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30Contemporary Claims of Political Injustice: History and the Race to the BottomRes Philosophica 219-233. 2018.Injustice theory better serves the oppressed than theories of justice or ideal theory. Humanitarian injustice, political injustice, and legal injustice are distinguished by the rules they violate. Not all who claim political injustice have valid historical grounds, which include past oppression and its legacy. Social class, including culture as well as money, helps explain competing claims of political injustice better than racial identities. Claims of political injustice by the White Mass Recen…Read more
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30Ethics for DisasterRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2009.Ethics for Disaster addresses the moral aspects of the aftermath of natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes. The book explores how these catastrophes illuminate the existing inequalities in society, combining a unique philosophical approach with new moral thinking. Zack stresses the obligation of both individuals and government in preparing for and responding to dangerous times, forcefully arguing for the preservation of normal moral principles even in times of crisis an…Read more
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29[Book review] race and mixed race (review)In Anthony Appiah & Henry Louis Gates (eds.), Identities, University of Chicago Press. pp. 1--4. 1995.
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28White Privilege and Black Rights: The Injustice of U.S. Police Racial Profiling and HomicideRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2015.Examining racial profiling in American policing, Naomi Zack argues against white privilege discourse while introducing a new theory of applicative justice. Deepening understanding without abandoning hope, Zack shows why it is more important to consider black rights than white privilege as we move forward through today's culture of inequality
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25Alberto G. Urquidez, (Re-)Defining Racism: A Philosophical Analysis, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, Viii +421 Pp. the Concept of Racism and the Adjective Racist (review)Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (3): 673-677. 2021.
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23Book Review: Philosophies of Race and Ethnicity (review)Journal of Moral Philosophy 2 (1): 104-108. 2005.
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22Why I Write So Many Books About RaceJournal of World Philosophies 1 (1): 131-137. 2016.I relate how my life has intersected with my work in philosophy, both before and after a twenty-year absence from academia. Motivations for engaging in Philosophy of Race may be different from other projects because the subject itself is urgent and the philosopher may be a person of color. I describe the development of my own writing in this subfield, from ontological issues in the philosophy of science to moral issues in political philosophy and cultural criticism. The first addressed the biolo…Read more
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21Proposal for a Feminist Kantian Liberal Obligation to Resist Oppression (review)Radical Philosophy Review 17 (1): 313-317. 2014.
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20“The Family” And Radical Family TheoryIn Hilde Lindemann (ed.), Feminism and Families, Routledge. pp. 43--51. 1997.
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20Review of Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach, On Civic Friendship: Including Women in the State (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (1). 2010.
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18Ethics and Race: Past and Present Intersections and ControversiesRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2022.Ethics and Race introduces historical and contemporary conceptions of race through ideas and events and provides an ethical foundation for students to critically engage these issues in the classroom and in their lives. The book features short chapters of jargon-free writing with discussion questions and a glossary.
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18Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality: The Big Questions (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 1998.This ambitious philosophical anthology combines analyses and surveys of contemporary theorising on social identity.
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16Applicative Justice: A Pragmatic Empirical Approach to Racial InjusticeRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2016.Naomi Zack pioneers a new theory of justice starting from a correction of current injustices. While the present justice paradigm in political philosophy and related fields begins from John Rawls’s 1970 Theory of Justice, Zack insists that what people in reality care about is not justice as an ideal, but injustice as a correctable ill.
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16Bachelors of Science: Seventeenth Century Identity, Then and NowTemple University Press. 1996.Naomi Zack begins this extraordinary book with the premise that if one is to understand Western conceptions of racialized and gendered identity, one needs to go back to a period when such categories were not salient and examine how notions ...
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16The Good Faith of the Invisible ManThe Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 27 108-112. 1998.I use Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man to consider the requirements of existentialism to be relevant to racialized experience. Black existentialism is distinguished from white existentialism by its focus on anti-black racism. However, black existentialism is similar to white existentialism in its moral requirement that agents take responsibility so as to be in good faith. Ralph Ellison's invisible man displays good faith at the end of the novel by assuming responsibility for his particular situatio…Read more
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15Lewis R. Gordon, "Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism" (review)Man and World 28 (4): 461-463. 1995.Reviewed by Naomi Zack.
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15Transsexuality and Daseia Y. Cavers-HuffIn Laurie J. Shrage (ed.), You've Changed: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity, Oup Usa. pp. 66. 2009.
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14The Ethics and Mores of Race: Equality After the History of PhilosophyRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2011.Naomi Zack brings us an indispensable work in the ethics of race through an inquiry into the history of moral philosophy. The Ethics and Mores of Race: Equality after the History of Philosophy enters into a web of ideas, ethics, and morals that untangle our evolving ideas of racial equality straight into the twenty-first century
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14Philosophy of Race: An IntroductionSpringer Verlag. 2023.Philosophy of Race: An Introduction provides plainly written access to a new subfield that has been in the background of philosophy since Plato and Aristotle. The second edition is updated to include contemporary developments such as digital racisms, metaphysical othering and metaphysical racism, and the rise of populist movements. Its focus has also been expanded to address non-white racial groups in the Americas, Europe, and beyond, such as the Roma and Uighur people. Part I provides an overvi…Read more
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14Charles Mills, Before, Now, and LaterRadical Philosophy Review 25 (2): 191-208. 2022.In memoriam and ongoing engagement, I begin with my earlier critical interpretation and a reinterpretation that shows how Mills was prescient, given the recrudescence of white supremacy now daily evident in the United States. This leads to an historical analysis of the racial contract as the racist contract and of the racist contract as the racist compact. The racist compact endures in society, outside of government, but protected by democracy. This creates backlash and obstruction to progress t…Read more
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13Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform (review)The Philosophers' Magazine 76 114-115. 2017.
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12Intersection Theory as ProgressiveThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 26 83-102. 2019.Many are already familiar with the idea of intersectionality. Intersection Theory can be conceived as encompassing other progressive theories, such as Philosophy of Race and Feminism. In Philosophy of Race, the ultimate explanatory concept is race; in Feminism, the ultimate explanatory term is gender. This discrepancy has given rise to Black Feminism. Intersection Theory can also be contextualized and expanded to include more detailed intersections when there is inequality within intersected gro…Read more
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10Progressive Anonymity: From Identity Politics to Evidence-Based GovernmentRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2020.Continuing her visionary work in social-political philosophy, Zack critiques identity politics as perpetuating damaging essentialist perspectives and policies. The antidote to identity group egoism is anonymity based on relevant shared interests and a meritocracy led by experts chosen without preference for group affiliation or political charisma.
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10Philosophical Feminism and Popular Culture (edited book)Lexington Books. 2012.The eight essays contained in this book explore the portrayal of women, and various philosophical responses to that portrayal in contemporary post-civil rights society. They bring feminist voices to the conversation about gender and attests to the importance of feminist critique in what is sometimes claimed to be a post-feminist era
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10Applicative Justice: A Pragmatic Empirical Approach to Racial InjusticeRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2016.Naomi Zack pioneers a new theory of justice starting from a correction of current injustices. While the present justice paradigm in political philosophy and related fields begins from John Rawls’s 1970 Theory of Justice, Zack insists that what people in reality care about is not justice as an ideal, but injustice as a correctable ill.
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9George Yancy’s Across Black Spaces Before and During the Corona DisasterJournal of Applied Philosophy 38 (4): 560-568. 2021.George Yancy’s existential analyses of Black life in anti‐Black and anti‐intellectual US society have been evocative and magisterial. The different parts of his Across Black Spaces both reprise his earlier work and take it further with new notes of concern. I suggest that COVID‐19 is metaphysical, that Yancy’s work is uniquely important for studies of race in the United States and as an intervention in our collective intellectuality. However, I suggest that we might move discussions of race ahea…Read more
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9The American Tragedy of COVID-19: Social and Political Crises of 2020Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2021.Zack presents social and political aspects of the COVID-19 disaster as it unfolded through federal and local government structures, society, culture, and the economy. As a record of 2020 and an argument for why we need to prepare for Climate Change and the next pandemic, this book is an essential resource for every student, scholar, and citizen.
Areas of Specialization
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
African/Africana Philosophy |