Abstract

Critical scholarship of Kant’s race theory has been mainly focused on his concept of race. This article draws attention to his peculiar conception of “variety” as a subracial category that, restricted to the White race, plays a significant role in providing a diversity that enables progress in culture. The question organizing the article is this: How, on Kant’s account, given its defense of radical racial inequality and degradation by race mixing, can the human diversity needed for substantial cultural achievements come about? Analyzing Kant’s opposition to race mixing, this article shows that its corollary is a teleological conception of the diversity within the White racial group (White diversity). The article reveals the neglected connection of White diversity and Kant’s account of “progressive culture” from a racial point of view. Since the positions of theories of race and racism on both race mixing and the role of race for culture play a decisive role in their characterization, these goals are significant both for a more coherent understanding of the nature of the racializing claims in Kant’s theory and of their racism.