Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T04:42:20.354Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Framing Mills’ Black Radical Kantianism: Kant and Du Bois

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2022

Frank M. Kirkland
Frank M. Kirkland*
Affiliation:
Hunter College CUNY Graduate Center, New York City, NY, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article has two purposes. The first speaks to the compatibilist quality of Charles Mills’ Black Radical Kantianism (BRK), its strengths and weaknesses and the pertinence of W. E. B Du Bois to it. BRK turns from Mills’ previous critique of Kantianism as representative of a rassenstaatlich political liberalism, underwritten and tainted by the racial/domination contract, to his current defence of a compatibilist Kantianism as representative of a rechtsstaatlich political liberalism supported by a non-ideal racially corrective critique of both that contract and the kind of political liberalism affiliated with it. The second focuses on what I introduce as the ‘Radicalization of Kant in Black’ (RKB). RKB is not a compatibilist project. Rather it re-examines issues first posed by ‘slave- and black-encoded’ blacks coming to act and struggle with the primacy of practical reason under the historically normative authority of freedom and the abolition of enslavement. What are the ramifications of each for Kant-/Kantian-radicalization?

Keywords

Black Radical KantianismRadicalization of Kant in Black
Type
Article
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 27 , Special Issue 4: Special Issue: Radicalizing Kant? , December 2022 , pp. 635 - 650
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Kantian Review

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allison, Henry (2020) Kant’s Conception of Freedom: A Developmental and Critical Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arendt, Hannah (1982) Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Ed. Beiner, R.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balfour, Lawrie (2011) Democracy’s Reconstruction: Thinking Politically with W. E. B. Du Bois. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basevich, Elvira (2021) W. E. B. Du Bois: The Lost and the Found. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Douglass, Frederick (1969) My Bondage and my Freedom. New York: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. (2007) Black Reconstruction in America. Ed. H. L. Gates, Jr. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gooding-Williams, Robert (2010) In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Höffe, Ottfried (2002) Categorical Principles of Law. Trans. Migotti, M.. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.Google Scholar
Huseyinzadegan, Dilek (2019) Kant’s Non-Ideal Theory of Politics. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1996) Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Gregor, M. in Practical Philosophy. Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2005) ‘The Conflict of the Faculties’. Trans. Gregor, M. and Anchor, R. in Wood, A. and di Giovanni, George (eds), Religion and Rational Theology. Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kirkland, Frank M. (2016) ‘Ferguson’s Political Imaginary and the Political Normativity of “Black Lives Matter”’. Critique (http://www.thecritique.com/2016/07). Archived.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine (1996) Creating the Kingdom of Ends. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Louden, Robert (2000) Kant’s Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl (1992) Capital, vol. 1. Trans. Fowkes, B.. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles (1997) The Racial Contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles (2005) ‘Ideal Theory as Ideology’. Hypatia, 20(3), 165–84.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles (2013) ‘Retrieving Rawls for Racial Justice: A Critique of Tommie Shelby’. Critical Philosophy of Race, 1(1), 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, Charles (2018) ‘Black Radical Kantianism’. Res Philosophica, 95(1), 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, John (1971) A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, Cedric (1983) Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. London: Zed Press.Google Scholar
Shelby, Tommie (2013) ‘Racial Realities and Corrective Justice: A Reply to Mills’. Critical Philosophy of Race, 1(2), 145–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Allen (1999) Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar