Abstract

The fourth chapter of Kant’s Universalism and the Concept of Race, titled “Explaining Subservience: Kant and the Enslavement of Africans” focuses on the social and political implications of universalism which are best seen in Kant’s comments on the enslavement of Africans in “On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy” (1788). This chapter is framed around Kant’s public engagement with Georg Forster about race. The author shows that Kant’s insistence about the permanency of Analgen is what motivates him to offer his fiercest defense of monogenesis, which results in an explanation of African chattel slavery. This chapter argues that the implications of Kant’s claims mean that African chattel slaves (and perhaps all Africans) are precluded from the universalist theory insofar as the institution of slavery, and their congenital condition as people who cannot labor on their own, justifies their inferior moral, social, and political position.