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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0004-3648-9757

Date Available

5-1-2026

Year of Publication

2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College

Arts and Sciences

Department/School/Program

Philosophy

Faculty

Arnold Farr

Faculty

Julia Bursten

Abstract

This dissertation develops what I call Critical Black Kantianism, a reconstructive approach to Kantian moral philosophy that centers race, recognition, and the structural conditions under which moral agency is formed. While Kantian ethics typically presumes idealized agents operating within just social contexts, this project argues that such abstraction obscures how racial domination actively shapes autonomy, dignity, and self-consciousness. Drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois’ account of double consciousness, Black feminist thought, and contemporary theories of recognition, I show that moral agency is not merely exercised within social environments but is constituted through them—often under conditions of misrecognition that fracture autonomy.

Against ideal-theoretical accounts of freedom, this dissertation advances a non-ideal Kantian framework attentive to structural injustice and lived experience. I introduce the concept of structural (in)visibility to describe how Black subjects are simultaneously rendered invisible as moral agents and hyper-visible as objects of surveillance, regulation, and control. This dynamic produces a form of moral injury that cannot be addressed by procedural or distributive accounts of justice alone.

By placing Kantian moral concepts in dialogue with Du Boisian double consciousness and Black feminist analyses of power, care, and credibility, this project reconceptualizes autonomy as socially mediated rather than individually insulated. I critique dominant models of recognition that presuppose symmetrical moral subjects and instead develop an account grounded in asymmetry, vulnerability, and historically situated agency. Through sustained philosophical analysis, the dissertation articulates how structural misrecognition shapes moral agency within a reconstructed Kantian framework.

Ultimately, this work argues that genuine moral freedom requires more than formal rights or abstract respect for persons; it demands transformation of the social conditions that determine whose agency is recognized and whose dignity is secured. Critical Black Kantianism thus offers both a philosophical framework and a normative orientation toward ethical life under conditions of racial injustice.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.236

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