Decolonizing Kant’s Critique of Taste

In a number of texts of the philosophical tradition – and thus also in Kant’s work – we encounter passages that – at least by today’s standards – are to be judged as at least eurocentric, racist and colonialist. In my lecture, I would like to address a specific critique – namely, of Kant’s logic of aesthetic judgment – and use it to demonstrate how radical but also how challenging it is, in my view, to develop a decolonial perspective on the problematic heritage of Enlightenment.  Often the question of how we should deal with this tradition is directed at the particular author and follows the pattern: »Were – for example: Kant, Fichte, Hegel, or also: Hannah Arendt and Max Weber … a racist?«.

In my lecture I would like to show how this approach narrows the topic in a problematic way. Using concrete examples from the Third Critique, I will try to show how important philosophical and philosophical-historical aspects, as well as the political dimension of philosophical discourse, are no longer adequately considered when we take this approach. And furthermore: that in this way the self-critical examination of the discipline with established practices of reception, claims of universalization and its own self-understanding is possibly blocked.