Species, variety, race: vocabularies of difference from Buffon to Kant

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Abstract

There are by now numerous studies of Kant’s work to develop a scientific account of human difference, of the manner in which this account fits into his system of progressive human history, of the means for understanding his racism in tandem with his moral theory, and finally of Kant’s relation to some of the key interlocutors in the debates regarding these issues at the time, most notably Herder, Forster, and Blumenbach. In this investigation I want to take a different tack, one that is tightly focused on the shifting vocabularies of difference in play in Kant’s racial taxonomy. German writers with broad interests in natural history, and in particular, in the kind of ethnographic reports typically included in travel and expedition narratives, had to be able to access and read original texts, or they had to work with translations. And the translators of these sorts of reports—typically working under immense time-pressure—were forced more than usual into the role of interpreter. This was especially the case when it came to accounts wherein vocabulary did not exist or was at least not settled, and more importantly where scientific understanding was uncertain or altogether lacking, a situation that could only make the creation of semantic categories all the more significant. With this in mind then, it might be useful to develop something like a mapping strategy when approaching Kant’s racial taxonomy. This would entail a set of basic questions regarding Kant’s sources, reception, translation, and modification of not just terms but indeed the conceptual framework associated with the language of species, variety, and race. For my purposes here I will focus on the singular importance of Buffon as a resource for Kant since we know that Kant was a careful reader of Buffon’s works, and that Kant clearly took his starting point for thinking about monogenesis from Buffon’s interfertility criterion for species membership.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)155-179
Number of pages25
JournalDianoia-Rivista di Filosofia
Volume39
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

Keywords

  • Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804
  • Buffon
  • Georg Forster, 1754-1794
  • Taxonomy
  • Race
  • Species
  • variation (biology)
  • translation
  • Enlightenment

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