Kant on public reason and the linguistic Other

Asian Journal of Philosophy 3 (2):1-22 (2024)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

On Kant’s account, “public use of reason” is the use that a truth-seeking scholar makes of his reason when he communicates his thoughts in writing to a world of readers. Commentators tend to treat this account as expressing an egalitarian ideal, without taking seriously the limiting conditions—especially the scholarship condition—built into it. In this paper, I interrogate Kant’s original account of public reason in connection with his construction of the “Oriental” as a linguistically and therefore epistemically and culturally inferior Other. I thereby give reasons to worry that Kant’s account is substantively inegalitarian (even if it is nominally egalitarian). I also draw attention to the fact that Kant constructed a linguistic Other against the backdrop of colonialism and from a position of power. This positionality gave what he said about the Other an ideology-forming and world-making effect. In this way, his exclusionary discursive practices—such as depicting the Oriental as an inferior linguistic Other—could have a lasting impact on knowledge production and on the real-world exercise of public reason.

Other Versions

No versions found

Similar books and articles

Kant’s Conception of Public Reason.Terence Hua Tai - 2021 - In Hon-Lam Li & Michael Campbell (eds.), Public Reason and Bioethics: Three Perspectives. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 283-315.
Enlightenment and freedom.Jonathan Peterson - 2008 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46 (2):pp. 223-244.

Analytics

Added to PP
2024-07-12

Downloads
127 (#172,552)

6 months
48 (#103,009)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Huaping Lu-Adler
Georgetown University