Although previous treatments of affective injustice have identified some particular types of affective injustice, the general concept of affective injustice remains unclear. This article proposes a novel articulation of this general concept, according to which affective injustice is defined as a state in which individuals or groups are deprived of “affective goods” which are owed to them. On this basis, I sketch an approach to the philosophical investigation of affective injustice that begins by establishing which affective goods are fundamental, and (...) then considers which subsidiary goods—such as freedoms, resources, opportunities, and forms of recognition—may be necessary for the provision of those fundamental affective goods. Drawing from and developing ideas in the extant literature, I argue that two such fundamental affective goods include subjective well-being and emotional aptness. I then show that by analyzing deprivations of the subsidiary goods that enable a person to pursue and attain subjective well-being and emotional aptness, it is possible to shed new light on the cases of affective injustice that have been described in the extant literature, while also identifying other kinds of cases that have not been theorized to the same extent. (shrink)

This paper explores a phenomenon that we call “justified-but-misdirected anger,” in which one’s anger is grounded in or born from a genuine wrong or injustice but is directed towards an inappropriate target. In particular, we argue that oppressive ideologies that maintain systems of gender, race, and class encourage such misdirection and are thereby self-perpetuating. We engage with two particular examples of such misdirection. The first includes poor white voters who embrace racist and xenophobic politics; they are justified in being angry (...) about their own economic exploitation, but that anger is misdirected in a way that maintains capitalism (which is the appropriate target of their anger). The second includes so-called “incels” who embrace misogyny; they are justified in being angry about unrealistic and unhealthy standards of contemporary masculinity, but that anger is misdirected in a way that maintains patriarchy. One goal of exploring this type of justified-but-misdirected anger is to thread the needle between holding wrongdoers to account while also clearly identifying the oppressive ideologies that influence their actions. (shrink)

How should we talk to Angry Uncle, or attempt to persuade any very ignorant audience? This paper discusses several strategies, including fact dumping, consistency checking, pandering, and just being friendly. It defends the continued value of fact dumping and consistency checking despite skeptical doubts rooted in recent cognitive science literature about their strategic efficacy. Pandering and friendliness often fail to confront our audience with epistemic resistance and so face serious limitations as means of responding to ignorance. Any reasonable view of (...) how to talk to Angry Uncles must also consider how to meet relevant moral standards, such as showing respect for ourselves, our audience, and important social causes. Without some fact dumping and consistency checking, pandering and friendliness often fail to meet these standards. All in all, the various modes work best together, and it would be a mistake to conclude from unfavorable cognitive science research that we should avoid fact dumping and consistency checking in Angry Uncle exchanges. (shrink)

Moral agency is limited, imperfect, and structurally constrained. This is evident in the many ways we all unwittingly participate in widespread injustice through our everyday actions, which I call ‘structural wrongs’. To do justice to these facts, I argue that we should distinguish between summative and formative moral criticism. While summative criticism functions to conclusively assess an agent's performance relative to some benchmark, formative criticism aims only to improve performance in an ongoing way. I show that the negative sanctions associated (...) with summative responses are only justifiably imposed under certain conditions when persons exercise their agency wrongly — conditions that do not always hold for structural wrongs. Yet even in such cases we can still use formative responses, which are warranted whenever agents fall short of moral ideals. Expanding our repertoire of moral criticism to include both summative and formative responses enables us to better appreciate both the powers and limitations of our agency, and the complexity of moral life. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the relationship between love and social justice activism, focusing in particular on ways in which activists rely on either the union account of love (to argue that when one person is oppressed everyone is oppressed), the sentimentalist account of love (to argue that overcoming injustice is fundamentally about how we feel about one another), or love as fate (to argue that it is in love’s nature to triumph over hatred and injustice). All three accounts, while understandable and (...) attractive, are seriously problematic, as they tend either to obscure important differences in the ways that various groups are socially situated or to enable inaction by trusting that justice is inevitable. Alternative, deeper interpretations of each account (and their relationships to activism) are explored. (shrink)

Myisha Cherry's The Case for Rage is a significant addition to the growing body of analytic philosophy that succeeds in not just engaging but shaping and even creating new forms of public discourse. It does so while remaining an exemplar for what good analytic philosophy should look like: filled with systematic and clear distinctions that illuminate rather than obfuscate real and concrete lived phenomena. I offer two challenges to Cherry's typology of rage: first, I rehabilitate two of variations she takes (...) to be morally and politically problematic, and, second, I argue that the freedom to feel, express, and act on Lordean rage proper should be more limited than Cherry allows. I then raise a set of questions about the aesthetics of persuasive anger. Finally, I highlight two striking insights in Cherry's rich argument. (shrink)