Was Immanuel Kant, key figure of the European Enlightenment, a racist? Are the great Kantian values - scientific objectivity, moral autonomy, rational religiosity, freedom and pacifist cosmopolitanism - only masks behind which a Eurocentrically reduced worldview is concealed, which appears with a global claim to power? Manfred Geier does not want to absolve Kant and his work of this accusation across the board. Rather, he attempts to place Kant's racist statements in their historical context and traces what was at stake in the debates of the time, what we can learn from them today, what needs to be criticized and what needs to be defended.
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Manfred Geier, born in Troppau in 1943, received his doctorate with a thesis on Noam Chomsky's linguistic theory. His work focuses on philosopher biographies and cultural-political currents. Manfred Geier lives as a freelance nonfiction author in Hamburg.
