Drawing on the work of Charles W. Mills and considering the case of reparations to Black Americans, this article defends the “structural turn” in the philosophical reparations scholarship. In the Black American context, the structural turn highlights the structural and institutional operations of a White supremacist political system and a long chronology of state-sponsored injustice, as opposed to enslavement as a standalone historical episode. Here, the question whether distributive justice is more appropriate than reparative justice is particularly pressing, since structural (...) racial inequalities form part of the basis for reparations. Derrick Darby’s pragmatic argument for non-race-specific redistributive policies and Tommie Shelby’s principled defense of distributive justice are both considered, as well as the challenge to the structural turn that comes from Carlton Waterhouse’s argument for reparations for enslavement rather than “legacy of slavery” reparations. (shrink)

"Analyzes the value of using case-based methodologies to address contemporary social justice issues in philosophy"--.

Despite the rapidly growing literature on realism, there’s little discussion of the ideology critique of John Rawls offered by one of its leading lights, Raymond Geuss. There is little understanding of what (most of) this critique consists in and few discussions of how Rawls’ approach to political theorising may be defended against it. To remedy this situation, this article reconstructs the realist ideology critique of Rawls advanced by Raymond Geuss, which has three prongs: (1) Rawls’ political theory offers insufficient tools (...) to uncover and address distortions of our political values, beliefs, and intuitions; (2) it unacceptably reinforces these distortions by unduly legitimating them; and (3) it diverts attention from important features of real politics. With this done, I finish by considering how Rawlsians can respond, chiefly by employing a kind of reflective equilibrium, or reflective endorsement, broad enough to encompass different forms of genealogy and ideology critique. (shrink)

Must principles of justice be practical? Some political philosophers, the “implementers,” say yes. Others, the “idealists,” say no. Despite this disagreement, the implementers and idealists agree on what “practical” means, subscribing to the “implementation-prediction” conception of practicality. They also seem to agree that principles of so-called “ideal theory” need not be IP-practical. The implementers take this as a reason to reject ideal theory as an approach to principles of justice, while the idealists do not. In this paper, I argue that (...) we should reject the IP conception of practicality. The implementers make a mistake, then, by requiring principles of justice to be IP-practical. But the idealists make a mistake, too, by rejecting in general the requirement that principles of justice be practical. For there is a plausible alternative conception of practicality that political philosophers should accept: the “experimentation-learning” conception. EL-practicality makes for a more realistic and epistemically accessible standard of practicality, and thus should be welcomed by the realistically-inclined implementers. It also preserves a crucial role for ideal theory, so should be welcomed by the idealists, too. (shrink)

This article adapts John Rawls’s writings, arguing that past injustice can change what we ought to publicly affirm as the standard of justice today. My approach differs from forward-looking approaches based on alleviating prospective disadvantage and backward-looking historical entitlement approaches. In different contexts, Rawls’s own concern for the ‘social bases of self-respect’ and equal citizenship may require public endorsement of different principles or specifications of the standard of justice. Rawls’s difference principle focuses on the least advantaged socioeconomic group. I argue (...) that a historicized difference principle considers the relative standing of racial, gender, and other historically stigmatized groups; provides their members assurance by weakening incentives to manipulate justice to another group’s advantage; and may result in policies resembling reparations, though justified by forward-looking considerations of self-respect and public assurance. I then examine how disrespectful justifications were historically used to forcibly include indigenous peoples as citizens. While Rawls thinks providing citizens one package of basic liberties signals respect, indigenous self-government could better support self-respect. I invoke Rawlsian international justice, which calls for mutual respect between peoples. Indigenous peoples’ status should reflect their past and persisting peoplehood, providing assurance by weakening incentives to unjustly transform international into domestic contexts. (shrink)

In recent work, Joseph Fishkin has helpfully enriched understandings of equality of opportunity as a feature of distributive justice schemes. One branch of his argument focuses upon the degree to which ‘merit’, as a function of talent and effort, is conceptually and practically vexing for these goals. While Thompson is in general agreement with the direction of Fishkin’s critiques and new offerings, in this article he extends and strengthens Fishkin’s analysis of talent, specifically focusing upon its role as a defensible (...) criterion for access to developmentally useful educational opportunities.Developing an account sympathetic to Fishkin’s contributions, Thompson provides a limited defense of talent as a morally relevant criterion for access to some educational opportunities. Of course, Thompson acknowledges that this relevance is not absolute and, therefore, points towards reasons why talent enjoys only this occasionally relevant status in relation to educational opportunities and what systemic issues ought to be avoided as a result. (shrink)

The social contract tradition has been critiqued for harboring ‘domination contracts’ that exclude women, people of color, people with disabilities, and others from political life. In this article, I build on these critical analyses to argue that the liberal ideal of the reasoning and speaking citizen entails the anti-democratic disqualification of ‘silent’ citizens such as young children and many peoples with intellectual disabilities. The liberal veneration of voice and the corollary vilification of silence represent the internal logic of all domination (...) contracts, since it is by comparison to silent children and peoples with disabilities that groups such as women and people of color are viewed as justifiably excluded. I identify two distinct but interacting forms of liberal disqualification: (1) contingent domination contracts, which can be potentially disputed and temporarily resolved by proving a group’s fulfilment of the qualifications of speech and reason; and (2) structural domination contracts, which cannot be resolved for ‘silent’ citizens. Moreover, any viable challenge to a contingent domination contract must centre on the democratic inclusion of silent citizens, which itself will require the reconceptualization and redesign of political processes, as well as workplaces, economies, and other social institutions. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 7, Page 956-976, September 2022. This article explores the role of practical political theory in the Black Lives Matter movement. I argue that BLM represents a multifaceted engagement with the complicated politics of redemption that lies at the heart of American democracy. In one sense, BLM stands for the integration of black life into the framework of political value, and thus for a redemption of the promise of ‘justice for all’. In another, it (...) is a challenge to the principles themselves, viewing justice as a threat to be managed, rather than as a principle to be redeemed. Exploring the praxis of this movement, organized both against and within the possibility of redemption, will enable us to more effectively characterize the limitations of a politics grounded in the theorization of justice and generate a richer understanding of the possibility for practical political theory to simultaneously employ and critique the politics of redemption. (shrink)

The issue of political violence is mostly absent from current debates about power. Many conceptions of power treat violence as wholly distinct from or even antithetical to power, or see it as a mere instrument whose effects are obvious and not in need of political analysis. In this paper, I explore what kind of ontology of power is necessary to properly take account of the various roles that violence can play in creating and maintaining power structures. I pursue this question (...) by contrasting the views of Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault. For Arendt, power is generated and maintained by communicative practices. She argues that power and violence are ‘opposites’ because violence can only destroy but not create these practices. In contrast, Foucault’s conception explicitly allows violence to play a constitutive role in generating power. I argue that while Arendt is right to insist that power and violence are not identical, it does not follow that violence cannot play any role in constituting power. Guided by Foucault’s approach, I formulate a non-dualist account of the relationship between power and violence that takes seriously the role that bodies, material things, and built infrastructures play in making social relations ‘more durable’ and constituting power. (shrink)

This review essay critically examines Catherine Mills’s Biopolitics and Camisha Russell’s The Assisted Reproduction of Race. Although distinct works, the centrality of race and reproduction provides a point of connection and an opening into reframing contemporary debates within bioethics and biopolitics. In reviewing these books together I hope to show how biopolitical theory and critical philosophy of race can be useful in looking at bioethical problems from a new perspective that open up different kinds of analyses, especially around historically embedded (...) problems like institutional racism and the legacies of colonialism in healthcare. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ethical implications of racism and some of the various costs associated with racism occurring at the institutional level. We argue that, in many ways, the laws, social structures, and institutions in Western society have operated to perpetuate the continuation of historical legacies of racial inequities with or without the intention of individuals and groups in society. By merely maintaining existing structures, laws, and social norms, society can impose social, economic, and health costs on racial minorities that (...) impinge on their well-being and human dignity. Based on a review of multidisciplinary research on racism, particularly focusing on healthcare, we demonstrate how institutional racism leads to social and economic inequalities in society. By positing institutional racism as the inherent cause of avoidable disparities in healthcare, this paper draws attention to the ethical significance of racism, which remains a relatively neglected issue in bioethics research. (shrink)

The challenges to designing and implementing ethically and politically meaningful eating policies are many and complex. This article provides a brief overview of Anne Barnhill and Matteo Bonotti’s Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach while also critically engaging with the place of racial justice, global interconnectedness, and debates over science in thinking about ethics and politics of public health nutrition and policy. I do not aim to burden Barnhill and Bonotti with the responsibility to fully address (...) these issues, but considering the interconnection of these issues and the ever pressing effects of climate change on local and global food systems, we collectively need to turn to these difficult and pressing questions about what a just food system looks like, what concerns are centred, and who is left out. I group these engagements with Barnhill and Bonotti under three headings: racial liberalism, global food system, and contested nutrition science. I conclude with some remarks about locality. (shrink)

In recent work in political philosophy there has been much discussion of two approaches to theorizing about justice that have come to be called ‘ideal theory’ and ‘non-ideal theory’. The distinction was originally articulated by Rawls, who defended his focus on ideal theory in terms of a supposed ‘priority’ of the latter over non-ideal theory. Many critics have rejected this claim of priority and in general have questioned the usefulness of ideal theory. In diagnosing the problem with ideal theory, they (...) have frequently fingered for blame the idealization it involves. In this paper I focus on one particular, much-discussed idealization—full compliance—in order to defend it. Focusing on the assumption, I argue that Rawls’s work is not ideal in the way that it is usually thought to be, is less ideal than is widely recognized, and became less ideal over time. I also argue that critics who in effect claim that it is not realistic enough simply fail to understand Rawls’s central motivation. Finally, I defend the assumption by arguing that there is an important sense in which all theories of justice must assume full compliance. Such an assumption, I argue, is needed if we are to have a plausible basis on which to judge the normative attractiveness of a theory. (shrink)

This article discusses the adequacy of Rawls’ theory of justice as a tool for racial justice. It is argued that critics like Charles W Mills fail to appreciate both the insights and limits of the Rawlsian framework. The article has two main parts spread out over several different sections. The first is concerned with whether the Rawlsian framework suffices to prevent racial injustice. It is argued that there are reasons to doubt whether it does. The second part is concerned with (...) whether a Rawlsian framework has the resources to rectify past racial injustice. It is argued that it has more resources to do this than Mills allows. This second part of the article centers on two Rawlsian ideas: ideal theory and the fair equality of opportunity principle. It is argued that ideal theory is essential for the kind of rectificatory work that Mills wants nonideal theory to do, and that where there is a socioeconomic legacy of past injustice, it is hard to see how FEO could be implemented if it did no rectificatory work, a result which means that there is less need to turn to nonideal theory at all. (shrink)

Among mainstream political philosophers, Charles Mills is probably best known, not as the author of The Racial Contract, but for his long-running critique of ideal theory and Rawls for his association with it. Yet the critique of ideal theory that followed the publication of The Racial Contract is prefigured in that very work, where we find in inchoate form what would be further developed later on. In the book, this early formulation of the critique occupies a small part of a (...) larger, more general argument condemning mainstream political philosophy for the way that it has ignored race. In this paper, I explore the relation of the critique to this more general argument. It might be thought that the general argument leads inevitably to the critique of ideal theory. I will argue that this is not so. I will show how Mills’ more general argument can be made without taking the further step of critiquing ideal theorizing. The blame for why mainstream political philosophy has ignored race, and continues to ignore race, I will argue, should be placed elsewhere. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify what it means for a normative theory to be fact-sensitive, and what might be wrong with such sensitivity, by examining the ways in which ‘justice as fairness’ depends upon facts. While much of the fact-sensitivity of Rawls’s principles consists of innocent limitations of generality, Rawls’s appeal to stability raises a legitimate worry about defining justice down in order to make ‘justice’ stable. If it should turn out that the correct principles of justice are inconsistent with (...) human nature, it might be important for us to recognize that as a feature of human psychology we regret, rather than revising our principles for the sake of stability in a way that obscures the fact that there is anything to regret. Whether or not Rawlsian principles are in fact watered down depends on how one interprets the role of reciprocity in the theory. Reciprocity can be seen as a fact about human psychology that limits the extent to which justice can be realized where assurance of compliance on the part of others is lacking. Or it can be seen as a fact about justice, to wit, that its point is to create a relationship of mutual recognition and respect, making strictly unilateral compliance pointless. (shrink)

Africana scholars often address their texts to a reader who is implicitly white. This tendency, which this article characterizes as the “discursive orientation toward whiteness,” has the pernicious effect of limiting the range and rigor of scholars’ research questions and proposal. This analysis examines the other discursive “face,” following J. Saunders Redding’s observation from almost eighty years ago, which remains unnervingly insightful: “Negro [sic] writers have been obliged to have two faces... to satisfy two different (and opposed when not entirely (...) opposite) audiences, the [B]lack and the white.” Scholars have described this second face in the text in a number of ways—variously as a temperament, a rhythm, or an “aesthetic.” Through an analysis of a few exemplary texts, the current study will describe a few of the most salient characteristics, ultimately in the service of equipping the “Black” scholar with a few effective, liberatory rhetorical strategies. (shrink)

How should one write, what words should one select, what forms and structures and organization, if one is pursuing understanding? Sometimes this is taken to be trivial question. I shall claim that it is not.[T]here is nothing that so alters the material qualities of the voice as the presence of thought behind what is being said: the resonance of the diphthongs, the energy of the labials are profoundly affected—as is the diction.philosophy and literature are akin in rich and meaningful ways. (...) Like philosophy, novels make arguments and explicitly engage the range of philosophical questions; and like literature, essential elements of philosophy include... (shrink)

The whiteness of American philosophy must be appreciated as an epistemological and ontological achievement. Thus, I contend that the only way forward for American philosophy entails an Africana philosophical critique, which consists of two methodological ventures—one deconstructive and the other radical. I will briefly present six voices that exemplify this Africana philosophical critique. The deconstructive voices include (1) Sylvia Wynter's genealogy of “MAN,” (2) Leonard Harris's insurrectionist challenge to Pragmatism, and (3) Charles Mills's and Chandra Mohanty's rejection of Ideal Theory. (...) The radical voices include (1) Lewis Gordon's Africana-existential-phenomenology as a decolonial “antidote” to Eurocentrism, (2) Tommy Curry's culturalogical solution to the “derelictical” and “methodological” crises of African American philosophy, and (3) Africana literature as “new” philosophy. (shrink)

I argue that the key ideas of the movement for Black lives have resonances with Frantz Fanon’s ideas particularly in Black Skin, White Masks. I first demonstrate how the mission to repudiate Black demise and affirm Black humanity captures Fanon’s critique of universal humanism. The fear of the Black body was central to the testimonies of Darren Wilson, Jeronimo Yanez, and George Zimmerman. Fanon prioritized the role of the body in his account of racism. It is difficult to not see (...) the relevance of Fanon’s analysis when one considers these testimonies. Lastly, I demonstrate how the chants “Black lives matter,” “Hands up, don’t shoot,” and “I can’t breathe” are acknowledgments of the significance of Black lives and serve as contemporary instances of Fanon’s sociodiagnostic approach. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ethical implications of racism and some of the various costs associated with racism occurring at the institutional level. We argue that, in many ways, the laws, social structures, and institutions in Western society have operated to perpetuate the continuation of historical legacies of racial inequities with or without the intention of individuals and groups in society. By merely maintaining existing structures, laws, and social norms, society can impose social, economic, and health costs on racial minorities that (...) impinge on their well-being and human dignity. Based on a review of multidisciplinary research on racism, particularly focusing on healthcare, we demonstrate how institutional racism leads to social and economic inequalities in society. By positing institutional racism as the inherent cause of avoidable disparities in healthcare, this paper draws attention to the ethical significance of racism, which remains a relatively neglected issue in bioethics research. (shrink)

Realist thinkers in political philosophy often criticize ideal theorists for neglecting or eliminating the fact of politics in their work. This is supposed to be problematic because we should never expect to overcome politics. Any theory that attempts to do so is said to be unrealistic, naïve, and impractical. Although much has been said in the dispute between realists and ideal theorists in recent years, this particular line of criticism, which should be distinguished from other criticisms of ideal theory, has (...) not been clearly or explicitly addressed by ideal theorists in the literature. I deal with this issue by examining the ideal theory of John Rawls, which has been a prominent target of realist criticisms. My aim is to see where politics exists, or might exist, in Rawls’s theory, and whether this politics satisfactorily answers to the various aspects of the realist’s critique. My analysis suggests that there may be no inherent or necessary conflict between ideal theory and real politics, after all. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race provides up-to-date explanation and analyses by leading scholars of contemporary issues in African American philosophy and philosophy of race. These original essays encompass the major topics and approaches in this emerging philosophical subfield that supports demographic inclusion and diversity while at the same time strengthening the conceptual arsenal of social and political philosophy. Over the course of the volume's ten topic-based sections, ideas about race held by Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche are (...) supplemented by suppressed thought from the African diaspora, early twentieth-century African American perspectives and Native-, Asian-, and Latin-, American views. The contributors bring philosophical analysis to bear on the status of racial divisions as categories of humanity in the biological sciences, as well as within contemporary criticism and conceptual analysis. Essays present the special applications of American philosophy and continental philosophy to ideas of race as methodological alternatives to more analytic approaches. As a collection of analyses and assessments of 'race' in the real world, the volume pays trenchant and relevant attention to historical and contemporary racism and what it means to say that 'race' and racial identities are socially constructed. The essays analyze contemporary social issues including the importance of racial difference and identity in education, public health, medicine, IQ and other standardized tests, and sports. Additionally, the essays consider the societal limitations and structures provided by public policy and law. As a critical theory, the volume compares the study of race to feminism. Historical and contemporary, academic and popular, racisms pertaining to male and female gender receive special consideration throughout the volume. While this comprehensive collection may have the effect of a textbook, each of the original essays is a fresh and authentic development of important present thought. (shrink)

Domination consists in subjection to the will of others and manifests itself both as a personal relation and a structural phenomenon serving as the context for relations of power. Domination has again become a central political concern through the revival of the republican tradition of political thought . However, normative debates about domination have mostly remained limited to the context of domestic politics. Also, the republican debate has not taken into account alternative ways of conceptualizing domination. Critical theorists, liberals, feminists, (...) critical race theorists, and postcolonial writers have discussed domination in different ways, focusing on such problems as imperialism, racism, and the subjection of indigenous peoples. This volume extends debates about domination to the global level and considers how other streams in political theory and nearby disciplines enrich, expand upon, and critique the republican tradition’s contributions to the debate. This volume brings together, for the first time, mostly original pieces on domination and global political justice by some of this generation’s most prominent scholars, including Philip Pettit, James Bohman, Rainer Forst, Amy Allen, John McCormick, Thomas McCarthy, Charles Mills, Duncan Ivison, John Maynor, Terry Macdonald, Stefan Gosepath, and Hauke Brunkhorst. -/- Front matter and First chapter available for download. (shrink)

Some theorists—including Elizabeth Anderson, Gerald Gaus, and Amartya Sen—endorse versions of 'public reason' as the appropriate way to justify political decisions while rejecting 'ideal theory'. This chapter proposes that these ideas are not easily separated. The idea of public reason expresses a form of mutual 'civic' respect for citizens. Public reason justifications for political proposals are addressed to citizens who would find acceptable those justifications, and consequently would comply freely with those proposals should they become law. Hence public reasoning involves (...) 'local ideal theorizing': the justification of political proposals includes their consideration and evaluation under conditions of compliance with them by the citizens to whom those justifications are addressed. Local ideal theorizing, moreover, can lead to 'full ideal theorizing', wherein citizens outline and evaluate an amended version of their society’s 'basic structure'. This argument is illustrated by some recent empirical work on inequality within the United States. (shrink)

How should philosophers in India approach the work of John Rawls? I argue against the view that his work should be regarded as exclusively within the domain of 'Western philosophy', which needs some distinctive process of translation and contextualization in order to speak to 'Indian conditions'. I also question the idea that 'Indian political philosophy' should be seen as an autonomous discipline with roots specifically in the Indian past.

This chapter explores the different dimensions of domination, including whether it has a structural approach, its relation to race and imperialism, and how non-domination can be institutionalized and achieved at a global level.

My dissertation defends W.E.B. Du Bois’s philosophy of modern freedom, which he grounds in the historical reconstruction of the American civic community on the moral basis of free and equal citizenship. Rather than ascribe to him an elitist politics of racial ‘uplift’ and assimilation to Anglo- American folkways, I instead argue that he defends black moral and political autonomy for securing state power and civic equality. Additionally, he challenges both historical and the contemporary political philosophers, including John Rawls, Axel Honneth, (...) and Philip Pettit, to articulate the racial dimension of the development of a social order that actualizes the moral meaning of free and equal citizenship. In establishing his novel philosophy of freedom, I adduce three critical components: (1) Contra standard interpretations of Du Bois that claim he espouses a controversial racialist doctrine, I argue that his racialism is best understood as conceptualizing the ethical salience of racial difference in the context of a democratic plurality. In the light of dominant accounts of plurality that do not foreground race, pace Margaret Gilbert and John Rawls, Du Bois deemphasizes individuals’ free choice in social group formation. In accepting the importance of free choice, he stresses collective historical experience as furnishing the normative salience of racial identity, which prefigures individuals’ free choice. A racialist model of racial difference in a democratic plurality exacts the civic obligation to confront the historical legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. (2) In advancing the moral value of citizenship, Du Bois affirms the moral obligation of the modern American state to represent black interests from Reconstruction onwards. Drawing on G.W.F. Hegel’s normative theory of the modern state, I justify Du Bois’s analysis of postbellum federal policies concerning black freedmen and refugees of the Civil War. Du Bois observes that the Freedmen’s Bureau – established with the passage of the 1865 Radical Reconstruction Amendments – democratically facilitated a ‘social revolution’ by promoting the integration of black freedmen on the moral basis of free and equal citizenship under the aegis of the federal government. Implicit in his analysis is a normative commitment to representational government that in attending to the needs of the postbellum black community incorporates black political will in the public adjudication of the common good – a historically unprecedented phenomenon. (3) With the rise of Jim Crow, when the U.S. federal government skirted its moral obligation to defend black interests, Du Bois argues that the black church and college assumed a civic function. Habits of citizenship flourished there, affirming the moral agency of African Americans as American citizens. Inasmuch as these institutions groomed disenfranchised black citizens for the assumption of political power, I articulate the challenge they present to John Rawls, Axel Honneth, and Philip Pettit to chart the civic dimension of ‘private’ social institutions. Because they neglect to theorize the historical experience of racial subordination, their views of freedom omit a formulation of social cooperation guided by the notion of the civic within the institutional context of civil society. Specifically, their accounts of the interrelation between citizens, social institutions, and the modern state fail to capture the civic function of the black church and college during Jim Crow. Thus, Du Bois’s dynamic, institution-based account of freedom highlights the racial dimension in the historical contestation of the legitimate scope and ends of the American civic community. (shrink)

Some people are multi-billionaires; others die because they are too poor to afford food or medications. In many countries, people are denied rights to free speech, to participate in political life, or to pursue a career, because of their gender, religion, race or other factors, while their fellow citizens enjoy these rights. In many societies, what best predicts your future income, or whether you will attend college, is your parents’ income. -/- To many, these facts seem unjust. Others disagree: even (...) if these facts are regrettable, they aren’t issues of justice. A successful theory of justice must explain why clear injustices are unjust and help us resolve current disputes. -/- John Rawls (1921-2002) was a Harvard philosopher best known for his A Theory of Justice (1971), which attempted to define a just society. Nearly every contemporary scholarly discussion of justice references A Theory of Justice. This essay reviews its main themes. (shrink)