9 - Determination of the concept of a human race (1785)

Summary

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

Occasioned by the reception of his earlier essay, Of the Different Races of Human Beings (1775, 2nd edn. 1777), which is also contained in the present volume, Kant's second essay on the natural history of the human species, entitled Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace (Determination of the Concept of a Human Race), appeared in November 1785 in issue no. 11 of the Berlinische Monatsschrift (Berlin Monthly), pp. 390–417. While Kant's earlier essay had addressed the unity of the human species and its differentiation into subspecies (“races”) in a fairly detailed geographical context, his second essay on the same topics focuses on conceptual issues and stresses that the elucidation of a concept such as that of a human race cannot be based on observation alone but needs to be guided by a preliminary determination of what to look for.

Kant's methodological clarification and the corresponding alternative presentation of his earlier account of the natural history of the human species in the second essay seek to redress the one-sided reception of the first essay, which had concentrated exclusively on Kant's hypothetical account of the actual differentiation of the human species over time and space and neglected to pay attention to his chief philosophical concern with developing the very concept of a subspecies – as possessing physical characteristics that are passed on unfailingly both within one and the same subspecies and across different subspecies.