Abstract

Although colonialism is only a marginal topic in Kant's writings, his remarks on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of colonial practices have naturally attracted much attention. As Kant is a main representative of enlightenment thinking and a herald of emancipatory theory, any putative endorsement or critique of colonialism on his part would seem to have far reaching implications: Kant's stance, whatever it turns out to be, could be understood as representative of the ways in which Western Enlightenment might be complicit with or, on the contrary, offer a resource for overcoming colonial oppression. This volume does not address the broader question of the general relation of enlightenment and colonialism directly but rather turns to the more limited task of getting clear about Kant's actual position regarding colonialism.