Eurocentrism in philosophy: The case of Immanuel Kant

Philosophical Forum

Volumn 27, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 333-356

  Serequeberhan, Tsenay ^a  

^a SIMMONS COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 50249176682     PISSN: 0031806X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. Edward W. Said and David Barsamian, The Pen and the Sword (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1994), p. 78.
2. The term "Idea" - i.e., the German Idee - designates a theoretical or practical construct of the imagination which serves to give guidance to the theoretical and practical efforts of human reason. For how this notion functions in Kant, please see Lewis White Beck's introduction to Kant on History, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Pub., 1963), p. xviii-xxi and also what Kant says of the Idea in relation to practical political actuality on page 150 of this same text.
3. See also the very insightful seminar by Hannah Arendt titled "Imagination," in Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, edited and introduced by R. Beiner (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982).
4. In "African Philosophy: The Point in Question" (African Philosophy: The Essential Readings, New York: Parago House, 1991 ed. Tsenay Serequeberhan), I have made this claim in a much more general and broad manner, as it relates to the tradition as a whole. The burden of this paper is to specify this charge in a limited number of texts and to argumentatively make it stick. In this respect Kant is important because he personifies and epitomizes - more than any other modern philosopher - the rationality of the rational or ratio as manifested in the Western tradition.
5. Placide Tempels, Bantu Philosophy (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1969), pp. 171-172.
6. To be sure this is the general framework in and through which Europe's relation with Africa has been and still is mediated starting at least from the 18th century (Anne Hugon, The Exploration of Africa from Cairo to the Cape, New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1993).
7. On this point Kwasi Wiredu writes: "Indeed an African needs a certain levelheadedness to deal with some of these thinkers at all. Neither Hume, nor Marx, displayed much respect for the black man, so whatever partiality the African philosopher may develop for these thinkers must rest mostly on considerations of the truth of their philosophical thought." (Philosophy and an African Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980, p. 49)
8. In my view, such a position fails to recognize that "the truth of their [i.e., Hume's, Marx's, Kant's, . . . etc.] philosophical thought" does not come packaged separately from the lack of "respect" that these thinkers have for non-European peoples. In fact, as we shall see in this paper, Kant's lack of "respect" for Africans - or Negroes, as he refers to them - is directly tied to and originates in and from his transcendental discourse on history. Thus the "truth" of his "philosophical thought" is intractably linked to his lack of "respect" for non-European peoples. The task of a destructive critique, in this regard, is to show how, in the very texture of the text historically contingent prejudices-i.e., pre-judgments - are palmed off as the "truth" of human historical existence as such. It is only thus that one can properly appropriate or appreciate - in full view of its original context - the "truth" of their "philosophical thought." For some of my earlier efforts in this area of destructive work please see: "Karl Marx and African Emancipatory Thought: A Critique of Marx's Euro-Centric Metaphysics," Praxis International, Vol. 10, Nos. 1/2, April & July 1990,
9. and "The Ideal of Colonialism in Hegel's Philosophy of Right," International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3, Issue No. 115, September 1989.
10. In this respect see also, Emmanuel Eze, "The Color of Reason: The Idea of 'Race' in Kant's Anthropology," in Anthropology and the German Enlightenment, ed., Katherine Faull; Bucknell Review, Universalism: An African Perspective," in Dialogue and Humanism, The Universalist Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1991;
11. R. A. T. Judy, "Kant and the Negro," in A Bulletin of the Society for African Philosophy in North America (SAPINA) Vol. III, No. 1, January-July, 1991.
12. For a programmatic formulation of such de-structive work see Lucius Outlaw, "African 'Philosophy': Deconstructive and reconstructive challenges," in Contemporary Philosophy, Vo. 5, African Philosophy, ed., Guttom Floistad (Martinus Nijhoff Pub., 1987).
13. On this point please see the following documents: "Grassroots International: A Strategy for Social Change," (Published by Grassroots International, 1988) and "Grassroots International: A Post-Cold War Strategy," (Published by Grassroots International, 1991).
14. V. Y. Mudimbe, The Surreptitious Speech (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. xx.
15. Samir Amin, Eurocentrism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989), p. 74. Amin uses the term "Islamocentric" as a correlate to "Eurocentric," but awkward as it sounds, it seems to me that the term "Arabocentric" is much more appropriate and symmetrical. Amin makes the above point by way of a critical remark in Edward W. Said's Orientalism. The latter views Dante's castigation of Mohammed to hell as an example of Eurocentrism, whereas Amin suggests that it is nothing more than a common and "banal provincialism" common to both sides in the Muslim-Christian conflict of the time. Said is thus criticized for neglecting the universalistic and transcendental aspect of Eurocentrism, which is its key defining element and that which distinguishes it from trite and ordinary kinds of racism or ethnocentrism. Which is common to most - if not all - ethnic and cultural groupings of humanity, insofar as each considers its own culture, tradition and/or creed as "better," "purer" or "true" as distinct to all the Others. Eurocentrism is such a view which has additionally been grounded in a universalistic metaphysics of Truth and Reason. This is the achievement of the European Enlightenment discourse on rationality. One last point: Paradoxical as it may seem, Amin's book, in its unrelenting search for "the" universal laws of the evolution of human society is through and through saturated and grounded on the very Eurocentrism which it tries to unmask.
16. As Jose Rabasa puts it: "I must emphasize that by Eurocentrism I do not simply mean a tradition that places Europe as a universal cultural ideal embodied in what is called the West, but rather a pervasive condition of thought. It is universal because it affects both Europeans and non-Europeans, despite the specific questions and situations each may address." Inventing America (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), p. 18.
17. Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure (Portsmouth N.H.: Heinemann Educational Books, 1989), p. 79-80.
18. V. Y. Mudimbe's The Invention of Africa (1988),
19. Jose Rabasa's Inventing America (1993)
20. and J. M. Blaut's The Colonizer's Model of the World (1993).
21. Cornelius Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, section 8, "Reflections on 'Rationality' and Development, Presentation and Response to Critics," p. 198.
22. Michel Foucault, "The Art of Telling the Truth," Critique and Power, edited and introduced by Michael Kelly (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1994) p. 147.
23. It is interesting to note that The American Philosophical Association at its Eastern Division Ninety-First Meeting had a very interesting symposium titled "The Enlightenment Project Today." This symposium (composed of: chair, Alan Ryan; speakers, Thomas McCarthy and Alasdair MacIntyre; commentator, Lucius Outlaw) was centered on Kant and on the nature of reason in the project of Enlightenment. Outlaw's comments were directed at querying this rationality in view of its lapses as regards to non-European peoples. See the APA journal (December 27-30, 1994, p. 22 and for McCarthy's and MacIntyre's blurbs on their respective papers pp. 75-77).
24. Han-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad Publishers, 1982), pp. 158-159.
25. As V. Y. Mudimbe has observed, the relation of the missionary to the native is grounded on what he calls "'the authority of the truth'" "African Gnosis: Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge," African Studies Review, Vol. 28, No. 2/3, June/September 1985, p. 154. What the authors we will consider overlook and thus implicitly share in is precisely this "authority of the truth" as embodied in European modernity and as it manifests itself in the historic-philosophic writings of Kant.
26. Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), trans., T. M. Knox,p. 11.
27. For a reassertion of Hegel's position, on this point - i.e., the concurrence of actuality and reason - see, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1981), p. 36.
28. Cornelius Castoriadis notes that, in contradistinction to Socrates (the citizen philosopher), it is Plato (following Parmenides, one might add) who inaugurates this propensity of philosophic thought to justify that which is and in so doing forsake its originary task of questioning and instituting, ex nihilo the socio-historical structures in which human existence unfolds. In this regard he writes: "We should take by the ear the theologian [Platonism, Christianity . . . etc.], the Hegelian, the Nietzschean, the Heideggerian, bring them to Kolyma in Siberia, to Auschwitz, into a Russian psychiatric hospital, into the torture chambers of the Argentine police [and one might add: the holds of the slave ships in the middle passage, and the countless European "civilizing" adventures in Africa and elsewhere] and require that they explain, on the spot and without subterfuges, the meaning of the expressions 'There is no power but of God,' 'All that is real is rational,' 'the innocence of becoming,' or 'releasement towards things.'" Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, pp. 9-10. As we shall see, Kant's Eurocentric legitimation of European expansion and global conquest is within the confines of Castoriadis's critique. One last point: One need not agree categorically to all the particular perspectives named by Castoriadis to recognize, in general, the truth of what he is saying.
29. Kant on History, "What is Enlightenment?" p. 3.
30. Beck, introduction to Kant on History, passim and specifically, pp. xviii-xx.
31. Michel Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?" in Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), ed., Paul Rabinow, p. 35.
32. Foucault develops his discussion of Kant by focusing on Kant's own distinction between the realm of "obedience" and the realm of "reason." For a concise discussion of this same point which focuses on the political selectiveness of the Enlightenment as conceived by Kant and his colleagues, see James Schmidt, "The Question of Enlightenment," in Journal of the History of Ideas. Vol. L, No. 2, April-June 1989.
33. Jürgen Habermas, "Taking Aim at the Heart of the Present: On Foucault's Lecture on Kant's What is Enlightenment?" pp. 152-153, in Critique and Power.
34. Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy
35. On this point, see note # 2.
36. Cornelius Castoriadis, Crossroads in the Labyrinth (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1984), pp. 274-275. Castoriadis directs his remarks to Marx. But these remarks pertain not only to Marx's attitude - and the disposition of capitalism towards non-European cultures - but to the European imperious attitude as a whole which is reflected, embodied, and articulated in the classic texts of the Occidental tradition.
37. Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1960), pp. 110-111.
38. Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, p. 109-116.
39. Notice that in these comparisons, just as the non-Europeans are "elevated" by being compared to Europeans (i.e., the Arabs and Persians by being likened to the Spanish and the French), to the same degree the Europeans, in these comparisons, are degraded - relative to other Europeans. The Arabs are like the Spanish just as the Persians are like the French. And the last two stand in the same relationship of superiority to the Spanish and the Arabs within their respective continents. Notice now that Spain occupies the southern-most extremity of Europe and it is that one section of the European mainland that was under Moorish/African control for an extended period of time. Notice also that the English are likened to the Japanese, but the Germans are not utilized as a standard of comparison. Are they above such comparisons? Thus, you have the Spanish, the French or the English - depending on how one arranges the hierarchy between their Asiatic correlates - and then the Germans, above all the Europeans: Indeed, Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles! There is a certain diabolical consistency in all of this. As is well known, Hegel held the view that there are four world-historical realms. In order of their hierarchy, starting from the lowest, these are: the Oriental, the Greek, the Roman, and the Germanic. On this point see Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976) trans. T. M. Knox, paragraphs 354-360.
40. In a similar vein, Karl Marx repeats this same self-flattering evaluation when he writes, of India: "At all events, we may safely expect to see, at a more or less remote period, the regeneration of that great and interesting country [India], whose gentle natives are, to use the expression of Prince Saltykov, even in the most inferior classes, 'plus fins et plus adroits que les italiens,' whose submission even is counterbalanced by a certain calm nobility, who, notwithstanding their natural languor, have astonished the British officers by their bravery, whose country has been the source of our languages, our religions, and who represent that type of the ancient German in the Jat and the type of the ancient Greek in the Brahmin." (from "The Future Results of the British Rule in India," published in the New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3840, August 8, 1853, collected in On Colonialism [New York: International Publishers, 1972], p. 86). Notice again that the Italian peninsula is located at the southern extremity of Europe and the Italians - especially those of the South - have been influenced by Arab and Moorish culture much more than the rest of Europe. So the Jat - a fiercely independent and thus "noble" Northern Indian peasant group - is like the ancient Germans and the ancient Greeks like the Brahmin. And all of this in spite of the "natural languor" of the "gentle natives." Such revealing remarks need no explicative commentary!
41. Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?" p. 37.
42. Kant on History, "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View," p. 24.
43. In this respect, as in many others, Hegel is a faithful disciple of Kant. For his efforts in this direction, see his programmatic formulation of this point in the preface to the Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), trans. T. M. Knox, p. 4, the second full paragraph. See also note # 16.
44. It should be obvious that, in this respect, Kant is ontologizing the ontic manifestations of instrumental rationality - as it is beginning to manifest itself, in bourgeois relations of production in contradistinction to feudal European society - and as a partisan of this rationality within a social formation in the process of historically embodying or being engulfed by the same. It should also be noted, since this is not the place to explore this point at any length, that Kant is expressing himself against Herder's conceptions of human life and history, which do not subscribe to the universalistic and transcendental nature of Kant's position. For a concise statement of Herder's position, see Patrick Gardiner's article on Herder in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan Pub., Inc. & The Free Press, 1967), pp. 486-489.
45. Philip Wheelwright, The Presocratics (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1975), fragment # 41, p. 72.
46. See note # 56.
47. Kant, On History. "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View," p. 12.
48. Jacque Lacan has observed that Kant's categorical imperative amounts to requiring the reduction of moral action - grounded on and in the sovereign will - to the status of computational, that is automatic and involutionary repetition, he states, ". . . a renewal or updating of the Kantian imperative might be expressed in the following way, with the help of the language of electronics and automation: 'Never act except in such a way that your action may be programmed.'" The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960, ed., Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Dennis Porter (New York, London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1992), p. 77.
49. In the above, there is a paradoxical reversal of Kant's imperative, an imperative meant to incarnate the sovereignty and freedom of practical human reason in contradistinction to feelings and inclinations, ends by requiring programmable action, i.e., unfree or automatic action. In like manner the obsession with a rational "guiding thread" in the realm of pure contingency - i.e., history - ends by making this very contingency itself into a necessity and a hierarchical order. See also Antonio Gramsci's critical remarks on Kant's categorical imperative, Prison Notebooks (New York: International Pub., 1992), pp. 373-374.
50. Cornelius Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, "Reflections on 'Rationality' and 'Development,'Presentation and Response to Critics," p. 200.
51. Antonio Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks, (New York: International Pub., 1972), ed., by Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith, p. 374.
52. Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, pp. 75-76.
53. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), p. 11.
54. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans., & ed., by W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), p. 119.
55. Aime Césaire, Letter to Maurice Thorez (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1957), p. 15.
56. Kant, On History, p. 16.
57. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, (New York: International Pub., 1983), pp. 23-25.
58. Cornelius Castoriadis, "The Crisis of Western Societies," Telos, No. 53, Fall 1982.
59. See note # 33.
60. See note # 56.
61. See note # 5.
62. Loren Eiseley, Darwin's Century (New York: Anchor Books, 1961), chapter 10.
63. Placide Tempels, Bantu Philosophy, pp. 171-172.
64. Kant on History, "What is Enlightenment?" p. 9.
65. See section one (I) of this paper.
66. E. W. Said and D. Barsamian, The Pen and the Sword, p. 105.
67. See note # 1.
68. See my remarks on Wiredu in note # 5.