13 - On the use of teleological principles in philosophy (1788)

Summary

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

After Of the Different Races of Human Beings (1775; 2nd edn 1777) and Determination of the Concept of a Human Race (1785), both of which are contained in the present volume, Kant published his third and final essay on the natural history of the human species, entitled Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der Philosophie, in January and February of 1788 in the Teutscher Merkur (German Mercury), issues nos. 1 and 2 (1st quartal, pp. 36–52 and pp. 107–36). The immediate occasion was the publication of an essay in the same journal in two installments in the fall of the previous year (October 1786, pp. 57–86 and November 1786, pp. 150–66), entitled Noch etwas über die Menschenracen. An Herrn Dr. Biester (Something Further on the Human Races. To Dr. Biester). The author of the critical essay was Georg Forster (1754–94), who had accompanied his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, on Captain James Cook's second voyage around the world in 1772–5, later assumed a professorship in natural history in Vilnius, Lithuania (at the time part of the Russian Empire) and who had moved to Mainz, Germany, in late 1788, where he was to turn into a fervent supporter of the French revolution. Forster's essay contained objections to Kant's concept of a human race, along with a mention of and two passing references to Kant's slightly earlier essay, Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786), which had also appeared in the Teutscher Merkur and which is also contained in the present volume.