Table Of ContentP
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By exploring the innovative account of labour embedded s
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in Kant’s political philosophy, this Element develops an o
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intersectional and materialist reading of Kant. Drawing on
Kant’s early notes and lectures on themes of labour, the
household, sex, and slavery, alongside his political, historical,
and anthropological writing on race and gender, Jordan The Philosophy of
Pascoe argues that Kant’s normative account of independence
Immanuel Kant
is configured through his theory of labour, which attends
in innovative ways to reproductive labour. By revealing the
close linkages between slavery and domestic labour in Kant’s
political thought, Pascoe shows how Kant’s evolving thinking
about labour may have shaped his ultimate rejection of slavery,
K Kant’s Theory
rather than any change in his theory of race. Instead, Kant’s a
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theory of labour provides a lens through which to read his ’s
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anthropological accounts of race and gender as embedded he
o of Labour
within his political philosophy, and to develop an intersectional ry
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about the series series editors
This Cambridge Elements series provides Desmond Hogan
an extensive overview of Kant’s philosophy Princeton
and its impact upon philosophy and University Jordan Pascoe
philosophers. Distinguished Kant Howard Williams
specialists provide an up-to-date summary University of Cardiff
of the results of current research in their Allen Wood sserP
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fields and give their own take on what Indiana tisre
they believe are the most significant University vinU
debates influencing research, drawing e
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ElementsinthePhilosophyofImmanuelKant
editedby
DesmondHogan
PrincetonUniversity
HowardWilliams
UniversityofCardiff
AllenWood
IndianaUniversity
’
KANT S THEORY
OF LABOUR
Jordan Pascoe
Manhattan College
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’
Kants Theory of Labour
ElementsinthePhilosophyofImmanuelKant
DOI:10.1017/9781009165754
Firstpublishedonline:September2022
JordanPascoe
ManhattanCollege
Authorforcorrespondence:JordanPascoe,[email protected]
Abstract:Byexploringtheinnovativeaccountoflabourembeddedin
Kant’spoliticalphilosophy,thisElementdevelopsanintersectionaland
materialistreadingofKant.DrawingonKant’searlynotesandlectures
onthemesoflabour,thehousehold,sex,andslavery,alongsidehis
political,historical,andanthropologicalwritingonraceandgender,
JordanPascoearguesthatKant’snormativeaccountofindependenceis
configuredthroughhistheoryoflabour,whichattendsininnovative
waystoreproductivelabour.Byrevealingthecloselinkagesbetween
slaveryanddomesticlabourinKant’spoliticalthought,Pascoeshows
howKant’sevolvingthinkingaboutlabourmayhaveshapedhis
ultimaterejectionofslavery,ratherthananychangeinhistheoryof
race.Instead,Kant’stheoryoflabourprovidesalensthroughwhichto
readhisanthropologicalaccountsofraceandgenderasembedded
withinhispoliticalphilosophy,andtodevelopanintersectionalanalysis
ofhispracticalphilosophy.
ThisElementalsohasavideoabstract:www.cambridge.org/pascoe
sse Keywords:Kant,intersectionality,labour,feministphilosophy,social
rP reproduction
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vin ©JordanPascoe2022
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g ISBNs:9781009165747(PB),9781009165754(OC)
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irb ISSNs:2397-9461(online),2514-3824(print)
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Contents
1 CouldItBeWorthThinkingaboutKantonLabour? 1
2 Kant’sTheoryofLabour 6
3 ‘ANewStar’:Kant’s‘Trichotomy’Argument 14
4 OfSexandSlavery:TheDevelopmentofDomesticRight 20
5 Labour,Leisure,andLaziness:AKantianTaxonomyof
Entitlement 25
6 KantianReconstruction:Slavery,Abolition,andPoverty
Relief 33
7 TheProblemofKantianIntersectionality 46
8 ConcludingRemarks:KantianSystemicInjustice 53
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ytisre References 56
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Kant’sTheoryofLabour 1
1CouldItBeWorthThinkingaboutKantonLabour?
Inagroundbreaking1993articleonsexandmarriage,BarbaraHermanlaidthe
foundationforfeministKantscholarshipthatusesKantianargumentstoaddress
arangeoffeministquandaries;1inspiredbyHerman’swillingnesstoopennew
Kantiandoors,IaskwhathappenswhenweexamineKant’stheoryoflabour,
which runs through his political, anthropological, historical, and moral
arguments.
Kant’stheoryoflabourprovidesaframeworktothinkbeyondandbetween
established divisions in Kant scholarship, illuminating elements of Kant’s
political arguments with implications for contemporary Kantian and feminist
scholarship, as well as for debates about Kant’s theory of race. This project
develops an intersectional analysis of Kant (Crenshaw 1989) which invites
dialogue across established methodological silos within Kant scholarship. As
race andgender have moved towards thecentre ofKantian scholarship inthe
last decade, they have remained strikingly distinct, with work on sex/gender
takingupKant’sdiscussionsofsex,marriage,caregiving,andcitizenship,and
workonrace/racismfocusingonhisanthropological,geographical,andcosmo-
politan texts.2 This has led to an emerging discourse on the difficulty of
intersectionalapproachestoKant,whichreflectsKant’sowncarefulinsistence
oncategoricalthinking.3
Just as Herman’s analysis of Kant and marriage invited contemporary
feminists to attend to (surprising) resources within Kant’s philosophy, my
analysis of Kant’s account of labour maps resources in Kant relevant to
contemporarymaterialist,intersectional,decolonial,andsocialreproduction
sserP feminist theorizing, as well as to contemporary Black radical thought. By
ytisre identifying patterns of institutionalized inequality within Kant’s political
vin thought,Idevelopanaccountoftheintersectionalpoliticaleconomyembed-
U
eg dedinKant’saccountofRight,4revealingfoundationalKantianresourcesfor
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irbm theorizingpatternsofdependencyandoppressionthatchallengeframeworks
a
C y foundinLocke,Hegel,andMarx.
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deh 1 ThegenealogyoftheseargumentsisexpertlysummarizedinVarden2020,especiallypp.20–6.
silb ExamplesoftheseargumentscanbefoundinAltman2010,Denis2001,Hay2013,Kleingeld
uP 1993,Langton2009,Nussbaum1995,O’Neill1989,Papadaki2007,Pascoe2013,2015,and
4
57 2018,Sabourin2021,Schaff2001,Schapiro1999,andVarden2006b,2006a,and2020.
5
61 2 Wherescholarshavetakenupthesequestionstogether,itisoftenbywayofdrawingaparallel.
9
00 See,forexample,Mendieta2011,Mills2005,Pateman,andMills2007,Kleingeld2007and
1
87 2014a.
9/7 3 For engagements with the problem of intersectionality in Kant, see Huseyinzadegan 2018,
1
01 Kleingeld2019,Pascoe2019a,HuseyinzadeganandPascoeForthcoming.
.01 4 I draw on Nancy Folbre’s (2021) conceptualization of intersectional political economy. This
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2 ThePhilosophyofImmanuelKant
IdevelopKant’stheoryoflabouracrosshispolitical,anthropological,histor-
ical,andmoraltexts,buildingonrecentworkdevelopingtheroleofnon-ideal
theoryinKant’spracticalphilosophy.TomaptheemergenceofKant’stheoryof
labour and its relation to the development of his thinking about race, gender,
sex, slavery, and colonialism, I go beyond the texts published in his lifetime,
examining recently publishednotes anddraftsinorder toilluminate theways
thathisevolvingtheoriesofrace,coloniality,andslavery,hisaccountofsexand
marriage,hisanalysisofparenthoodandservitude,histreatmentofcontractand
trade,andhisdevelopmentoftherelationshipbetweencitizenshipandenlight-
enment intersect and generate one another. My holistic analysis shows that
Kant’sthinkingaboutlabour,slavery,citizenship,thefamily,andsexdeveloped
in interlinked ways over several decades, culminating in his development of
a‘newphenomenoninthejuridicalheavens’,a‘trichotomy’ofRightthatthinks
beyondthepublic/privatedividebyinsistinguponathirdsphere,organizedby
‘therighttoapersonakintotherighttoathing’(MM6:276;RDL20:460).
Thisthird dimension ofPrivate Right is explicitly developed as a responseto
Kant’sthinkingaboutbothsexandslavery,groundinghisclaimthatslaveryis
inconsistent with right. Because work on Kant’s account of slavery generally
focuses on his arguments about race and colonialism, while his account of
domestic right focuses on marriage, sex, and gender, the links between these
argumentshavebeenunder-examined.ButKanthimselfunderstoodthetrich-
otomyframeworkasacriticalinnovationinjuridicalphilosophy,whichshaped
not only his understanding of domestic and slave labour, but also his famous
distinctionbetweenactiveandpassivecitizenship,aswellasthelimitsofpublic
sse reasonandcivilequality.
rP y Kant’stheoryoflabourprovidesavantagepointforrevealingthestructural
tisre intersections of racism and sexism in his political thought, taking up the
v
inU challenge Dilek Huseyinzadegan lays out in her ‘For What Can the Kantian
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dirb FeministHope?’(2018)byexaminingthecontinuities‘betweenourproblems
ma and Kant’s’ (10). In Kant’s theory of labour, I find both complicity with
C
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b e emergent global patterns of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism, as
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silbu ThisapproachtakesKant’sracistandsexistthinkingasanintegralpartofhis
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5 philosophical system but understands these dimensions of his thinking as
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61 instructivesince,asHuseyinzadeganputsit,‘weallknowthesecontradictions
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01 exemplifiedinKant’sworkareinfactrepresentativeofthelargercontradictions
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9/7 ofourlivestodayandarenotsoeasilyundone’(16).
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01.0 Kant’s thinking about labour presents us with a set of contradictions we
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Kant’sTheoryofLabour 3
vision of independent citizens and meritocratic pathways by which workers
(and,perhaps,women)may‘worktheirwayup’tofullpoliticalparticipation,
andontheother,deeplyingrainedpracticesofenclosedeconomicdependency
that make caregiving and reproductive labour precarious and insecure, and
thatshapeandperpetuatestarkraced,gendered,classed,andglobalinequal-
ities.Contemporaryscholarshipthatseekstoaddressinequalitybydrawingon
Kantian accounts of dependency, poverty, and redistributive justice, then,
mustcarefullyattendtothesepatternedexclusionsinordertoavoidrepeating
them,andexistingKantianframesthattakeuprace/racismandgender/sexism
separately(oratbest,asanalogousproblems)mustlearntoresistreinscribing
patterns of erasure that treat dependencies as single-axis problems, which
allows for personal, rather than structural, remedies. Tracking this problem
requires new strategies within Kant scholarship to think beyond single-axis
frameworksofoppression.
Thus,thegenealogyofthisprojectreachesbeyondKantscholarship,orient-
ingitsattentiontolabour–andinparticular,tocaregivingandotherunwaged
labour – through materialist and intersectional feminisms, which have long
engaged in analyses of labour to identify patterns of exploitation and entitle-
ment in liberal and legal theory.5 It draws on intersectional feminism and
twenty-first century work on global migration and care chains in order to
identify domestic and caregiving labour as a global political problem that
refusestobecontainedbythe‘restrainingwalls’(MM6:248)ofthehousehold.
Anditrecognizesthisanalysisasparticularlytrenchantinthewakeofaglobal
pandemicinwhichtheabsenceofadequatejuridicalframeworksforconceptu-
sse alizingdomesticandcaregivinglabourhasbecomereadilyapparent;astheline
rP y between‘essential’andexploitativelabourhasblurred,theseconceptualgaps
tisre haveshapedstarklygenderedandracedimpacts.
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U Atthesametime,myanalysiswilllocatethelimitsoflabour-basedanalysis,
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dirb building on arguments from the Black radical tradition that challenge the
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a categories of exploited and alienated labour for conceptualizing enslavement
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b e and global conquest, thinking beyond Marxist (and Lockean) frames. I read
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o
deh arguments in order to map the edges of Kant’s account of labour, the places
silbu wherelabourslidesbeyondexploitationandintosubjection,objectification,and
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45 fungibility. Kant’s practical philosophy, I argue, is particularly instructive for
7
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1 identifyingtheseslides,bothbecauseofhisexplicitembraceofthesemovesin
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1 hisanthropologicalandhistoricalwork,andbecauseofthewayshisanalysisof
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01 5 From,forexample,thewagesforhouseworkmovementtothecontemporarydomesticworkers
.01 alliance, to Pauli Murray and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s trenchant uses of labour discrimination
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4 ThePhilosophyofImmanuelKant
labourdoesnotexhaustthestrategiesavailableforaddressingtheseslidesinhis
moral and political philosophy. In making this argument, I build on Charles
Mills’ insight (2017) that Kant’s philosophical system provides normative
resources that Marx’s lacks, showing that Kant, likewise, provides us with
resourcesfortheorizingunwagedlabourthatgobeyondwhatweinheritfrom
Marx(Pascoe2017).
Thus, I argue neither that a labour analysis is sufficient for addressing
normative inequality in Kant’s practical philosophy, nor that it is sufficient
for theorizing historical or contemporary practices of enslavement, extrac-
tion, or exploitation. Rather, I show that Kant’s theory of labour sheds
light on the normative structures of inequality built into his philosophy of
Right, with implications for modern liberal frames that inherit from Kant.
Kant’s theorization of inequality takes race- and gender-based divisions of
labour to be intertwined and mutually constitutive, revealing the ways that
Kant’s theorization of justice is explicitly white and male, organized
against a raced and gendered backdrop of ‘dependency’ that places the
labour of women, of non-whites, and in particular, of non-white women,
outside the frame of justice.
ThisgenealogyrequiresmetoaskwhatitwouldmeannotonlytomakeKant
usefultofeminist,decolonial,radicalBlack,andintersectionaltheorizing,but
also to hold Kant accountable to these modes of theorizing. This means, as
PatriciaHillCollinshasputit,‘invokingconcreteexperienceasacriterionof
meaning’ (1989: 769). Kant’s thinking about the contradictions of labour are
grounded in his own experiences, first as a tutor working within another’s
sse household, and later as a professor who employed a manservant of his own.
rP y Perhaps for this reason, his theorizing of labour is nuanced in ways that his
tisre thinking on race, gender, and sex often is not. But his thinking about labour
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dirb gender, sex, and class: holding Kant accountable to contemporary theorizing
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a about race, gender, sex, and class means refusing to excise his practical phil-
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b e osophy from his anthropological, historical, and geographical work. While
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eh I explore how Kant arrived at these arguments through his long interrogation
silbu of the institutions that make moral life possible, which were informed and
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45 filtered through the development of his social theory and his engagement in
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1 contemporarydebate.Indoingso,Iresistinterpretivepracticesthatcompelme
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1 to read Kant as if his account of independence and public reason necessarily
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/7 appliedtomeby,forexample,settingasidehisremarksaboutgender.Inthis,
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01.0 IamorientedbyTiffanyLethaboKing’sarticulationofthetrainingwearegiven
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/gro asphilosopherstoidentifywithcanonicalfigureslikeKant,tolocateourselves
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