Universalism Otherwise: Kantian Ethics, Spaak’s Critique, and the Postcolonial Reframing of Justice in Southeast Asia

Abstract

This research paper critically interrogates the tension between Immanuel Kant’s Enlightenment universalism and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s postcolonial critique, situating the debate within the historical and ongoing legacies of colonialism and neocolonialism in Southeast Asia. It revisits Kant’s ethical, aesthetic, and anthropological writings especially lesser studied texts on race and the sublime and engages Spivak’s claims that Kant’s framework universalizes European subjectivity while excluding the subaltern. Through a dialectical and interdisciplinary analysis, the paper demonstrates that while Kant’s early texts reflect Eurocentric biases, his later works on cosmopolitanism and moral anthropology offer a trajectory toward ethical inclusivity. Grounded in contemporary Southeast Asian realities, the study explores how Kant’s philosophical ideals have shaped regional constitutional laws, governance standards, and transitional justice mechanisms. It further interrogates the colonial deployment of Kantian aesthetics and anthropology in Southeast Asia, while uncovering how local cultural systems, indigenous epistemologies, and postcolonial literature have appropriated and redefined universalism. Drawing on recent scholarship, sociopolitical developments, and literary narratives, the paper argues for a pluralized and context sensitive interpretation of Kant’s ethics. Ultimately, the research contends that Kant’s universalism is neither to be canonized nor dismissed but reimagined through decolonial and dialogical lenses as a contested yet potentially emancipatory framework. This approach positions Kant not as a relic of Eurocentric modernity, but as a philosopher whose ideas, when critically reinterpreted, remain relevant to contemporary struggles for justice, dignity, and ethical cohabitation in a plural world.