I defend the cosmopolitan instrumentalist theory of secession, according to which a group has a right to secede only if this would promote cosmopolitan justice. I argue that the theory is preferable to other theories of secession because it is an entailment of cosmopolitanism, which is independently attractive, and because, unlike other theories of secession, it allows us to give the answers we want to give in cases like secession of the rich or secession that would make things worse for (...) minorities. I defend the view against the objections that it allows for colonialism and annexation, that it is not a distinct theory, and that it is impractical. (shrink)

When a liberal-democratic state signs a treaty or wages a war, does its whole polity do those things? In this article, we approach this question via the recent social ontological literature on collective agency. We provide arguments that it does and that it does not. The arguments are presented via three considerations: the polity's control over what the state does; the polity's unity; and the influence of individual polity members. We suggest that the answer to our question differs for different (...) liberal-democratic states and depends on two underlying considerations: the amount of discretion held by the state's officeholders; the extent to which the democratic procedure is deliberative rather than aggregative. (shrink)

In ‘Colonialism, territory and pre-existing obligations,’ Cara Nine argues that Lea Ypi’s account of the wrongness of colonialism has a hole in it: Ypi leaves open the possibility of justified settler colonialism. Nine suggests that we can patch this hole by attaching value to existing political associations. But Nine’s solution has its own hole. Many political associations exist due to settler colonialism, and thus if we endorse the value of these associations we seem to endorse colonialism. In response, we could (...) say that past colonial injustices have been remediated or superseded. Or, we could leave the hole open: colonialism is sometimes justified. I argue that, surprisingly, the second option is likely preferable, because it does not require us to say that the injustices of colonialism are gone, and because it points towards a better theory of colonialism’s wrongness than Ypi’s: cosmopolitan instrumentalism, according to which colonialism is wrong only when it is unjust according to one’s overall theory of cosmopolitan justice. (shrink)

In ‘What’s Wrong with Colonialism,’ Lea Ypi argues that the wrong of colonialism can be expressed as procedural wrongs, not as wronging territorial rights. On her view, colonial practices went wrong in two ways: they forced residents into political associations, and the terms of the political association were not established through equal and reciprocal negotiations. I argue that because Ypi’s account successfully side-lines all but essential claims to territory, her theory ends up being vulnerable to an objection it means to (...) avoid. Historical residents may be subject to unequal treatment under newly formed political associations because their historical patterns of land use are not considered to have any independent moral weight. My analysis does not rely on any appeal to property or territorial rights. Instead, I appeal to pre-existing obligations holding between residents. (shrink)

Why should we decolonise knowledge? One popular rationale is that colonialism has set up a single perspective as epistemically authoritative over many equally legitimate ones, and this is a form of...

I argue that if we claim colonialism is per se wrong, then we face a dilemma that stems from the fact that many states today are a result of past colonialism. We believe that postcolonial states have a right to self-determination such that it is wrong to colonize them. But this entails that there is a process that can turn a colonial state into a rightful state, and so we admit that there is a way to carry out colonialism that (...) is not wrongful. To avoid this conclusion, we must accept that the wrongness of colonialism has been superseded or remedied. These options either entail instrumentalism, which admits that colonialism is not per se wrong, or they are implausible. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between justice and colonialism. It defines colonialism; examines the kind of injustice that colonialism involved; and the possibility of corrective justice.

The current debate on why colonialism is wrong overlooks what is arguably the most discernible aspect of this particular historical injustice: its exreme violence. Through a critical analysis of the recent contributions by Lea Ypi, Margaret Moore and Laura Valentini, this article argues that the violence inflicted on the victims and survivors of colonialism reveals far more about the nature of this historical injustice than generally assumed. It is the arbitrary nature of the power relations between colonizers and the colonized (...) which is at the heart of the injustice of colonization, and violence was the way arbitrariness and domination was cemented. The example of colonialism in the Caribbean during the 16th and 17th centuries is used to expose the full extent of this historical injustice. (shrink)

Massimo Renzo has recently argued in this journal that Allen Buchanan’s account of the ethics of intervention is too permissive. Renzo claims that a proper understanding of political self-determination shows that it is often impermissible to intervene in order to establish a regime that leads to more self-determination for a group of people if that group was or would be opposed to the intervention. Renzo’s argument rests on an analogy between individual self-determination and group self-determination, and once we see that (...) there are differences between the two kinds of self-determination, his argument against Buchanan fails, and thus there are more cases of permissible intervention than Renzo countenances. However, understanding these differences also reveals that Buchanan’s account is also not permissive enough. There are cases of justified intervention beyond even what Buchanan compasses. (shrink)

We offer an account of the nature and structure of the immorality of colonialism. We distinguish between the fundamental wrong of colonialism and the other wrongs that the fundamental wrong facilitated. On our view, the fundamental wrong was that colonizers regarded the colonized as incapable of managing their own affairs, in effect relegating them to the status of minors or mentally incompetent adults. We call this the nonautonomy assumption. It could also be called the inferior status assumption, for reasons that (...) will become clear as we proceed. We argue that, in addition to the nonautonomy assumption, the most serious wrongs of colonialism were severe economic injustices and practices of humiliation, and that these wrongs can reasonably be seen to be facilitated by or grounded in the fundamental wrong. We make the case that our analysis has two virtues: it provides a more comprehensive characterization of the wrongs of colonialism and the relationships between them than extant philosophical accounts and it helps make sense of the concepts of neocolonialism and internal colonialism, which extant accounts are unable to do. This has the added advantage of bringing discussions that have hitherto taken place in fields such as political theory, postcolonial studies, history, and critical theory into the ambit of analysis by political philosophers, using tools and concepts that philosophers have at their command, such as the notions of autonomy and inferior status. After developing our own view, we offer a critical appraisal of three prominent recent attempts to identify “the wrong” of colonialism, the views of Anna Stilz, Massimo Renzo, and Lea Ypi. We argue that by focusing on defects of the political structure of colonialism such as the deprivation of collective self‐determination, these accounts do not clearly identify the fundamental wrong of colonialism and either completely ignore or pay insufficient attention to severe economic injustices and practices of humiliation; and that they also render the notions of neocolonialism and internal colonialism unintelligible. While acknowledging that the nonautonomy assumption encouraged colonialists to deprive the colonized of collective self‐determination and recognizing that this was a serious wrong, we deny that the deprivation of collective self‐determination was the fundamental wrong of colonialism, as the denial of autonomy is more basic than the denial of political self‐management. The analysis we offer makes it clear that colonialism is not a topic of merely historical interest. The most serious wrongs suffered by colonized people did not end with decolonization, that is, the achievement of independent statehood. The fundamental wrong of colonialism was grounded in inequalities of power that persist today and that continue to contribute to economic injustices and to the failure to regard the weaker as equals, in a variety of contexts, including, but not limited to the case of formerly colonized peoples. (shrink)

The principle of cultural nationalism holds that every national community, simply by being a national community, has a prima facie right to self-government. Given that national communities are singled out as the right-holder, proponents must explain why this particular type of group is entitled to the right to self-government. In this paper, I analyze the strategies that a cultural nationalist may adopt to demand the right to self-government. We can distinguish between four types of arguments for cultural nationalism–the Argument from (...) Historical Injustice, the Argument from Inequality, the Instrumental Value Argument, and the Intrinsic Value Argument. I consider the merits and limitations of each. After critically examining these arguments, I conclude that none of the arguments successfully justifies the generalized claim that every national group enjoys a prima facie right to self-determination. Proponents of cultural nationalism may respond to my objections by suggesting that, even assuming that all my objections are sound, this only shows that existing arguments in favor of cultural nationalism are unsound. That is, they can find new ways to defend the principle and I have not proven that cultural nationalism must be rejected. To this, I discuss further three reasons to reject cultural nationalism: it lends moral support to colonialism, undermines inter-group cooperation, and is incompatible with a deep and genuine commitment to multiculturalism. Therefore, although we should embrace multiculturalism—policies that support different national heritages—cultural nationalism ought to be rejected. (shrink)

What is wrong with colonialism? The standard—albeit often implicit—answer to this question has been that colonialism was wrong because it violated the territorial rights of indigenous peoples, where territorial rights were grounded on acquisition theories. Recently, the standard view has come under attack: according to critics, acquisition based accounts do not provide solid theoretical grounds to condemn colonial relations. Indeed, historically they were used to justify colonialism. Various alternative accounts of the wrong of colonialism have been developed. According to some, (...) colonialism involved a violation of territorial rights grounded on legitimate state theory. Others reject all explanations of colonialism's wrongfulness based on territorial rights, and argue that colonial practices were wrong because they departed from ideals of economic, social, and political association. In this article, we articulate and defend the standard view against critics: colonialism involved a procedural wrong; this wrong is not the violation of standards of equality and reciprocity, but the violation of territorial rights; and the best foundation for such territorial rights is acquisition based, not legitimacy based. We argue that this issue is not just of historical interest, it has relevant implications for the normative evaluation of contemporary inequalities. (shrink)

In “What’s Wrong with Colonialism,” Lea Ypi argues that the distinctive wrong of colonialism should be understood as the failure of the colonial relationship to extend equal and reciprocal terms of political association to the colonized. Laura Valentini argues that Ypi’s account fails. Her argument targets an ambiguity in Ypi’s account of the relata of the colonial relationship. Either Ypi’s view is that the members of the colonized group are, as individuals, denied an equal and reciprocal political relationship to the (...) colonizer, or Ypi’s view is that the colonized individuals form a collective agent and that it is denied an equal and reciprocal relationship to the colonizer. According to Valentini, both options face insurmountable difficulties. Valentini’s argument, this paper argues, sets up a false dilemma. The third option is to think of the colonizer as relating in an unequal and non-reciprocal way to the plurality of people subjected to colonial rule. As I will argue, this view avoids Valentini’s objections. It does, however, raise some new questions about how we are to understand the distinctive wrong of colonialism. (shrink)

In its attempt to deflate of the pretensions of ‘Western knowledge’, the epistemic decolonisation movement carries on the work of Socrates, who sought to persuade those who thought that they were wise but were not, that they were not. Yet in its determination to recover and elevate indigenous systems of thought, decolonisation seems opposed to this very work, which is always corrosive of inherited belief. Decolonisation both expresses and contradicts the spirit of Socratic philosophy.

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 3, Page 317-333, Fall 2022.