The plot thickens!
With reference to "the cream of the crop", endogamy, first-cousin marriages, "inbreeding" etc. The Book of Enoch wherein the Nephilim/ fallen angels mate with the daughters of men etc. , the latest awesome news is that A New Human Species may have been identified !
Looking forward to the 29th of June when the US Government is going to tell us about the extraterrestrial sightings! If the extraterrestrials are indeed already here among us , then we may not have to travel for trillions of light years to the furthest reaches of the cosmos "in search of knowledge"
"He who knows himself knows his Lord"
As Pope put it, eleven hundred years later:
"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, The proper study of mankind is Man."
--the kant article was only slightly revealing for us. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/05568641.2016.1199170?journalCode=rppa20
it doesn't explicitly discuss kant's views on race except structurally. he accepted the broad notions of humans made up of many races, all linked to one group by virtual of the fact that we can interbreed and bear children. the obvious physical differences are not basic to anything, but apparently he shared general views that over time, and for whatever reason, there are differences among the races. but not so significant as to create different species.
the article asked how the architecture of his thinking about reason related to the way he grappled with the question of what is nature and how it works, not on how and why races are different.
what i found interesting was the timing: the end of the 18th century was the period in which defining race and trying to understand its origins and workings comes about. they must have inherited older non-scientific popular notions, as i said, like the great chain of being. but they precede the century in which scientific thinking becomes more rigorous and develops mechanisms to study microscopic forces that genes that refine understandings of how humans work.
linnaeus is of this period. and eventually i think darwin must have been decisive in dealing death blows to the ignorance and speculation of earlier centuries on how living beings emerged and evolved.ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2021 11:29 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Kant and AfricaOn the lighter side, if only Kant who has not yet resurrected would suddenly appear (the second coming of Kant) what an exciting discussion and debate it would be between Immanuel Kant in one corner – without the advantage of hindsight - and Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju in the other corner, exchanging, philosophical blows about alleged "racism", all based on Adepoju's pure reason and some post-enlightenment "noble savage" anthropology to boot. Ideally, I would nominate Kwame Anthony Appiah who is himself a contemporary philosopher with his own philosophical views on race and racism, as the moderator!
Unfortunately, the state of the art is not yet so developed that we could dig him up at Königsberg Cathedral, Kaliningrad, Russia, give new flesh and blood to his old bones and ask him if he has any regrets or change of mind about any of the things that he has said previously.
Another fellow whose critics would like to resurrect for questioning is Karl Marx, who is buried at Highgate Cemetery, London, United Kingdom...
I for one who took philosophy as a "subsidiary"/ minor, and enjoyed tremendously, a very long time ago, when time was short and when the grass was still green and up to this day not having ploughed through Kant as I should have done (who has?) I'd say that Ken's succinct explications are sufficient, as is indeed the essay that appears at the top of the Kant and race theory link I posted: Kant, race and natural history - by Stella Sandford and some of the other stuff further down below in that link
Myself, I was terribly impressed by Oluwatoyin, waxing poetic with his "I refresh myself almost daily by visualising Kant seated in his house in Konigsberg, watching the glory of the night sky and reflecting on the harmony between his mind, which is able to perceive that sky, reflecting on the vast spatial and temporal spans represented by the celestial dynamism he perceives, an image drawn from his majestic meditation on time, space, finitude and infinity towards the conclusion of his A Critique of Practical Reason."
Albeit, less impressed by the twilight and sunset poetry and more impressed by Adepoju's stamina to have actually ploughed through all of Kant's "Critique of Practical Reason" to the very end: The poetry reminds me of Bernard-Henri Levy (a Jew) who was once asked on Swedish TV, " Do you believe in God?" and this answer - of the moment - to that question. His answer then was, "Yes, sometime, when I look up at the night sky" (to behold ( I suppose) what Allen Ginsberg once described as "the starry dynamo in the machinery of night"
In Judah Halevi's Kuzari , I came across as sentence which started, something like " now you take a primitive African ( somewhere in the jungle) barely equipped with some rudimentary language . Now, Adepoju can holler as much as he likes, but that was a pretty commonplace perception of some of our ancestors in those days ( as Ken has briefly explained and it certainly wasn't a sin in the eyes of God to think like that.
I'd like to know more about Kant's impact. Did Kant influence the father of race biology, Herman Bernhard Lundborg, for example?
--On Thu, 24 Jun 2021 at 09:14, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Ken.--
Which article are you referring to since Cornelius link is to a Google search with many hits?
Racism has often coupled philosophical justification with plain inhumanity, theory with clear bigotry, both feeding each other.
Is that not how much of inhuman behaviour is rationalised?
Thanks
Toyin
On Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 10:31 Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
--wow, this is a serious piece. thanks cornelius.i was slightly--i mean slightly--interested in toyin adepoju's claim; it seemed too simple. maybe the problem is with the term "racist," which meant one thing during the centuries when the great chain of being was naturalized, and therefore not questioned, and the modern period when evolution, genetics, and the sciences came into their own. racism concerning an epistemological understanding of the universe and its component, vs. popular beliefs about different people, as in the popular view of germans held by the french, or of new jersey people held by new yorkers. the first built on science with its presuppositions that were hard to change; the latter popular beliefs like slang or common speech, changing incrementally but inevitably due to usage.
the article, however, is serious philosophy, which makes serious claims worthy of our studythanksken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, June 21, 2021 6:43 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Kant and AfricaThis in not poetic, flowery or peripheral : Kant and Race Theory
--On Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 14:58:44 UTC+2 ovdepoju wrote:
Edited
Beautiful.
I am an African Independent Scholar who considers Kant's work part of the acme of human thought.
I refresh myself almost daily by visualising Kant seated in his house in Konigsberg, watching the glory of the night sky and reflecting on the harmony between his mind, which is able to perceive that sky, reflecting on the vast spatial and temporal spans represented by the celestial dynamism he perceives, an image drawn from his majestic meditation on time, space, finitude and infinity towards the conclusion of his A Critique of Practical Reason.
From the perceiving mind to the question of how and what that mind perceives, the wonders of existence that motivate these reflections, wonders of the sublimity of nature and the grandeur of the human mind, a line of thought taking one from Kant's A Critique of Practical Reason to his A Critique of Pure Reason to his A Critique of Judgement.
Kant's thought engages the central questions of philosophy as traditionally understood in Western thought and as these resonate in bodies of thought and reflective traditions around the world.
Kant was racist. Hegel was racist. Heidegger, to give another example, was an enabler of Nazism.
Hinduism, to give other examples of the co-existence of the sublime and the dehumanizing, is the crucible of both lofty metaphysics and the Hindu caste system as well as the now abolished wife burning tradition; Judaism embodies awesome evocations of the human relationship with the divine but is also a pioneer in the practice of religiously sanctioned genocide;the Koran has wondrous passages but also orientations feeding inhuman fanaticisms....the list goes on.
It's possible to appreciate Kant and even Hegel while acknowledging their racism.
One may learn positively from Hegel's philosophy of history while recognizing the limitations represented by the Eurocentric and Africa denigrating bias of that philosophy.
One could even adapt the Hegelian inspiration in exploring how the African corollaries, such as the Yoruba "ase", of the German concept of "Geist", translated as mind/spirit, which underlies Hegel's thought, may be developed in terms of interpreting history as a dialectic between human and environmental potentiality and actualization.
I present this perspective in "Developing a Historiographic Method Inspired by Yoruba Thought 1 : Motivated by Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba : A New History, on Yoruba History as a Quest for Meaning" and ''What Can an African Philosopher Gain from Hegel, Abhinavagupta and Ramana Maharshi? : Developing African Philosophy through the Inspiration of German Idealism and Indian Philosophy in Relation to Yoruba History as a Quest for Meaning in Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba : A New History.''
I am developing these ideas further for presentation in a paper at the Atanda conference on Yoruba culture that begins tomorrow.
Congrats, Bjoern, on the project to which you are contributing.
It would be great to read more from you on these issues.
On Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 11:03 Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
Beautiful.
I am an African Independent Scholar whose considers Kant's work part of the acme of human thought.
I refresh myself almost daily by visualising Kant seated in his house in Konigsberg, watching the glory of the night sky and reflecting on the harmony between his mind, which is able to perceive that sky, reflecting on the vast spatial and temporal spans represented by the celestial dynamism he perceives, an image drawn from his majestic meditation on time, space, finitude and infinity towards the conclusion of his A Critique of Practical Reason.
From the perceiving mind to the question of how and what that mind perceives,the wonders of existence that motivate these reflections, wonders of the submity of nature and the grandeur of the human mind, a line of thought taking one from Kant's A Critique of Practical Reason to his A Critique of Pure Reason to his A Critique of Judgement.
Kant's thought engages the central questions of philosophy as traditionally understood in Western thought and as these resonate in bodies of thought and reflective traditions around the world.
Kant was racist. Hegel was racist. Heidegger, to give another example, was an enabler of Nazism.
Hinduism, to give other examples of the co-existence of the sublime and the dehumanising, is the crucible of both lofty metaphysics and the Hindu caste system as well as the now abolished wife burning tradition, Judaism embodies awesome evocations of the human relationship with the divine but is also a pioneer in the practice of religiously sanctioned genocide,the Koran has wondrous passages but also orientations feeding inhuman fantacisms....the list goes on.
It's possible to appreciate Kant and even Hegel while acknowledging their racism.
One may learn positively from Hegel's philosophy of history while recognising the limitations represented by the Eurocentric and Africa denigrating bias of that philosophy.
One could even adapt the Hegelian inspiration in exploring how the African corrolaries of the German concept of "Geist", translated as mind/spirit, such as the Yoruba "ase" which underlies Hegel's thought may be developed in terms of interpreting history as a dialectic between human and environmental potentiality and actualisation, a perspective I present in an essay on Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba: A New History, a perspective I am working on for presentation in a paper at the Atanda conference on Yoruba culture that begins tomorrow.
Congrats, Bjoern, on the project to which you are contributing.
It would be great to read more from you on these issues.
Toyin
On Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 08:37 <bfre...@gmail.com> wrote:
--Dear Colleagues,
For some years I am working in the research area of decolonization. I see, as a white scholar, my responsibility to find out what the Western philosophy's part in the project of decolonization has to be. Western thought, most notably since the beginning of the Enlightenment, has been permeated by the sense that it is the standard-bearer of thought. With an unprecedented violence, Western philosophy asserted itself as the one right way to peace, prosperity and happiness for all human beings. Within the framework of philosophy, thousands of years of contributions beyond the so-called western traditions have been largely ignored. If we look closely at many of the important thinkers of the Enlightenment, such as Kant, Hegel or Voltaire, we find vile testimonies of racism or sexism, of, in a word: superiorisms. The superioristic thinking asserts itself above the other and makes itself decisive for the other. The superiorisms of the Enlightenment resulted in the fact that a multiplicity of human beings were and continue to be excluded from the project of the Enlightenment, even if this is rarely acknowledged explicitly. The persistent claim of the Enlightenment thinkers to address the needs of all human beings seems in sharp contradiction with, for instance, the exclusion of non-white people from the Enlightenment. It seems even until the present day it is not clear how this could happen. Therefore, we would like to address questions such as the following: Did the thinkers of the Enlightenment manage to be humanists and racists at the same time? Or did they dehumanize those excluded from the Enlightenment so that the contradiction just dissolved? Are the values of the Enlightenment such as democracy, autonomy, freedom contaminated by the superiorism of some of their architects or not? Might this sense of superiority be an explanation for the fact that western thinking remains deeply convinced of its own rightness and for the on-going superiorism we see in our divided societies?
It seems Western thought, to this day, has not sufficiently recognized its superioristic danger as the danger that it is! When considering contemporary contexts, this danger remains real. The other is stigmatized or re-stigmatized. Western thought remains dangerous. The West must finally take this seriously and critically evaluate its value as a normative authority. It would hardly be surprising if we indeed find that a lot of contemporary problems have grown forth from the pseudo-self-evident superiority of the white, heterosexual, male human being many of the Enlightenment thinkers tried so vigorously to defend by manipulating philosophy. The West needs to understand itself, needs to understand all the intricacies of its superiorism, its superalternity and finally start working on the Desuperiorization of its thought. We want to stimulate a discussion that Western thought must understand that its central task must be its Desuperiorization.
Let me know try to explain why I am writing to you today: I was blessed to be asked to contribute to a volume entitled "Kant in Africa and Africa in Kant. Critical Philosophy in African Culture and Though" (http://www.hegelpd.it/hegel/cfa-kant-in-africa-and-africa-in-kant-critical-philosophy-in-african-culture-and-thought-estudos-kantianos/).
I am well aware of the more known literature on this (from Eze to Bernasconi and from Kleingeld to Mills), but what I realized is, that I am truly missing in my work (even though I have not precisely determined what my contribution will be about) are more contemporary African voices to help me understand how Kant is perceived in (and outside) of the philosophical departments of Africa today. I am blessed with many friends in Nigerian and South-African philosophical departments, but I felt, I would need to reach out to more colleagues! I am wondering how is this strange tension of the Kantian philosophy perceived? The tension of this egalitarian Enlightenment thinker who is so brutally anti-African at the same time… How is Kant taught? How is the Kantian philosophy viewed or used? Can his racism be ignored? Can it not be ignored? Can it be evaded? Does this influence your work with or teaching about Kant?
Perhaps you have seen my requests on some philosophical mailing lists, but so far I did not receive a lot of responses, this is why I wanted to ask, if there is anything you could share with me regarding this topic. Perhaps you have experience from teaching Kant yourself, or from participating in courses about Kant? Perhaps you have course material you could share or texts written by African philosophers who I might have missed? I am thinking esp. about books, texts, collections, materials which have only been published in Africa, or by University publishers etc.
As you can tell from my introduction, I have fairly strong (and fairly negative) opinions on the failings of the Kantian philosophy, but, of course, I need to learn from my dear African philosophical colleagues, how Kant is perceived in African places or in the African diaspora today.
I would also welcome if you would have ideas about issues you think need to be addressed with regards to Kant's racism which so far have been ignored.
Of course, I am happy to share with you some of the ideas I developed on Kant, should you be interested!
All the best,
Bjoern (Freter)
https://independent.academia.edu/Bj%C3%B6rnFreter
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