from Mills’ previous critique of Kantianism as representative of arassenstaatlichpolitical liberalism, underwritten and tainted by the racial/domination contract, to his current defence of a compatibilist Kantianism as representative of arechtsstaatlichpolitical liberalism supported by a non-ideal racially corrective critique of both that contract and the kind (...) of political liberalism affiliated with it. The second focuses on what I introduce as the ‘Radicalization of Kant in Black’ (RKB). RKB isnota compatibilist project. Rather it re-examines issues first posed by ‘slave- and black-encoded’ blacks coming to act and struggle with the primacy of practical reason under the historically normative authority of freedom and the abolition of enslavement. What are the ramifications of each for Kant-/Kantian-radicalization? (shrink)

I argue that the freedom which is to coexist with the freedom of choice of others in accordance with a universal law mentioned in Kant's Rechtslehre is not itself freedom of choice. Rather, it is the independence which is a condition of being able to exercise genuine free choice by not having to act in accordance with the choices of others. Kant's distinction between active and passive citizenship appears, however, to undermine this idea of independence, because the possession of a (...) certain type of property right on the part of some citizens makes it possible for them to dominate others. Kant's account of property in this way turns out to be central to the question as to whether his Rechtslehre represents an internally consistent account of how freedom can be guaranteed within a legal and political community. I go on to argue that Kant's attempt to justify a pre-political right of property cannot be viewed as a successful justification of private property, and that he should have abandoned the notion of su... (shrink)

What is domination? According to a leading strand of republican political philosophy, a person is dominated when under the unconstrained power of another. Call this the dyadic conception of domination, because it involves a two‐person relation. I argue that domination is better understood structurally. Structural domination is domination by institutions. Rather than a master dominating a slave and a boss dominating a worker (as in dyadic domination), structural domination holds that the institution of slavery dominates the slave and labor law (...) dominates the worker. Without the structural conception, I contend, one misdescribes the power dynamics of paradigm cases of domination. (shrink)

The coercive authority of the Kantian state is rationally grounded in the ideal of equal external freedom, which is realized when each individual can choose and act without being constrained by another's will. This ideal does not seem like it can justify state-mandated economic redistribution. For if one is externally free just as long as one can choose and act without being constrained by another, then only direct slavery, serfdom, or other systems of overt control seem to threaten external freedom. (...) Yet Kant endows the freedom-based state with considerable powers of economic redistribution. I argue that recent commentary has misunderstood both Kant's account of why poverty is a form of freedom-threatening dependence and the extent of the Kantian state's powers for remedying poverty. Criticizing Arthur Ripstein and the Kantianism of the “Toronto-School,” I argue that the most salient notion of dependence at issue within the Kantian framework is not the direct control of the choice-making capacities of another but asymmetrical influence in a power relationship. For Kant, poverty is fundamentally a problem of structural disempowerment. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of human dignity based on a discussion of Kant's moral and political philosophy and then shows its relevance for articulating and developing in a fresh way some normative dimensions of Marx’s critique of capitalism as involving exploitation, domination, and alienation, and the view of socialism as involving a combination of freedom and solidarity. What is advanced here is not Kant’s own conception of dignity, but an account that partly builds on that conception and partly criticizes (...) it. The same is the case with the account of socialism in relation to Marx’s work. As articulated, Kantian dignity and Marxian socialism turn out to be quite appealing and mutually supportive. (shrink)

The Free Development of Each collects twelve essays on the history of German philosophy by Allen W. Wood, one of the leading scholars in the field. They explore moral philosophy, politics, society, and history in the works of Kant, Herder, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx, and share the basic theme of freedom, as it appears in morality and in politics.

This chapter introduces W.E.B. Du Bois’s original political thought and his strategies for political advocacy. It is limited to explaining the pressure he puts on the liberal social contract tradition, which prioritizes the public values of freedom and equality for establishing fair and inclusive terms of political membership. However, unlike most liberal theorists, Du Bois’s political thought concentrates on the politics of race, colonialism, gender, and labor, among other themes, in order to redefine how political theorists and activists should build (...) a democratic polity that is truly free and equal for all. Additionally, this chapter defines some key concepts Du Bois developed to scrutinize a white-controlled world that does not welcome black and brown persons as moral equals. These trailblazing concepts include: the doctrine of racialism, double consciousness, and Pan-Africanism. Finally, this chapter defends Du Bois’s contributions to black feminist thought and American labor politics, which inspired major social justice movements in the twentieth century, in which he played a notable role. (shrink)

Kant is famous for his universalist moral theory, which emphasizes human dignity, equality, and autonomy. Yet he also defended sexist and (until late in his life) racist views. In this essay, I address the question of how current readers of Kant should deal with Kant’s sexism and racism. I first provide a brief description of Kant’s views on sexual and racial hierarchies, and of the way they intersect. I then turn to the question of whether we should set aside Kant’s (...) sexism and racism or ‘translate’ his egalitarian principles into inegalitarian ones. I argue for a third position, namely, that we should highlight the tensions that pervade Kant’s theory. In the final section, I argue that the use of inclusive language and female pronouns in recent discussions of Kant’s moral and political philosophy carries significant risks. I end by articulating several preconditions for fruitfully using Kant’s moral principles to criticize sexism and racism. (shrink)