Does Kant have a Nachlass

"The following questions have repeatedly arisen [in Kant scholarship]: how reliable are the texts? Or: in the attempt to correctly understand what Kant meant, should [...] Kant’s literary remains (The Nachlaß), and his published writings be relied upon and cited in the same way?" (Werner Stark) Perhaps the first methodological question that occurs in Kant scholarship is whether we should prioritize Kant's thought from four distinct periods. Scholars have disagreed radically not only about which period to prioritize but where these periods begin and end, or even if periodization is a good way to think about intellectual development. However, there is a second question that is just as important but receives less attention: what is the status of Kant’s Nachlass? Should we prioritize Kant’s published works over his Nachlass? No matter if one prioritizes the pre-critical period, silent decade, critical-period, or post-critical period, one still must answer the question of how to prioritize the published or unpublished work. As Werner Stark notes, this is a central and still current question. The standard response is to prioritize the published work but use the Nachlass to "supplement" and "contextualize" the published. This standard modus operandi of Kant scholarship is thus a tacit methodological assumption. Indeed, this approach has become so standard that it is part of the Cambridge complete editions and is endorsed by many scholars. Paul Guyer states, "These [Nachlass] materials supplement Kant's published works." Henry E. Allison claims, "These references [in the unpublished Reflexionen and Opus Postumum] cannot be given priority over Kant’s Published remarks, but they do constitute an invaluable and hitherto neglected supplement to these remarks. It is as such that I propose to use them in the present study." Kenneth R. Westphal suggests, "It is not clear whether Kant endorsed what he wrote in [his unpublished notes]. Thus ascribing a view to Kant on their bases is hazardous. [...] I [therefore] discuss only those notes that augment his published view." Heather M. Roff puts forth a similar view, claiming "The lecture notes are not Kant's mature published thought [however] we can supplement Kant’s more mature and published work with that of his student’ notes to gain further clarity." Proponents of this methodological approach, however, fail to ask whether the dichotomy between published and Nachlass is a false one. We argue it is a false dichotomy and that we should focus instead on individual historical material objects (texts) that can be afforded different degrees of priority based upon pre-theoretical value laden criterion that inform different investigations. This has the unintuitive consequence that texts can justifiably be considered both published and Nachlass simultaneously. Nonetheless, to demonstrate the importance of our methodological investigations, we apply them to a case study of the study of Kant’s racism. Indeed, Kant scholarship is currently in the midst of a philosophical debate about how to treat his Rassenschriften but underlying this disagreement is a more primordial methodological disagreement that we hope to clarify and set the groundwork for a resolution.