Above All Things Human: Bestimmung In Salomo Friedlaender’s Kant For Children
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2024
Published In
Kant For Children
Abstract
Kant’s commitment to universalism has been called into question since increasing attention has been paid to his work on race in the last 20 years. This worry can easily be applied to Kant’s work on education: when Kant describes education as allowing humanity to fulfill its Bestimmung (vocation), scholars might reasonably conclude that such a claim only applies to certain racial groups. Yet Salomo Friedlaender claims that if Kant’s moral theory is taught to children, “Every person is valued according to her morality and no longer, as in our crude days, according to ‘race’ or national and religious affiliation” (18). This interpretation of Kant might strike some contemporary Kant scholars as naïvely optimistic, but neo-Kantians were well aware of Kant’s racial claims. By examining how neo-Kantians read Kant’s work on race, I argue that Friedlaender’s interpretation provides a way of reading an unracialized Bestimmung in the pedagogy.
Published By
De Gruyter
Editor(s)
B. J. Krajewski
Recommended Citation
Krista Karbowski Thomason.
(2024).
"Above All Things Human: Bestimmung In Salomo Friedlaender’s Kant For Children".
Kant For Children.
121-140.
DOI: 10.1515/9783110979862-010
https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy/633
