Philosophical racism: The concept of ‘race’ in Immanuel Kant

Abstract

In this article we will review the anthropological work of the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant, in its relationship with the scientific instrumentalization by imperial policies of the time, and from the point of view of the Latin American postcolonial (decolonial) perspective. Our goal is to explore Kant’s idea of ‘race’ in his courses on anthropology and physical geography, which allows us to broaden our understanding of the scope that this kind of philosophical racism had in the European view of the ‘savage’ (in America, Asia and Africa) and of the hermeneutical implications that the concept of ‘race’had in the philosophy of history.

Keywords: race, racism, Kant, eurocentrism, decoloniality.