Kant's Universalism and the Concept of Race

In Kant's Universalism and the Concept of Race, Jameliah Inga Shorter-Bourhanou provides an account of Kant's views on universalism, with a particular focus on Kant's racism and its surrounding controversy. In this book, Shorter-Bourhanou embraces both sides of the traditional debate around this topic, agreeing with such philosophers as Pauline Kleingeld and Allen W. Wood that Kant's universalist theory offers moral, social, and political philosophies worth preserving. Shorter also agrees with philosophers Robert Bernasconi and Charles W. Mills that Kant's racist ideas impact his moral, social, and political philosophies.

Shorter-Bourhanou carefully seeks a middle-ground between these two interpretations to account for Kant's racism, while at once offering important assertions about universalism that would reflect a truly inclusive ideology. She argues that Kant's discussion of race -- and the impact of these claims on his universalist views -- indeed influence his moral, historical, social, and political philosophies. In order to discover the possibility for a concept of a Kant-inspired universalism that is truly inclusive, she reconciles his racism as a path toward generating new possibilities for Kantian philosophy at large.