Agnes Tam

An increasing number of philosophers have argued that social movements as a form of contentious politics are apt agents of change. Given their contentious mode of communication, social movements are said to be more inclusive of the oppressed and effective in disrupting pernicious ideologies. This paper challenges the current overly optimistic and simplistic assessment of aptness. The core argument is that social movements are not just a form of practical contention but also a form of practical narration. As such, whether a movement fosters progress or regression depends crucially on the quality and content of the narration in which it is embedded. My argument proceeds in three steps. Firstly, I turn to the recent empirical scholarship on social movements to show the inadequacy of the contentious political model in explaining movement agency and the need for collective identity. Next, drawing on the interdisciplinary scholarship on narrative agency, I claim that narration is key to constructing collective identity, and that a specific genre of narratives, namely melodrama, is particularly effective in transforming the experience of oppression into motivationally powerful collective identities. Finally, I argue that the narrative conventions of melodramas that effectively galvanize agency are often the same ones that mischaracterize the causes of injustice, misplace blame, misinform goals, and reinforce ideologies. I illustrate this point with reference to the white supremacy movement in the United States. The upshot of my analysis is not to discredit social movements as “inapt” agents of change, but rather to show that there are dangers and complexities lurking within the hero narratives of recent philosophical work on social movements.

If I were to ask you to name the most important concept in moral and political philosophy today, your answer might be ‘justice’, ‘equality’ or ‘freedom’. But for an intellectual in eighteenth-century Europe, the most likely answer would have been ‘progress’. Living in the Age of Enlightenment, marked by major scientific revolutions, rapid economic growth and the fall of absolute monarchy, ‘progress’ appeared to be an apt description of the arc of history, as well as a moral imperative for human action. But the climate of optimism did not last long. The world wars, colonial conquests and environmental devastation that followed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries destroyed many things, including the faith in progress, both as a fact and an ideal. As Theodor Adorno remarked, ‘It could be said that progress occurs where it ends’ (Adorno 1998: 150). And so it did.Interestingly, over the past decade, the philosophical discourse on progress has been experiencing something of a revival. The book Moral Progress (2021) marks a significant contribution to that revival. Edited by Jan-Christoph Heilinger, the book records Philip Kitcher’s three-part Munich Lectures in Ethics from 2019 and includes commentaries from Rahel Jaeggi, Susan Neiman and Amia Srinivasan. Despite its short length and accessibility, the book is rich in philosophical perspectives and empirical insights. In this critical notice, my aim is to situate this work within the larger debate on moral progress and evaluate Kitcher’s pragmatist attempt to re-establish the concept’s relevance and validity. Specifically, I identify three challenges any such attempt faces, viz. metaphysical, epistemic and motivational. I argue that while Kitcher’s Deweyan attempt is successful in overcoming the first two, it is less so with respect to the last challenge. In the hope of sparking more discussion on the topic of moral progress, I end by suggesting possible ways to implement moral progress that are less democratic and less scientific but more communitarian and more artful than the Deweyan method.

Part I offers a set of ethical recommendations on various aspects of the everyday operations of animal shelters. The authors begin by clarifying the ethical framework on which the recommendations are based as well as setting out several overarching issues. The authors then address specific ethical questions arising in the context of the shelter’s internal structure and decision-making processes; its relationship with the public, donors, industry, and government; its role in the enforcement of animal welfare legislation; shelter operations, such as responses to overpopulation and decisions about when to end animals’ lives; how it should respond to animals in the community, such as feral cats; and issues arising in relation to shelter staff. The first part of the policy document summarizes these recommendations; the second part explains, in more detail, the reasoning behind these recommendations.

An increasing number of philosophers have argued that social movements as a form of contentious politics are apt agents of change. Given their contentious mode of communication, social movements are said to be more inclusive of the oppressed and effective in disrupting pernicious ideologies. This paper challenges the current overly optimistic and simplistic assessment of aptness. The core argument is that social movements are not just a form of practical contention but also a form of practical narration. As such, whether a movement fosters progress or regression depends crucially on the quality and content of the narration in which it is embedded. My argument proceeds in three steps. Firstly, I turn to the recent empirical scholarship on social movements to show the inadequacy of the contentious political model in explaining movement agency and the need for collective identity. Next, drawing on the interdisciplinary scholarship on narrative agency, I claim that narration is key to constructing collective identity, and that a specific genre of narratives, namely melodrama, is particularly effective in transforming the experience of oppression into motivationally powerful collective identities. Finally, I argue that the narrative conventions of melodramas that effectively galvanize agency are often the same ones that mischaracterize the causes of injustice, misplace blame, misinform goals, and reinforce ideologies. I illustrate this point with reference to the white supremacy movement in the United States. The upshot of my analysis is not to discredit social movements as “inapt” agents of change, but rather to show that there are dangers and complexities lurking within the hero narratives of recent philosophical work on social movements.

If I were to ask you to name the most important concept in moral and political philosophy today, your answer might be ‘justice’, ‘equality’ or ‘freedom’. But for an intellectual in eighteenth-century Europe, the most likely answer would have been ‘progress’. Living in the Age of Enlightenment, marked by major scientific revolutions, rapid economic growth and the fall of absolute monarchy, ‘progress’ appeared to be an apt description of the arc of history, as well as a moral imperative for human action. But the climate of optimism did not last long. The world wars, colonial conquests and environmental devastation that followed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries destroyed many things, including the faith in progress, both as a fact and an ideal. As Theodor Adorno remarked, ‘It could be said that progress occurs where it ends’ (Adorno 1998: 150). And so it did. Interestingly, over the past decade, the philosophical discourse on progress has been experiencing something of a revival. The book Moral Progress (2021) marks a significant contribution to that revival. Edited by Jan-Christoph Heilinger, the book records Philip Kitcher’s three-part Munich Lectures in Ethics from 2019 and includes commentaries from Rahel Jaeggi, Susan Neiman and Amia Srinivasan. Despite its short length and accessibility, the book is rich in philosophical perspectives and empirical insights. In this critical notice, my aim is to situate this work within the larger debate on moral progress and evaluate Kitcher’s pragmatist attempt to re-establish the concept’s relevance and validity. Specifically, I identify three challenges any such attempt faces, viz. metaphysical, epistemic and motivational. I argue that while Kitcher’s Deweyan attempt is successful in overcoming the first two, it is less so with respect to the last challenge. In the hope of sparking more discussion on the topic of moral progress, I end by suggesting possible ways to implement moral progress that are less democratic and less scientific but more communitarian and more artful than the Deweyan method.

Due to their heavy reliance on public goodwill, community-based animal protection organizations (APOs) often face a dilemma in animal advocacy. Either they preserve institutional efficacy by focusing on popular causes—for example, protecting cats and dogs from individual acts of cruelty—at the expense of their own progressive institutional mandates. Or they honor their own institutional mandates by pursuing progressive causes—for example, challenging factory farming or the property status of animals—at the risk of losing public support. In this chapter, the authors argue that APOs can avoid this dilemma by adopting a new model of advocacy: “we”-reasoning. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of social norms, the authors claim that “we-reasons” rooted in group norms, distinct from both prudential reasoning (“reason-for-me”) and from moral reasoning (“reason-for everyone”), can generate support for progressive agendas. They apply this model to recent controversies about the adoption of vegan diets in shelters.

There is a widely recognized dilemma of political epistemic trust. While the public needs to rely on the testimonies of epistemic authorities (e.g. politicians, policymakers, and scientists), it is risky to do so. One source of risk is self-interest. Epistemic authorities are prone to abuse the trust placed in them by misinforming the public for material and social gain. To reap the benefits of trust and mitigate the risk of abuse, liberal political theorists adopt the strategy of cultivating vigilant trust. By enhancing epistemic vigilance and epistemic autonomy, trust is both constrained and intellectualized. This chapter rejects this strategy for two reasons. First, it is undesirable. By over-intellectualizing trust, such an approach deprives trust of its important epistemic and social benefits. Second, it is unnecessary. The risk of abuse is exaggerated. The strategy fails to appreciate that epistemic authorities in virtue of their social roles are typically governed by the social norm of epistemic trustworthiness, not self-interest. The chapter concludes by suggesting an alternative strategy of cultivating trustworthiness. It seeks to strengthen epistemic authorities’ responsiveness to the social norm of epistemic trustworthiness, thereby improving epistemic trust without over-intellectualizing it. It is further outlined how liberal-democratic institutions can implement it.

A lively debate in the literature on moral progress concerns the role of practical reasoning: Does it enable or subvert moral progress? Rationalists believe that moral reasoning enables moral progress, because it helps enhance objectivity in thinking, overcome unruly sentiments, and open our minds to new possibilities. By contrast, skeptics argue that moral reasoning subverts moral progress. Citing growing empirical research on bias, they show that objectivity is an illusion and that moral reasoning merely rationalizes pre-existing biased moral norms. In this article, I argue that both the rationalists and the skeptics fail to understand fully the role of practical reasoning by focusing exclusively on moral reasoning to the neglect of social reasoning. In the first half of the article, I argue against the skeptics by vindicating moral reasoning. I identify a Democratic Model of moral reasoning which is reliable and effective in overcoming bias. In the second part of the article, I argue against the rationalists. Drawing on a paradigmatic case of moral progress, i.e., the British abolition of the slave trade, I illustrate that moral reasoning, even when sound, is insufficient to motivate progressive action. The explanation for this puzzling phenomenon is not that the moral norm against cruelty is inert, as skeptics might suggest. Rather, it is that the moral norm against cruelty was overridden by the social norm of slavery which was tied to the British joint commitments to freedom and national honour. The debate between rationalists and skeptics centers around the moral rationality of human action, failing to recognize that human action is in fact primarily about social rationality. I defend a joint commitment account of social rationality, and offer a novel Communitarian Model of social reasoning which follows the logic of social rationality to revise social norms. I defend the reliability and efficacy of the Communitarian Model of social reasoning by applying it to the abolitionist social movement to show how Britons gave fellow Britons social reasons grounded in their joint commitments to freedom and national honour to end slavery.

In liberal political philosophy, a prevalent view holds that groups are typically voluntary associations. Members of voluntary associations can accept, revise or reject group practices as a matter of choice. In this article, I challenge this view. Appealing to the concept of joint commitment developed in philosophy of social science, I argue that individuals who jointly commit their wills to a goal or a belief form a ‘We’-group. Members of ‘We’-groups are under an obligation to defer to ‘Our’ will embodied in ‘Our’ norms as a matter of course. I further show the ubiquity of We-groups. This joint commitment account of group authority raises a much-overlooked question of group legitimacy: Do members have good reasons to obey norms of their group? I show that state-centric views of legitimacy are inapt to answer it. A group-centric view, revived from the old communitarian literature, is defended.