Seite 100 [100]
Thus, different categorizations of human do not yet apply to
race (species), but they do show well that the concept of the same
and other does not necessarily require skin color. The individual
and the masses are also same and other. In fact, they are strangers,
or even enemies. (Let us consider how the fascist or socialist dic¬
tatorships in the 2oth-century treated thinkers.)
The question is different from the perspective of cultural his¬
tory. It is not so much philosophical as empirical. In Immanuel
Kant s On the Different Races of Man (Von der verschiedenen Racen der
Menschen, 1775) (Kant 1977. 2. p.432.) he repeats the concepts of
Linnaeus when he divides humanity into four root races. The race
question interested Kant later, too, as he published another text on
the subject almost ten years later. The debate between Forster and
Kant on this subject is important, as this addresses the subject of
the alien, the concept of race, and non-European cultures.
Kant’s solution is simple: he separates the four root races by skin
color. It is impossible not to notice in his system that it is based in
essentially two races: in the first place, the white race (die Race der
Weifen) and second designated the Negro race (die Negerrace). (Ibid)
However, he writes in a later work that “in terms of skin color, we
distinguish four classes among people,” by which he means the
so-called “inherited skin color”: “white, yellow Indians, blacks, and
red-skinned Americans” (by which he means Native Americans).
(Kant 1977. 8. p.93.)
Let us return to Kant’s “racism” for a moment. Let us take into
consideration that the Enlightenment demanded that individuals
signify the world around themselves on the basis of rationality,
according to the standards of the scientific world of their day. For
example, the scientific world promulgated the theory of phlogiston,
and therefore Kant did as well. (Ibid. p.103.) This theory claims
that all flammable materials contain a substance called phlogiston,
which is the substance that burns. They thought that during the
burning process phlogiston is removed from materials, so the more
phlogiston something contains, the more intensely it will burn. It
is a theory invented by Joachim Becher and refined by G. E. Stahl