Kant deals with national characters in the second part of his Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view of 1798. Firmly rejecting the climatic theory, he advocates an anti-naturalistic stance. However, Kant is skeptical of Hume’s tenet that nations owe their characters to their different forms of government. In Kant’s view, the most civilized nations are England and France: their characters have to do with purely cultural factors. Complementing each other, the characters of those nations broadly correspond to a masculine and feminine principle, as analyzed by Kant in the previous chapter of his Anthropology. The remaining European and Extra-European nations have a less defined – and, in some cases, mixed – character, that owes something more to the natural dispositions. Yet Kant still manages to avoid naturalistic explanations. In many nations, natural dispositions do prevail over cultural ones, but this simply means that less (and sometimes, nothing) can be said about their characters.
University of Trieste, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0001-9876-0697
Chapter Title
Kant e il carattere dei popoli
Authors
Riccardo Martinelli
Language
Italian
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-160-0.05
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2020
Copyright Information
© 2020 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Book Title
Nazioni come individui
Book Subtitle
Il carattere nazionale fra passato e presente
Editors
Michela Nacci
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
158
Publication Year
2020
Copyright Information
© 2020 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-160-0
ISBN Print
978-88-5518-159-4
eISBN (pdf)
978-88-5518-160-0
eISBN (epub)
978-88-5518-161-7
Series Title
Studi e saggi
Series ISSN
2704-6478
Series E-ISSN
2704-5919