Tuesday 5 October 2010

Critics on Immanuel Kant

Last time I was studying an issue about Philosophy. So I decided to search something in the web. The issue was about Rationality. But at that time I found something really interesting: an article about an Afro-German philosopher, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, who criticized one of the most famous philosophers in history, Immanuel Kant. In the article, the colour of the reason: the idea of `race´ in Kant´s anthropology, Chukwudi talks about that Kant was racist when talking about rationality. After reading a lot of books of Kant, Chukwudi got to the conclusion that Kant always spoke that the only people capable of thinking were white people, to be more precise, European people. The rest (black, yellow and red people) were considered by Kant as ‘lazy people’.

When I read this article I couldn’t believe why a philosopher would say such a terrible thing. I don’t think because of the colour of the skin a person can think or not. All the people have the ability of thinking so it doesn’t matter if you are white or black or whatever.

Poly

2 comments:

  1. I’m really surprised about what you found regarding Kant’s ideas about rationality!! It makes me think that sometimes when we read some piece of work, we don’t go “beyond the lines”, we have to be very careful when it comes to analyzing another’s ideas and points of view. Besides, it may be helpful to read what other people think about an author to understand him better. Now, I will try to give Kant’s works a second reading!!!

    Sunshine

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  2. I agree with you, but I also understand Kant's ideas. You have to consider he developed the whole theory influenced by the Imperalism.
    Evan

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