COLONIALISM, RACE, AND EUROPE

The “Definitive Articles” of Perpetual Peace introduce Kant's system of Right, composed of domestic, international, and cosmopolitan Right. Kant argues that republicanism is the ideal system of domestic government and traces an expected progression of European states toward peace through the leadership of republics and the formation of a voluntary federation of states. Regarding republics, he argues that “the civil constitution of every state shall be republican,” a regime founded on the “freedom of the members of a society . . . the dependence of all upon a single common legislation. . . and their equality” (322, 8:249-350). The second definitive article establishes that “[t]he right of nations shall be based on a federalism of free states,” a practical end because an “enlightened people can form itself into a republic,” which, being naturally peaceful, provides a focal point for other states “to attach themselves to it” and gradually extend further and further” (325, 327, 8:354, 356). In contrast to previous accounts of cosmopolitanism in Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (Idea, from now on) and the Critique of Judgment, where the cosmopolitan condition was achieved through the federation of states, in Perpetual Peace, cosmopolitanism appears as a separate realm regulating other types of relationships (Kleingeld Reference Kleingeld, Formosa, Goldman and Patrone2014a, 68–71), notably European actions in non-European regions.

Kant had dealt with non-Europeans in his anthropology and geography, where he classified them as racially inferior to European whites. Scholars have noted two stages in Kant's racial theories: an early and less systematic stage, and the later stage—developed in the 1780s—when race takes a teleological character and is connected to Kant's critical philosophy (Larrimore Reference Larrimore2008, 356; Bernasconi Reference Bernasconi, Elden and Mendieta2011; Larrimore Reference Larrimore1999). In particular, Kant tied racial difference to seeds that were triggered (not caused) by climate and slowly unfolded but eventually became permanent racial traits (Larrimore Reference Larrimore2008, 344) resulting in a hierarchy with whites at the top and Native Americans at the bottom. Regarding the latter he argued in 1788 that “their natural disposition has not yet reached a complete fitness for any one climate . . . too weak for hard labor, too indifferent for diligence, and unfit for any culture, still stands—despite the proximity of example and ample encouragement—far below the Negro himself,” who otherwise holds the lowest rung in the racial ladder (Footnote UTP , 48, 8:175-176). In his 1780s lectures, Kant asserts that only the white race contains “all incentives and talents” and even the “Hindus” who can be educated (and are thus superior to “Negroes”) can be trained in the arts but not in abstract concepts (15:877-8).

Kant pairs these assertions with uncritical discussions of Europeans’ activities overseas, remarking upon the uses that the different races should be put to given their natural predispositions (Footnote DHR , 333, 2:438n). As late as 1792, Kant cites approvingly David Hume's statement that Africans have no claim to equality and in the same lectures he contends that no freed Negro has distinguished himself with any skill (which is conducive to culture, according to Kant's Critique of Judgment) (Bernasconi Reference Bernasconi, Elden and Mendieta2011; Clewis Reference Clewis and Clewis2015; Kleingeld Reference Kleingeld, Flikschuh and Ypi2014b). Moreover, in his early 1780s Lectures on Physical Geography (Doenhoff) (cited by Kleingeld Reference Kleingeld, Flikschuh and Ypi2014b, 46, 66) Kant argued that peoples from Hindustan would be “much happier” if “ruled by a European sovereign” and, in 1785, noted that unless visited by “more civilized nations,” Tahitians would live in peaceful indolence forever (Footnote RJGH , 142, 8:65).Footnote ³

In 1795, however, Kant publishes a critique of European powers’ behavior in non-European regions (Kleingeld Reference Kleingeld, Flikschuh and Ypi2014b; Niesen Reference Niesen2007; Valdez Reference Valdez2012). The passages contain explicit and graphic descriptions of the violence performed by Europeans, contrasting the right to hospitality to the horrifying “inhospitable behavior of civilized, especially commercial states in our part of the world, the injustice they show in visiting foreign lands and peoples (. . . tantamount to conquering them)” (Footnote TPP , 329, 8:358). He continues by highlighting atrocities in particular areas including “America, the negro countries, the Spice Islands, [and] the Cape” —all of which were considered ownerless, “since [Europeans] counted the inhabitants as nothing” (Footnote TPP , 329, 8:358). Kant then notes how these explorations spur internal conflict, particularly in the East Indies, where foreign soldiers arrived with the excuse of “set[ting] up trading posts” but ended up oppressing the inhabitants and inciting Indian states to “widespread wars, famine, rebellions, treachery, and the whole litany of evils that oppress the human race” (Footnote TPP , 329, 8:358-359). After praising Japan's and China's restrictive policies, Kant notes that the worst (or best, from the moral standpoint) aspect of this violence is that it is not profitable for commercial states, whose trading companies are on the verge of collapse. He offers the example of European actions in the Sugar Islands—site of the “cruelest and most calculated slavery”—that yield no profit but serve the intermediate and not very commendable purpose of training sailors to carry on wars in Europe (Footnote TPP , 330, 8:359).

How do we reconcile Kant's theory of racial hierarchy and his approving remarks of civilized rule before 1795 with the critique in Perpetual Peace? The connection between Kant's racial thinking and the status of colonialism in his system is contested in existing literature. For example, Anthony Pagden notes that Kant's writings do not engage consistently with “colonies as such,” and what he says is often “confused and contradictory” (Reference Pagden, Flikschuh and Ypi2014, 19). Other scholars argue that colonialism (and hierarchy more broadly) is necessary in the trajectory of progress Kant envisions, even if morally objectionable (McCarthy Reference McCarthy2009, 171; Tully Reference Tully2008, 146-7). Yet others claim that Kant was simply unconcerned with colonialism, given that he considered non-whites “meaningless in the grand teleological scheme of things” (Larrimore Reference Larrimore1999). In a recent exchange, however, Pauline Kleingeld (Reference Kleingeld2007; Reference Kleingeld, Flikschuh and Ypi2014b) and Robert Bernasconi (Reference Bernasconi and Bernasconi2001; Reference Bernasconi, Elden and Mendieta2011) have argued that Kant's racial views led him to uphold colonialism on both paternalist and instrumentalist grounds. This view interprets Perpetual Peace as a change of heart, which Kleingeld attributes to unrecorded shifts toward racial egalitarianism, and Bernasconi sees as compatible—though in tension—with Kant's universalism.

This debate focuses on the following questions: does the moral condemnation of colonialism in Perpetual Peace depart from previous statements? And, if so, does it follow from a shift in his thinking on race or not? In contrast, I argue below that the impulse behind Kant's inauguration of a cosmopolitan realm and his critique of colonialism should be understood along Perpetual Peace’s overall argument about republics, an international federation, and their connection to peace. This explanation is internally coherent—vis-à-vis other arguments in the same essay—and externally coherent—vis-à-vis the political and economic context that has not been considered before, and thus interpretatively firmer than connecting this shift to other areas of his thought less soundly documented. This argument suggests that Kant became concerned about colonial conflict when he realized that, rather than necessary, it was detrimental for progress toward peace. Moreover, my argument shows that claims about the hypothetical benefits of civilized rule in his earlier writings—made in the context of his discussion of race hierarchy—are qualitatively different than the ones in Perpetual Peace, which engage in detail with the far from civilized reality of colonialism and are explicitly tied to political debates and priorities in Europe. Part of this condemnation explicitly targets the injustice of these actions, which means that we cannot assert Kant's complete moral disregard for non-Europeans and an acceptance of the violent practices underlying European imperialism. As I show below, however, concern for non-Europeans and anti-colonialism are compatible with persistent hierarchical beliefs about race and civilization on Kant's part.

WHAT COLONIALISM?

To understand Kant's position in 1795 we need to, on the one hand, explore the connection—if any—that exists between his earlier statements on colonialism, made in the context of his discussion about race, and his 1795 condemnation of colonialism, and, on the other hand, be cautious about interpreting his statements as being simply about the rightfulness of dyadic relations between colonizer and colonized. This requires that we assess the critique of the violence of Europeans’ actions in the non-European world on its own terms, before settling on their particular meaning and their place in Kant's overall system.

Existing literature on this topic has so far examined Kant's critique in light of conceptual histories of the notion of “colony” (Pagden Reference Pagden, Flikschuh and Ypi2014); as connected to evolutions of his thought on race (Kleingeld Reference Kleingeld, Flikschuh and Ypi2014b); associated with his growing appreciation of cultural diversity (Muthu Reference Muthu and Flikschuh2014), or explained through Kant's discussion of international law (Niesen Reference Niesen, Flikschuh and Ypi2014, 173-7; Ripstein Reference Ripstein, Flikschuh and Ypi2014, 146). Others have noted that Kant's changing notion of teleology explains both his reformed racial thought and his shift against colonialism (Storey Reference Storey2015; Ypi Reference Ypi, Flikschuh and Ypi2014a). None of these scholars, however, scrutinizes the kind of colonial conflict that Perpetual Peace addresses, despite the fact that Kant explicitly mentions six non-European locations in the article on cosmopolitanism. Existing scholarship also does not ask what purpose the critique of colonialism serves in an essay motivated by the Revolutionary Wars, which Prussia fought until 1795, when it signed the Peace of Basle, which removed it from the confrontation for about a decade.Footnote ⁴ My interpretation concentrates on the historical background of the non-European locales mentioned by Kant in his article on cosmopolitanism and shows that Kant's analysis of colonial conflict is tightly integrated with the discussion on republicanism and European peace that occupies the rest of Perpetual Peace.

The Cosmopolitan section of Perpetual Peace references the following geographic areas: the Cape (Cape of Good Hope, South Africa), the Spice Islands (Maluku Islands, Indonesia), the Sugar Islands (Caribbean Islands), the East Indies (South and South East Asia), the “negro countries” (West Africa), and America (North America). These locales were not simply sites where a European aggressor conquered and dominated natives but places that witnessed intense strife involving two or more European powers in ways that were directly or indirectly connected to the American and French revolutions (Figure 1 provides a timeline of major events and Kant's writings).

FIGURE 1.

Timeline of Kant's Works and Historical Events

If we organize the historical analysis around the American and French revolutionary wars, we can see that they resulted in important European infighting in the colonies (among European states, through trading companies, or native allies)—especially in the six geographic areas explicitly mentioned in Perpetual Peace. During the American Revolution, France's support for the colonies and Holland's neutrality led to wars contemporary to the Revolutionary War: the Anglo-French War (1775-1783) and the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-1784). The fighting in these wars was not restricted to continental Europe or North America's surroundings: clashes between France and Britain took place in South East Asia, where France still had holdings (Malleson Reference Malleson2010). In particular, the Second Mysore War was fought between the British East India Company and the Kingdom of Mysore, a French ally (Pradeep Reference Pradeep2011, 29). Britain also attacked outposts of the Dutch East India Company, which lost Negapatam (Southern India), Ceylon and other outposts of the Indian subcontinent, in addition to the Maluku islands (Edler Reference Edler1911, 245-6; Tarling Reference Tarling1958, 182). This led to the decline of the Dutch East India Company company and its West Indian counterpart, which had been losing its West African slave trading posts to France and Britain during the 18th century (Furnivall Reference Furnivall2010, 50-1; Rawley and Behrendt Reference Rawley and Behrendt2005, 78-9).

Dominance in the slave trade was tightly connected to the power of the naval and merchant fleets available to European powers (Rawley and Behrendt Reference Rawley and Behrendt2005, 96-7). This does not escape Kant, who in the Drafts for Perpetual Peace (from now on Drafts) links the slave trade, naval power, and the capacity to fight more and more violent wars (222, 23:174). Because of the triangular structure of trade,Footnote ⁵ the slave trade was tightly connected to the trade in sugar, which was a prized commodity. Contemporaries to Kant, like the Abbé Raynal, took “the labors of the colonists of the long-scorned islands [the Caribbean]” to “double perhaps triple the activity of . . . Europe” and the principal cause of the “rapid movement which stirs the universe” (Shapiro Reference Shapiro2008, 72).Footnote ⁶ Trade restrictions imposed on Britain's North American colony, possibly devoted to undermining France's West Indies vis-à-vis British ones, led to North American discontent for the lack of access to trade with the thriving French possessions. In response, Britain partially legalized trade with the French West Indies, but contraband continued to thrive and disputes remained, becoming subsidiary causes of the American Revolutionary War. France's interest in protecting its West Indies possessions, in turn, was a prime reason for supporting Americans (Rawley and Behrendt Reference Rawley and Behrendt2005, 104-5; Egnal and Ernst Reference Egnal and Ernst1972), with significant fighting between Britain and France taking place in the Caribbean (see Figure 1). In addition to these clashes, several slave trading posts in West Africa changed hands between France and Britain during the Anglo-French War (France took Saint Louis, in present-day Senegal, and Fort James, in Gambia; while Britain took Gorée, in Senegal) (Rawley and Behrendt Reference Rawley and Behrendt2005, 105).

This reconstruction suggests that Kant's goal in naming those sites in Perpetual Peace is to highlight the harms brought about by Britain's naval dominance, its refusal to let go of its North American colonies, and the vast spatial reach of its warfare. European struggles were amplified into non-European space and by enlisting trading companies and non-European manpower for war. This imperiled European peace and the development of the American Republic. Importantly, many of the rivalries around commercial interests and trading spots in the colonial locales analyzed above were still playing out during the French Revolutionary Wars (i.e., the immediate context of Kant's writing), which I examine next. This analysis confirms that Kant's concern with intra-European conflict, British expansionism, and the fate of republics was a prominent impulse for writing the third article.

The War of the First Coalition (1792-1802) was the first part of the Revolutionary Wars, in which allied Europeans fought Republican France. The Peace of Basle—which famously motivates Kant to write Perpetual Peace—brought a temporary pause to this war and was signed by Prussia and Spain in 1795, the same year when France and Holland signed the Treaty of The Hague after Holland's defeat (Blanning Reference Blanning1996, 135; Dubois and Garrigus Reference Dubois and Garrigus2006, 30). Soon after the outbreak of the war, Spain and Britain invaded French Saint Domingue, where conflict had been ongoing since the 1791 slave rebellion. This rebellion disrupted the sugar trade, benefitting Britain and Spain—also sugar producers—and gave way to feuds between France and the United States (Dubois and Garrigus Reference Dubois and Garrigus2006, 30). Britain and Spain—while committed to slavery in their possessions—supported rebelling slaves in Saint Domingue (Geggus Reference Geggus1982). The 1795 peace treaty transferred the Spanish territory back to France, while the British capitulated in 1798. Additionally, Britain retook Tobago in 1793—after 12 years of French rule—and invaded Martinique in 1794 (Laurence Reference Laurence1995, 7; Morgan Reference Morgan2007, 48). In February 1794, the island of Guadeloupe was invaded by the British (in coalition with anti-abolition French planters), only to be retaken by France in December (Morgan Reference Morgan2007, 48).

Conflict in West Africa had abated by this period. France never became self-sufficient in transporting slaves to its Caribbean colonies and Britain became dominant in the Atlantic slave trade, transporting over 50% of slaves between 1791 and abolition (Rawley and Behrendt Reference Rawley and Behrendt2005). Finally, Kant's reference to the Cape is aligned with the other examples. Given its strategic location on the route to India, Adam Smith deemed its discovery one of the greatest events of the era (Bell Reference Bell2016, 3n) and it was at the center of Anglo-French maritime rivalry in the late 18th century (Turner Reference Turner1966). In 1795, in particular, the Cape was a front in the Revolutionary Wars, when Britain took it over from the Dutch in retaliation for France's occupation of the Dutch Republic (Palmer Reference Palmer1954, 22). Interestingly, the example of the Cape appears only in the published version of Perpetual Peace, unlike the others, featured already in the Drafts, which Kant started writing in 1794. This is perhaps because Kant decided to add this case only after hearing of the events in January 1795.

In sum, the non-European sites that Kant mentions in his essays are quite diverse: West Africa, site of European slave trading posts without territorial control; the Caribbean, prime destination of slaves demanded by European planters who produced one of Europe's most prized commodities; America, likely its northern part, characterized by settler practices and the exploitation of natives; the Cape, strategic port on the way to India; India, site of struggle between trading companies, which controlled territory in alliance with local rulers; and the Spice Islands, site of competition among Europeans over access to spices. This variegated set of examples does not seem to amount to a coherent point about colonialism, unless the point is about European states competing viciously among each other for colonial sites in ways connected to trade and intra-European wars.

This reading takes Kant's claims on colonialism to be an integral part of Perpetual Peace, rather than assuming they contain his self-standing critique of colonialism, and reveals Kant's frustration with expansionism, particularly on the part of Britain, which appears as the aggressor in a significant number of the examples he offers and is the dominant world power at the time. He also appears to grapple with the character of colonial conflict and its effects on republicanism and peace—which occupy the rest of the essay—rather than with the dyadic encounter between colonizer and colonized. There is little continuity between this focus and the arguments in previous examinations of colonialism—concerned with non-Europeans as subjects that would benefit from external (civilized) rule, given their defective capacity for self-government or passivity.

Kant's claims in the cosmopolitan section of Perpetual Peace are also different from later discussions outlawing the establishment of colonies and bondage after war between states, located in the section on international Right of the Metaphysics of Morals, applicable to interactions among European states. Contra interpretations of Kant's anti-colonialism as resulting from international Right and—in particular—the regulation of war (Niesen Reference Niesen, Flikschuh and Ypi2014; Pagden Reference Pagden, Flikschuh and Ypi2014; Ripstein Reference Ripstein, Flikschuh and Ypi2014), Kant consistently does not include any treatment of conflict with non-Europeans in the sections on international Right (in Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals). This exclusion was not simply about the political status of these peoples, given that Kant explicitly considers some non-Western peoples to be states, that is, he refers to Indian “states” [Staaten] and to China as a “great empire” [großes Reich] in Perpetual Peace (329-330, 8:359-360). He arguably would have thought of Japan equivalently, given the long-standing political order in that region, which was “fully capable of resisting [Europeans’] demands” (Clulow Reference Clulow2014, 37-8), a feature that Kant praises in his essay. Thus, at least in Perpetual Peace, Kant categorizes interactions with both non-Western non-states and non-Western states as part of the cosmopolitan realm, though the latter examples disappear from his discussion on cosmopolitanism in The Metaphysics of Morals. In this work, Kant also discusses interactions with non-state actors in the section on Private Right (Footnote MoM 417, 6:266) in order to address arguments of legitimate property used to justify colonial expansionism (Williams Reference Williams2014).

ANTAGONISM AND EQUILIBRIUM

The stark critique of conflict that appears in Perpetual Peace seems to contradict the role that antagonism and war had in Kant's philosophy of history, but this is because Kant's conception of antagonism shifts between Idea and Perpetual Peace to accommodate colonial conflict. This reformulation was enabled by Kant's new understanding of teleology, presented in the Critique of Judgment.

Antagonism results from men's asocial sociability [ungesellige Geselligkeit], which Kant defines in Idea as “[the tendency] to come together in society, coupled” with continual resistance that “constantly threatens to break this society up” (44, 8:21). Asocial resistance transforms men's “primitive natural capacity for moral discrimination into definite practical principles” and compels them to come together under a civil constitution. The same logic applies to states in the state of nature, whose “natural capacities” cannot be developed due to the expenditure of commonwealths’ resources on armaments, war depredations, and the imperative of war readiness.

These evils, however, “still have a beneficial effect” (Footnote IUH , 49, 8:25-26). Wars, military preparations and the distress that follows them are “means by which nature drives nations” to prepare to take a step that reason would have dictated without so many “sad experiences:” to abandon a “lawless state of savagery and enter . . . a federation of peoples” where every state can derive its security and rights from a “united power and the law-governed decisions of a united will” (Footnote IUH , 47, 8:24).Thus, the path towards a federation need not be dictated by reason because nature employs the antagonism of men and of states as means to “calm and security” (Footnote IUH , 47, 8:24). The teleology of nature in Idea operates irrespective of men's intentions: the “intention of nature” fuels wars and destroys some states, dismembers others, and results in revolutions that will eventually result in a peaceful state of affairs (Footnote IUH , 48, 8:24-25). Certain civil arrangements, moreover, facilitate efforts on the part of commonwealths to educate their citizens and to allow them to mature morally. This process is neither intentional nor random but guided by the “wisdom of nature” and need not lead to a “lapse into inactivity” but to a government of the actions and counter-actions through a principle of equality (Footnote IUH , 49–51, 8:25-26).

In Idea’s account of antagonism, Europe is the site of progress, and wars and commerce occur among European states.Footnote ¹⁰ The strong language indicates that Kant acknowledges the violent propensities of individuals and states but trusts these dimensions to awaken the natural capabilities of men and—through the mere exhaustion and learning from the destructiveness of these events—encourage the establishment of a common constitution. These natural capacities, or germs [Keime] to be developed, are, according to his racial theory, differently distributed among different races, with only the European race being able to fully develop morally.Footnote ¹¹ In sum, Kant's idea of cosmopolitan progress in Idea is Eurocentric, hierarchical, and potentially imperial, even if not particularly concerned with the specificities of the empires taking shape as he was writing.

A decade later, Perpetual Peace opens by warning readers about destructive war resulting in “peace of graveyards” (317, 8:343). Kant offers a more critical view of war and trade and enacts specific regulations limiting and regulating violence, rather than expecting it to lead indirectly to peace, as in Idea. Relations between Europe and the rest of the world, and between state and non-state actors (which had not concerned him in 1784), are now regulated by a separate cosmopolitan sphere. Despite these qualifications, the idea of war as beneficial does not disappear. Certain forms of conflict are still conducive to a civil constitution, but certain techniques of war, certain dyads, and wars in particular spaces are unconditionally condemned. The criteria by which antagonism is evaluated is connected to the question of equilibrium, a notion already present in Idea. Antagonism is conducive to moral progress because it “compel[s] our species to discover a law of equilibrium to regulate the essentially healthy hostility which prevails among the states and is produced by their freedom.” The cosmopolitan whole envisioned in Idea “reinforce[s] this law by introducing a system of united power [and] . . . political security” that—through equality—governs the actions and counter-actions so that states do not “destroy one another” (49, 8:26).

Equilibrium remains important in 1793, when he suggests that “it is not in the nature of the human being to relinquish his power by choice,” but reason relies on the evil that arises from the opposition of inclinations to one another to play freely and “subjugate them all and, in place of evil” establish the self-sustainable rule of good (Footnote OCS , 308–309, 8:312). This focus is found in Perpetual Peace in the Appendix and in the “Guarantee for Perpetual Peace.” In the latter, while discussing international Right, Kant contrasts healthy equilibrium and despotism. He argues that while “the separation of neighboring states independent of one another” is a condition of war (that could only be avoided by a federative union), this is better, in accordance with reason, than if these states were fused “by one [despotic] power overgrowing the rest.” Here nature re-appears, and “wills it otherwise:” while differences of language and of religion bring pretexts for war, “increasing culture and the gradual approach of human beings to greater agreements in principles” leads to understanding in a state of peace that “is produced and secured . . . by means of their equilibrium in liveliest competition” (Footnote TPP , 336, 8:367, my emphasis; see also Footnote DPP , 225, 23:187). We see the indirect value of war in other portions of the “Guarantee,” when Kant notes that “by war [nature] has compelled peoples” to both spread out in the world and “enter into more or less lawful relations” (Footnote TPP , 332–333, 8:363). War, he continues, “needs no special motive but seems to be engrafted onto human nature and even to hold as something noble” (334, 8:365). War, or the threat of it, also forces peoples “to submit to the constraint of public laws” given that “each people would find itself in the neighborhood of another people pressing upon it, against which it must form itself internally into a state in order to be armed as a power against it” (Footnote TPP , 335, 8:366).

The discussion of the indirectly beneficial effects of antagonism in equilibrium relies on Kant's arguments in the “Critique of Teleological Judgment,” according to which the standpoint of scientific inquiry and moral conduct both rely on a conception of nature “as a realm governed by laws that make possible the realization of the ultimate object of morality” (Guyer Reference Guyer2005, 317), without conflating the two types of arguments (i.e., a step taken “toward morality” is not necessarily a “a moral step” (Footnote TPP , 343, 8:376)).Footnote ¹² It is notable, however, that unlike the other definitive articles of Perpetual Peace, the cosmopolitan section addresses simultaneously questions of Right and the question of realizability—to which he devotes most of the space, likely because this is the first time he considers seriously how colonial antagonism fits within his philosophy of history. Hence, he deals with both moral judgments (what is moral conduct, what is the highest end) and reflective judgments (how are these ends achieved given the natural constraints we face). Kant makes reference to the unprofitability of colonial violence, a fact that is welcome from “the standpoint of the moral judge [moralischer Richter]” (Footnote TPP , 330, 8:359). The purpose of colonial violence, Kant claims, is “mediate and not particularly laudable,” in contrast to purposeful actions that lead to moral progress. In other words, Kant notes that, first, colonial violence is morally objectionable (a determinative argument); second, we can expect that it won't persist, given the profit-seeking nature of human beings (a reflective argument); and, third, persistent conflict of this kind works against progress toward morality (a reflective argument).

This is consistent with Kant's “pragmatic anthropology,” namely “the investigation of what [the human being] as a free-acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself” (Footnote APPV , 3, 7:119). In this scheme, nature contributes to morality by providing the conditions for the development of the cultures of skill and discipline, with the latter being particularly central to tame the “crudeness . . . of our animal inclinations and prepare man for a sovereignty of reason.” Judgment's role, in turn, is to identify and criticize actions that are not harmonious with the maximum development of human beings’ natural predispositions and to devise institutions that can regulate our freedom (Footnote CoJ , 319-321, 5:431-433; Ypi Reference Ypi, Flikschuh and Ypi2014a, 114). Thus teleology works as a heuristic device that guides conduct in two senses. First, it guides inquiry to discover laws of nature, and, second, it guides our moral conduct so that morality and human freedom can be realized within nature (Guyer Reference Guyer2005, 326-7, 9-31). Finally, our inquiry into the laws of nature can also work to assign responsibility for hardships and to adjust our conduct appropriately to remedy them (Footnote CoB , 231, 8:120-121).

A TYPOLOGY OF ANTAGONISM

The previous section establishes that equilibrium is a core condition for antagonism to work indirectly toward progress. Moreover, it shows how determinative and reflective arguments interact in the third definitive article. This discussion already hints at the fact that from a moral standpoint, Kant condemns both European war and colonial conflict. In contrast, according to reflective criteria, and unlike intra-European conflict taking place in Europe, he finds that colonial conflict does not indirectly serve moral advancement. This means that Kant needs to update his claims about antagonism in Perpetual Peace, which he does—as I explain below—by differentiating between (a) intra-European conflict in Europe; (b) intra-European conflict in or about the colonies; and (c) conflict between European and colonial peoples.Footnote ¹³

NOT PHILANTHROPY, BUT RIGHT

I have so far established that the consequences of colonial conflict on the possibility of European peace and the character of Europeans fueled Kant's critique of colonialism in Perpetual Peace. However, I have not yet considered two connected questions: first, what is the relation between Kant's teleological consideration of colonial conflict and the arguments of Right he makes in Perpetual Peace?, and second, what is the link between Kant's (moral) condemnation of colonial conflict and his race beliefs?

Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals take the steps of: (a) characterizing a realm of interaction that was novel and analytically distinct (including relations that had been an afterthought in Idea) and its connection with other realms and the trajectory toward peace; and (b) condemning morally the annexation of non-European territory. The reconstruction of the first task in Perpetual Peace constitutes this article's core. In Perpetual Peace, Kant deals with cosmopolitanism as a separate realm for the first time. Therefore, it can be expected that his reflections were still rough and only systematized later in The Metaphysics of Morals. In view of the events he witnessed, Kant needed to regulate the barbarism of unconventional warfare in the colonies he identifies in Critique of Judgment and describes forcefully in Perpetual Peace, yet he could not embed cosmopolitan regulations within international Right, which, as noted above, did not include relations with non-states or non-European states.

Regarding the task of defining the moral status of European actions outside of Europe, Kant announces at the outset that Perpetual Peace is concerned with “Right,” rather than philanthropy. Following this statement, as noted above, Kant characterizes the actions of Europeans outside of Europe as “cruel” (slavery in the West Indies), displaying “injustice” (their visits/conquests), and “oppression” (in the West Indies) and resulting in “the whole litany of evils that oppress the human race” (i.e., the incitement of Indian states to wars, famine, and rebellions). These condemnations focus on violations of the right of hospitality and on actions that follow from this violation (i.e., the cruelty of slavery in the West Indies and the oppression of East Indian natives and states driven to internal wars).

A look at the Metaphysics of Morals reveals that these two tasks are accomplished differently. On the one hand, the section on cosmopolitanism (§62) is narrowly concerned with establishing the injustice of settlements in non-European lands (this time specifying the protection of nomadic peoples and using only the examples of the “Hottentots,” the Tungusi, and “most of the American Indian nations”).Footnote ²⁰ In this section, Kant rejects “specious reasons” offered for settlement/conquest and claims that they “cannot wash away the stain of injustice” of the forceful means used (490, 6:353).

The destabilizing effect resulting from expansionism and unending colonial conflict, on the other hand, is covered in the section on the right of nations, which theorizes rightful antagonism. In this section, Kant defines: (a) a “right to equilibrium” [Recht des Gleichgewichts] among contiguous states; (b) a principle of outer freedom that allows the preservation of states’ belongings but not new (and threatening) acquisitions; (c) conduct of war that is outlawed, like means that would make subjects unfit for citizenship, states unfit for entering relations with other states, or any other conduct that would destroy trust requisite to achieve future peace (Footnote MoM , 484–485, 6: 346–347). These statements are in line with Perpetual Peace in condemning conduct incompatible with equal freedom, convergence, and equilibrium, namely, those actions that reveal “a maxim by which, if it were made a universal rule, any condition of peace among nations would be impossible and a state of nature perpetuated” (Footnote MoM , 487, 6:349).

Kant's condemnation of settlement in the Metaphysics of Morals is clear and contains substantive innovations vis-à-vis his less systematic pre-1790 reflections on colonialism, which were associated with his writings on racial and civilizational inferiority and, it should be noted, never went as far as authorizing violent conquest and oppression of natives. In particular, non-Europeans are recognized as contracting agents, with a right to exclude, whose nomadic lifestyle establishes possession. Yet it is important to note that Kant's condemnation focuses on the means.Footnote ²¹ This is not to say that the protection of natives is indirect but to say that these condemnations are compatible with civilizational hierarchy, that is, Kant's belief that populating these countries with civilized peoples would potentially be more conducive to progress, even if he knows that, in the particular juncture when he is writing, this cannot happen without violence, and is thus impermissible. In the section on property rights (§15), he concludes that a “veil of injustice” “would sanction any means to a good end” (418, 6:266). The same rationale informs the closing argument of §62, which claims that “supposedly good intentions cannot wash away the stain of injustice in the means used for them” (490, 6:353). While Kant is skeptical of the intentions being genuinely good, his language is clear in attributing the injustice to the means. He concludes this paragraph by comparing these claims to the arguments that revolutionaries use to justify force, that is, that a more just system can be established. We know of course that Kant favored the kinds of governments that revolutionaries wished to establish, but opposed the means to their establishment, and his arguments against colonial settlement seem to contain a parallel claim.

Claims about civilizational hierarchy are connected to claims of racial hierarchy in Kant's system, since only certain races develop the proper predispositions to attain culture and develop morally (Larrimore Reference Larrimore2008). Moreover, the establishment of a unified system of Right is in line with Kant's longstanding concern with achieving unity in multiplicity, in which race played a central role. Thus, Kant's unified system of Right, rather than implying the abandonment of beliefs about hierarchy and difference, could have followed from his postulate of unity in difference—“first an article of moral faith, and then a project for human beings” (Larrimore Reference Larrimore2008, 348, 56). In fact, it is the difference (i.e., relative weakness) of non-European peoples that requires these protections, because it prevents an engagement in conditions of equality with Europeans, thus making the logic of antagonism—which regulates European states’ relations—fail. In other words, protections of Right are extended in order to prevent violence and oppression, but also to accommodate inequality, rather than as a recognition of equality. Thus, in contrast to Mark Larrimore's (Reference Larrimore1999) claim that Kant considered non-Europeans inferior and meaningless in the grand scheme of progress, I argue that Kant likely came to consider them far from meaningless, and perhaps even a central obstacle to progress toward peace, due to their inability to stand up in “lively competition” against European conquerors.

We can think of this form of incorporation in parallel to that of women, who, as feminist critics of Kant have noted, Kant considers naturally inferior to men and unfit for the public sphere, even while he accords them respect and a role in men's education (Kleingeld Reference Kleingeld1993; Kofman Reference Kofman1997).Footnote ²² Just as a belief in gender inequality is compatible with a concern with the well-being and general standing of women, incorporating non-Europeans into Kant's system of Right did not require an incorporation in equal terms (Bernasconi Reference Bernasconi, Elden and Mendieta2011, 292), that is, a retreat from Kant's commitments to racial hierarchy. Differently put, condemning violence against non-European groups and the violent means of conquest does not in and of itself require an acceptance of those groups as racially equal or their civilization as comparable to Europe's. The permanence of Kant's racial and civilizational thinking receives support from a later claim, from the 1798 edition of his anthropology lectures: