University of California,

Irvine
Department of Comparative Literature
Winter Quarter 2017
Comparative Literature 210
Course Code: 22863
Kant, Concept, Teleology, Race
Seminar Sessions -- Friday 2-4:50PM -- Humanities Gateway 3301

Professor Nahum Dimitri Chandler

Office: 3333 Humanities Gateway
E-Mail: glasnet2014@gmail.com
Tel.: 949/824-1610
Office Hours:
Wednesday 11:30AM-1:30PM
SYLLABUS
Course Description:
This course will work through the concept of teleology in Immanuel Kants thought of the
human, especially with regard to his production of the first philosophical concept of race.
Key texts are: sections from both the First Critique and the Third Critique, the essays
Determination of a Concept of Race (1785), On the Use of Teleological Principles in
Philosophy (1788), and his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1795).
As such it will examine the relative and interwoven status of organic teleology and aesthetic
teleology, in particular as it is staged as a problem of the diversity of the human, both as homo
sapiens and as an historial entity or form of being, in the work of Kant. Notably, while key texts are
indicated above the seminar will work with texts across the entirety of Kants mature discourse, on
the matter of teleology therein.
More precisely, the course elaborates an investigation of the critical thought that in the
history of modern thought and science the very idea of race is not an aberration or anachronism. It
proposes, instead, that such an idea is encoded in the problem of the supposed commonness of the
human, as it has been produced and engaged in modern discourses, in particular since the 18th
century. As such it brings this inquiry to central bearing on Immanuel Kants attempt to formulate a
philosophical concept of race across the decades of his articulation of the critical project. On this
basis but beyond the time of this specific term, this course provides an essential preparation for
those who work thought this seminar to approach at a new depth and precision that typically
understood the intellectual history of the concept of race since the late eighteenth century.

Let me now put this on another track so as to illuminate by a different angle, the work of
this course and its value as I see it.
In an additional discourse we might say that this course will consider the relation of the
philosophical formulation of a concept that portends to account for both the unity and the diversity
of man on the order of the general to the emergence of the project of an anthropology as part of a
general project of knowledge in the work of Immanuel Kant.
That concept, of course, is the philosophical formulation of the concept of race.
Long before the formalization of the concept of culture, to which it would give epistemic
rise a whole century later, this concept in its first philosophical elaboration in the work of Kant
placed at stake many of the questions that remain intractable for the most contemporary of our
theorizations of culture and historicity. These are the perennial questions of the (so-called originary)
dissemination, (re-) inauguration, hierarchy, limit, and possibility of historical social forms among
humans.
Thus the course undertakes as its primary work a consideration of (1) the emergence and
formulation of the question what is man? in the work of Immanuel Kant. (Perhaps it need be said
here: the problematic concerning a concept of man and the concept of race therein within Kants
discourse pertains in a fundamental fashion to the problem of teleology that stood at the
architectonic root of his entire critical project and which remained at issue even in the last stages of
his itinerary.) (2) As a supplementary elaboration the seminar examines the reconsideration of that
problematization in the work of Michel Foucault. It pursues a specific thematization of the way in
which the problem of a concept of race emerges in Kants thought in the decisive moment of the
emergence of the question what is man? for him a problematization that arises in the midst of his
elaboration of the critical project during the 1770s and 1780s. And, in parallel fashion, it examines
the way in which this constitutive order of the problematization of the question of man that is,
the status of the concept of race goes almost unremarked in Foucaults re-engagement with the
Kantian elaboration during the 1960s and 1970s. (3) Running throughout the course, but thematized
specifically during the closing two weeks, will be the proposition of another elaboration of this
epistemic historicity. The novel character of the core organization of this course might be remarked:
the place of the concept of race in Kants problematic remains poorly thought in general; the place
of Kants discourse within Foucaults itinerary remains deeply incommensurate with its status. (For
example, even though Foucaults secondary thesis at the Sorbonne was a translation and
commentary on Kants Anthropology and should thus be understood to set the stage for the
itinerary of discussion that became The Order of Things. Yet, the full implication, even now remains
outside or in the shadows of the most important contemporary discussions of Foucaults work.)
With regard to both thinkers, across the current discussions of racisms, the epistemic status of the
concept of race, which places at issue all that has been named under the contemporary headings of
the concept of culture and the concept of historicity and which is announced as an order of problem
for science or knowledge that is exorbitant to a direct empirical historicism, remains obscure. This
course thus attends to the epistemic subsoil and bedrock of contemporary conceptual and
theoretical disposition in the fields of the human sciences in general and in contemporary
philosophy concerned with the supposed human in all senses of the reference. In so doing it
simultaneously addresses these questions on two necessary levels: their philosophical provenance
and the terms of their most contemporary theoretical implication.

Thus through this apparently quite discrete focus, this seminar nonetheless addresses some
of the most far-reaching issues of the present and the future, considering especially the moral and
ethical questions that arise therein concerning the problem and limits of the concept of the human.
Course Readings and Textbooks:
Core readings from Immanuel Kant will include sections from both the Critique of Pure
Reason (1781) and the Critique of the Power of Judgment, the essays Determination of a Concept of
Race (1785), On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy (1788), and sections
of Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1795). Several references will be taken to the writing of
Michel Foucault, in particular his Introduction to Kants Anthropology, from 1964, as well as to sections
of The Order of Things (1966). Other texts, notably several addressing the problem of the concept of
race -- by W. E. B. Du Bois, for example -- will be engaged, as well as writing offering commentary
on the work of Kant or Foucault.
Seminar members should find access to the following major texts for sustained reference
and use throughout the term; they have been ordered at the campus bookstore and will be placed on
reserve at the campus library; however, they may, perhaps, also be found online via several sources,
notably the librarys online resources. The specific English language translations and editions below
should be used for all course work.
1. Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology, History, and Education. Edited and translated by Robert B.
Louden and Gnter Zller. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007 (Kant 2007). ISBN
9780521452502
2. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Edited and translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W.
Wood. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998 (Kant 1998). ISBN: 0521657296 (paperback)
3. Foucault, Michel. Introduction to Kants Anthropology. Translated by Roberto Nigro and Kate
Briggs, with an introduction by Dominique Sglard and Sylvre Lotringer. Los Angeles, CA:
Semiotext(e), 2008 (Foucault 2008). ISBN 9781584350545
4. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York:
Random House, Vintage, 1994 (Foucault 1994). ISBN: 0679753354
*** Background Texts
5. Du Bois, W. E. B. The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The
Essential Early Essays. Edited by Nahum Dimitri Chandler. New York: Fordham University Press,
2015 (Du Bois 2015) ISBN: 9780823254552.
6. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Edited by Paul Guyer. Translated by Paul
Guyer and Eric. Matthews. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000 ISBN: 0521344476.
7. Kant, Immanuel. Lectures on Anthropology. Edited by Allen W. Wood and Robert B.
Louden. Translated by Robert B. Louden, Allen W. Wood, Robert R. Clewis, and G. Felicitas
Munzel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012 (Kant 2012) ISBN: 9781107344976;

https://uci.eblib.com/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1139645
If you wish some background guides on the writings of Kant, then you may wish to consider
any or all of the following: Sebastian Gardner, Routledge philosophy guidebook to Kant and the Critique of
Pure Reason. London: Routledge, 1999, ISBN-0415119081; Graham Bird, ed., A Companion to Kant.
Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2006, ISBN-978-1405197595; Allen Wood, Kant. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers, 2004, ISBN-978-0-631-23281-0. And then, the best bio-source: Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A
Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN-9780521497046.
Course Work Requirements:
The final grade for seminar members will be based on seminar participation -- which may
include a presentation on selected course material -- and a final essay, the topic of which will be
determined by consultation and approval of the instructor. Attendance and full participation in the
weekly sessions of the seminar and an essay of 20-25 pages submitted at or near the end of the
semester are required (due date to be determined, but most likely on March 17th, by midnight,
online).
Course Schedule:
Week 1
First Critique Prefaces, both editions (1781, 1787)
Determination of a Concept of the Human Race (1785)
Additional Notation:
Of the different races of human beings (1775)
Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim (1784
Week 2
First Critique Prefaces, both editions (1781, 1787)
Introductions, both editions (1781, 1787)
Determination of a Concept of the Human Race (1785)
Additional Notation:
Of the different races of human beings (1775)
Week 3
First Critique Transcendental Aesthetic, both editions (1781, 1788)
On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy (1788)
Week 4
First Critique Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic (1781, 1787)
On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy (1788)

Additional Notation:
Reviews of J. G. Herder's Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Humanity, Parts 1 and 2 (1785)
Conjectural beginning of human history (1786)
Week 5
Third Critique Appendix: Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment
Week 6
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1795) Dialectic
Week 7
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1795) Characteristic
Week 8
Michel Foucault - Introduction to Kants Anthropology (1961)
Week 9
Michel Foucault - The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Chaps. 5,7, 9 and 10)
Week 10
W. E. B. Du Bois The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the 20th Century: The Essential Early Essays
- The Conservation of Races (1897)
- Sociology Hesitant (ca. 1905)
Nahum Dimitri Chandler On Paragraph Four of The Conservation of Races (2014)

Bibliography
Du Bois, W. E. B. The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Essential Early
Essays. Edited by Nahum Dimitri Chandler. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015.
Foucault, Michel. Introduction to Kants Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by
Roberto Nigro and Kate Briggs, with an introduction by Dominique Sglard and Sylvre
Lotringer. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2008.
------. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Random House, Vintage,
1994.
Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology, History, and Education. Edited and translated by Robert B. Louden and
Gnter Zller. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
------. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Edited by Paul Guyer. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric.
Matthews. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
------. Critique of Pure Reason. Edited and translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1998.