week 11-13 upp.pdf

lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • Communitarianism Week 11 L1&2 • Holds that human identities are shaped by constitutive communities • This idea of constituted humans should inform our idea of human nature • That human nature must inform our moral/political institutions as well as policies that guide th...

lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • Communitarianism Week 11 L1&2 • Holds that human identities are shaped by constitutive communities • This idea of constituted humans should inform our idea of human nature • That human nature must inform our moral/political institutions as well as policies that guide them • We have amoral obligation to the nourishment of our communities • Without these communities our lives would be empty • Has had a long history in other civilizations • In the West emerges as a reaction to Rawls’s (1971) A Theory of Justice • Rawls: main function of government is to secure and distribute fairly liberties and economic resources enabling individuals to lead their freely chosen lives • Communitarians such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer disputed Rawls’s view Drawing on Aristotle and Hegel argue for the centrality of community Seek to go beyond mechanical individuated regulation of human affairs Opposed to disinterested account of human nature Have a collectivist understanding of social and political interests • The same pattern must also hold for policies adjudicating social structures Universalism vs Particularism • Target liberalism’s universalist pretensions particularly Rawls’s original position • Standards of justice will be found in particulars of different societies hence will vary from one society to the next • Walzer: thinking of a universal set will be so abstract that it will be of little use to people in particular contexts • Rawls attempts to concede to this by claiming his argument is best for liberal cultures and applicable to those willing to work out a political consensus • Also concedes that liberalism may not be for all times and all societies • Other liberals push a hard line against communitarianism, eg Brian Barry who believes in the superiority of liberal egalitarianism while showing no interest in values of other traditions • Downloaded by Tyla Frank ([email protected]) lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • • • • 1980s communitarianism did not succeed due to examples of communities cited eg MacIntyre’s Aristotelian society was too simple to apply to modern complex societies • Walzer’s citation of the caste system did not impress anyone including modern Indian thinkers • In the 1990s this debate faded away as it was replaced by debates on human rights • After the fall of the USSR there was brief euphoria over possibility of liberal democracy • However, that was short lived as it became clear that liberal democracy could not apply to developing world due to a variety of factors • Yet it was assumed that these challenges were temporary and that all rational persons would want liberal democracy • East Asia provided a challenge to liberal democracy with emphasis on values of family and community • Late 1990s economic collapse also led to collapse of some of their values (exception of Chinese growth) • Does not appear that Asian values have been a challenge to liberal democracy (led by politicians not interested in posing theoretically superior views) • East Asian scholars, though, have sought to take up a place in debates on human rights • While they do not entirely reject Western liberalism, they imagine how those rights can be made real in societies with different frameworks such as Confucian traditions • Taylor proposes cross-cultural dialogue where interlocutors don’t argue for universal validity but possible errors of their views We must agree on different foundations of norms for human rights to make such a discourse possible Problem with Taylor position: difficult for people to move away from their attachments in favour of an abstract that promotes a cross-culturally appealing justification (even of there was such an agreement, there would be dispute on how it is to be applied) • Real debate has been on abstract liberal ideals and how they can be applied to real world issues that cause controversy – need for more cross-cultural dialogue than insistence on universality of human rights doctrine The debate over the self • Communitarians have accused liberals of advancing an idea of the self that is atomistic • But are liberals really committed to that view? • Downloaded by Tyla Frank ([email protected]) lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • • Taylor’s criticism applies more to Nozick than Rawls • While liberals do not hold an ex-nihilo individual, they think such an individual can impinge his will on the world • Communitarians argue against this pointing out that instead of arriving at autonomous choices, vast areas of our lives are governed by what we do not exercise choice over • Qualified liberal response: what matters is exercise of choice when individual is called to do so despite background matters • Communitarians: what makes sense is not created by us including high value goods, we choose within context Michael Walzer Week 11 L3 The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism • Biting as communitarian critique may be, it will be transient • Social democracy is also intermittent (also shares commitment to economic growth with liberals) 1st critique • Liberal theory accurately represents liberal practice – of atomistic individuals • Not created ex nihilo but are a result of struggle against community • Marx provides first criticism of the liberal individual • MacIntyre: loss of narrative capacity • But the biggest criticism of liberalism is liberalism itself – its caricature of disconnected individual • Liberals celebrate right to choose yet have no criteria • What is purpose of strangers putting justice, first? 2nd Critique • Liberal theory misrepresents real life The world is not made up of unencumbered individuals (cut off from everything else) • Downloaded by Tyla Frank ([email protected]) lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • • • Even the most liberal of societies are communitarian Claims preceding arguments are partly right In the US individuals live as free and as dissacociated as seen in these four mobilities: • 1. geographic • 2. social • 3. marital • 4. political • All these mobilities are counter to communitarianism and in aid of liberalism • The communitarian correction is not to replace liberalism but to point out communitarian nature of liberal individuals • Liberalism is about voluntary associations • But will these associations survive these four mobilities • To do so they need help • That help has to come from the state • The state will have to take up sponsorship of these groups • Liberalism is a theory of relationship with a voluntariness at the centre – the right of voluntariness makes this relationship possible. Michael Onyebuchi Eze Week 12 What is African Communitarianism? Against Consensus as a Regulative Ideal • Identity of individual and reality of community are dialogical • Neither is prior to the other • For that reason politics of consensus is not desirable • Instead of consensus to advocate realist perspectivism • Consensus adopts a sort of terrorism in the subjugation of the individual • Realist perspectivism prefers conversion of beliefs instead of conformism Downloaded by Tyla Frank ([email protected]) lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 Ubuntu #Both a philosophy and a culture #Refers to quality of a person (unlike static Western definition) #The person is always located in community #Mbiti: “I am because we are, since we are, therefore, I am” (corporate existence) #Eze: Wrong formulation (neither reality is prior, they are both co-dependent) #Likes Dzobo’s “we are, therefore I am, since I am, therefore we are” #Dzobo captures how interwoven the individual and the community’s good are • All old communitarianism, Ramose, Gyekye, Menkiti advocates priority of community over individual • Eze: both realities are contemporaneous, community is made by people fated to live together • Individuality is also expressed in community • Hence the two are co-dependent Politics of common good: consensus or conformity • Ubuntu is about common good • Individual interests need not undermine common good • While most African thinkers endorse idea of common good, Ramose recognizes the worth of each individual • Wiredu’s consensus is based on deliberation and arriving at common ground – exemplified by two headed crocodile realizing shared interests • Dirk Louw’s attempts at painting consensus as alterity does not succeed • Consensus banishes exercise of freewill Why not consensus • Africanists have failed to provide a definition of consensus • From Latin = general agreement or unanimous position of a number of positions • Unanimity is also held by Ramose and Wiredu • In absence of such definition will rely on Habermas What is consensus • Process of accepting validity by rational agents • To arrive at position acceptable to all (where there is divergence) fair procedure is important Downloaded by Tyla Frank lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • • • • As discourse ethic – merely formalistic – no theory of wrong or right • However, sees consensus as leading to terrorism of unanimity Realist Perspectivism • WVO Quine: principle of charity in interpretation • 2 principles of charity • 1. strong version: empathy for the other’s narrative • 2. principle of humanity: recognizes our own fallibility in judgment of the other Ubuntu or simunye? We are one Simunye suppresses otherness for oneness Ubuntu need not be like that Louw’s ubuntu: unity in diversity • This is in contrast to Augustine Shutte’s view of an individual as another self • Problem: this is objectification of the other David Oyedola Week 13 L1 Appiah on Race and Identity in the Illusions of Race: A Rejoinder • Appiah and Masolo have rejected the existence of race and identity, respectively • This is done to effectively secure the possibility of eliminating all discrimination based on race and identity • However their theoretical postulations do not speak to the realities of the people • People take these identities seriously and at times take up arms in their defence • There is also reality of continuation of postcolonial struggles seeking to affirm the identity of Africans • Oyedola seeks to undertsnad the claims of both sides • Race and racism have been investigated through analytical means • But there is also scholarship of Senghor and Cesaire (which may be used as strawmen) • There is also critical race theory which seeks to interrogate the power of whiteness, unequal relations between different races, role of racism in colonialism etc Downloaded by Tyla Frank ([email protected]) lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • Advocates alternatives such as Nyerere’s ujamaa • While colonialism ravaged Africa it left nothing for Africans to continue into their future • When Appiah denies existence of race what are his reasons? • His answer: there is nothing that race can do for us (becoming a race identity eliminativist) • Curious that as a man born in colonial Africa he denies the existence of race • Beyond Appiah’s rejection of the existence of race (scientifically) there is its sociological existence (which Du Bois calls the archeological understanding of race) • Relevant topics to discussion of race: • Monogenism • Scepticism • Polygenesim Faulting Appiah’s skepticism Downloaded by Tyla Frank lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • • • His views on there being no races could have been influenced by failures of race and identity struggles (as he reads it in American literature) • Could have arrived at questioning what the use of such categories is • Leads him to abandon that category in favor of his cosmopolitanism • How can he be faulted • He can be faulted through Tsenay Serequeberhan: • 1. Through Fanon and Cabral – the history of the colonized is actualized • 2. the colonized who feel clumsy in a perfected mechanized world have to reclaim their historicity • Kant and Appiah share the same disposition of one genus (Kant: environment triggers genes that create distinct races – different from Appiah’s cosmopolitanism) • Appiah’s cosmopolitanism claims sameness of all races • Kant could possibly lend credence to Appiah’s thinking • However Appiah’s thinking ignores real struggles for the formation of identity of certain races in direct struggle against other races Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze Week 13 L2 Philosophy and the “Man” in the Humanities The Cogito • Modern masters of Western philosophy have tackled the nature of man, tenaciously and sometimes extravagantly • Rene Descrates in Discourse (dealing with nature of soul), and Meditations are a philosophical-anthropological exercise aimed at establishing the nature of the human • That nature will be established by the certainty of reason • Hence Descartes holds that the primary concern of philosophy is the nature of man and God • His notion of man aligned with the capacity to think has survived while many of his ideas on God were to be debated and defeated • The influence of Descrtes’ views on man is to be seen in: • Pascal (who was opposed to Cartesianism): we can conceive of man without body parts, but not without thought Downloaded by Tyla Frank ([email protected]) lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • • Ricouer: ““I think, I am” “is the reflective foundation of every proposition concerning man” • The problems generated by Descartes are to be particularly seen in Kant • In his quite diverse Logic, Kant seeks to reformulate Descartes’ thesis but can’t depart from it • Curiously classifies problems of philosophy as follows: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope? • 4. What is man? • 1: metaphysics; 2: morality; 3. religion; 4; anthropology • The 1st three are related to the last • Holds that man’s end is to understand himself as a being endowed with reason • Anthropology’s aim: “to explain the inner and outer nature of the “early being endowed with reason”; a “systematic treatise comprising our knowledge of man” • This orientation of anthropology is not in opposition to Critique of Pure Reason but in continuity with it • How so? • Kant holds that the unity of varied representations in consciousness – is what makes him call them one and his – is conscious to his self – not to diverse representations = “I” • There is difference between Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” and Kant’s synthetic “I” • Kant’s “I” involves bringing into unity the various representations which at the same time is the unity of consciousness • Yet the similarity is the privilege accorded the faculty of thinking • Thus reason is accorded the ability to stabilize man’s dispersed and contradictory states of being and ultimately constitutes itself • Hume adds on to it: Treatise of Human Nature — all sciences are comprehended in the science of human nature and are dependent on it • From this we are able to understand man, scientific process, and morality • Holds these disjunctive positions: 1. certitude in all science is in human nature; yet 2. holds to radical skepticism about then existing theories of self and grounds for objectivity in knowledge • But why was this project of man important? Downloaded by Tyla Frank lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • • • • Can be traced to renaissance 1300 – 1500 (man’s thinking is at the centre as a result of the rebirth of culture through rediscovery of classical civilization) • Man’s thinking as responsible for science was important • Spread to the enlightenment in the 17th and 18th century • Eze: why did the definition of man become so important in modern philosophy? • Eze: It was challenge of understanding varieties of races with quest of establishing essential qualities of human being as opposed to its accidental features • Eze: Savage of renaissance and enlightenment is different from the barbarian and gentile (the other-who was seen as outside the Latin and the Christian) But medieval sense of history and Geography was severely limited – imagination ran free about the true nature of the other – as can be seen in restraint urged by St Augustine in the City of God • End of 12th century men have taken ship and are travelling (need for new science of geography and ethnography than authority of scripture) – including accounting for varieties of men • Thanks to these men, a new understanding developed: • 1. Marco Polo (1254 – 1324) • 2. Henry the Navigator (1394 – 1460) • 3. Bartolomeu Dias (c1450 – 1500) • 4. Cristobal Colon aka Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506) • These discoveries and new ways of thinking in enlightenment shifted distinction from barabarian – Latin and Christian – gentile to Civilized – Savage; Historical – Primitive and Progressive – Archaic • For these differences the light of enlightenment was seen as having responsibility to shine on the other • Travel had removed shrouds, replaced with stricter scientific interest • In the light of this difference question turned from who are to what is to be human • Travelers had to deal with these questions: Is there one human nature, in the light of varieties of humans? Are all races of equal historical worth? What would the criteria for establishing such theory of worth? In which direction is progress? • Thus intellectual opportunity was presented and many attempts to provide answers undertaken Downloaded by Tyla Frank ([email protected]) lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • • • But Descartes’ philosophy provided a nightmare for modern reason: Once the modern world emerges – there is doubt about of the reality of the world and human life (maybe commonsense and reason can’t be trusted – what if all is a dream) Doubt is about human nature (seen in both Hume and Kant) sparked by encounter with foreigners Philosophy and the “varieties of men” • But why the tag savage • Eze: answer lies in the lack of distinction between anthropology and philosophy (for Hume and Kant) – for most of their work was on the nature of varieties of men, what accounted for their difference, and hierarchy of superiority • Eze: Can such a historical reading, especially done by an African, compromise, Wiredu’s call for level headedness (remembering his warning on the African’s philosophical heritage) • Wiredu’s point: Western phil’s truths are transcultural even when inhospitable to the African • Responsibility to truth but also guard against the racism • Eze: the question is not whether individual philosophers were racists, but how modern philosophy used race and to what ends Downloaded by Tyla Frank lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • Did their writings aid or oppose race based economic and political ideals that promoted the enlightenment? • What is the relationship between light and reason of enlightenment and darkness and irrationality of savages? • How did the advent of the savage influence the philosophers’ theories of man and culture? • Has the notion of the savage anything to do with the substance of these theories? • If so, how do they stack up against the philosophers’ better known “universal” theories of knowledge, ethics or politics? • These questions can tell us about historical aspects of modern philosophy and the conflicted ways this tradition promoted its own universal and cross-cultural aspirations • If Wiredu is right with his list (Hume, Kant, Aristotle, Marx, Husserl, Frege, Hegel, Russell, Heidegger) • Do their commitments demonstrate a convergence of truth or prejudice • Take these classic examples • 1. Hume: pp 55 – 56 • 2. Kant: p. 56 • 3. GWF Hegel: p. 56 • Because of the modern division of labour (anthropology and philosophy) some think these embarrassing and opaque views must be dismissed • Eze: A wrong way to protect philosophy will be to ignore interrogating all its facets just because unpleasant topics like colonialism, racism, and ethnocentrism will crop up • Further, is it true that pure philosophy is unconnected with these impure aspects • But why pick on race, why not class and gender? • Eze: race is neither prior nor superior category of inclusion or exclusion • Rather, when philosophy has been bent or has bent itself towards racist or racial ends, race issues tend to be inseparable from wider economic, political and cultural motives Kwame Anthony Appiah Week 13 L3 The Conservation of “Race” • Continues WEB Du Bois’s search for truth on race • Afro-American literature not just a project of cultural politics Downloaded by Tyla Frank ([email protected]) lOMoAR cPSD| 27236268 • • It’s part of struggle against racism • In all his writings Du Bois came to the conclusion that there was nothing scientifically significant about race to imply differences • While race talk in biology is seen as innocent, it is a ‘dangerous trope’ In contrast to Joyce Joyce, many black thinkers did not take it as an obvious assertion that there are no races • But what binds people together if there are no races? • The answer lies in a new story which Joyce is incapable of telling • Appiah: In the US racism is not advanced by the denial of the existence of race (eg opposition to affirmative action can be easily done away with) • Racism will always exist whether there is belief in the existence of races, or not. • Truth-telling about the non-existence of races is in the service of justice • Barker: Appiah’s position does not take, seriously, hurtful incidents of racism • Appiah: Barker gets the gradient of what is at stake wrong Doctrine of Racism • There are three types • Racialism: belief that there are characteristics that distinguish races • Central to 19th century attempts of developing different races • Must not be a dangerous doctrine (provided positive characteristics are evenly spread a cross different races) • However, it is a false doctrine • Racilaism depends on other doctrines that have been called ‘racism’ • One such doctrine is extrinsic racism • ER: makes moral distinction of races on belief that distinctions are morally significant • Evidence to the contrary does not change such racists • May be suffering from cognitive defect but are in effect insincere intrinsic racists • Intrinsic Racism: makes a moral distinction between races – believing that each race has a different moral status • No evidence to the contrary changes the racist = intrinsic sexism A Discussion About Race Downloaded by Tyla Frank