ABSTRACT
Colonialism is for Immanuel Kant connected essentially to unfair commercial terms, territorial occupation or, finally, war of conquest. This chapter provides an interpretation of what might have pushed Kant towards a change of mind on colonialism and races. Kant’s views on race and colonialism raise perplexities among interpreters. Undeniably, he makes a number of unambiguously racist considerations on non-European populations in the course of his various lectures on anthropology. Kant speaks of the “unsocial sociability” of peoples and nations as one of the essential components for progression. Kant’s view, instead, is that violations of international justice – and of cosmopolitan rights – are perpetrated primarily by “the civilized, especially commercial, states in our part of the world”.
