Huaping Lu-Adler on Kant’s Relation to Racism

Abstract One of the many virtues of Huaping Lu-Adler’s Kant, Race, and Racism is its questioning of the very meaning of “racism” attributed to Kant. Yet more important is Lu-Adler’s own attempt to go beyond the “individualistic” approaches that focus on Kant’s mind or heart behind his philosophical racism. By engaging with some current philosophical accounts of racism, Lu-Adler instead reconceptualizes Kant’s relation, as philosopher-cum-educator, to racism. What matters first and foremost, according to Lu-Adler, is Kant’s position in power relations, which had an impactful role in shaping modern racial ideology. I, however, argue that Lu-Adler thereby makes some unnecessary and undesirable sacrifices, which I discuss in three interconnected respects. First, I question Tommie Shelby’s “non-moralistic” analysis of racism, which Lu-Adler adopts. Second, I challenge Lu-Adler’s denial of “hierarchism” as an element of racism. Third, I object that Lu-Adler’s novel approach of reading Kant by way of Sally Haslanger’s critical revision of Shelby’s “ideology” account of racism is not pluralistic enough for antiracism. Overall, this article does not purport either to refute or to adhere to Lu-Adler’s account simpliciter. Rather, it argues that her reconceptualization of Kant’s racism is more fruitful if it is used complementarily to other approaches. I close the article by sketching how this might work: I consider an example of a pluralistic approach that combines Lu-Adler’s “ideological formation” approach and Pauline Kleingeld’s “individualistic” approach for a more consistently antiracist account of Kant’s racism.