George Hull

Defences of racial anti-realism typically proceed by establishing that nothing possesses the descriptive characteristics associated with the term ‘race’. This leaves them vulnerable to the externalist challenge that the descriptive meaning of ‘race’ is subject to revision based on discoveries about the nature of its referent. That referent is, according to constructionist realists, the groups we call races (the R-groups). Anti-realists and constructionist realists agree that the R-groups are constructed as real social groups by being viewed and treated as though they were relatively homogenous groups, differing in significant, inherent, heritable ways. Only, anti-realists insist they are not races, but racialized groups. I seek to harness their agreement about the socially constructed nature of the R-groups to break the impasse between anti-realists and constructionist realists and settle their dispute in the anti-realist position's favour. On the account of their social construction agreed by both sides, R-groups exhibit empty concept dependency: they depend for their existence on people's utilizing a concept with no referent. Race cannot be both the concept which captures the R-groups’ nature and the empty concept on whose utilization their existence depends. When we are forced to choose, I argue, the latter is the only justifiable option.

In African countries there has been a surge of intellectual interest in foregrounding ideas and thinkers of African origin--in philosophy as in other disciplines--that have been unjustly ignored or marginalized. African scholars have demonstrated that precolonial African cultures generated ideas and arguments which were at once truly philosophical and distinctively African, and several contemporary African thinkers are now established figures in the philosophical mainstream. Yet, despite the universality of its themes, relevant contributions from African philosophy have rarely permeated global philosophical debates. Critical intellectual excavation has also tended to prioritize precolonial thought, overlooking more recent sources of home-grown philosophical thinking such as Africa's intellectually rich liberation movements. This book demonstrates the potential for constructive interchange between currents of thought from African philosophy and other intellectual currents within philosophy. Chapters authored by leading and emerging scholars: recover philosophical thinkers and currents of ideas within Africa and about Africa, bringing them into dialogue with contemporary mainstream philosophy; foreground the relevance of African theorizing to contemporary debates in epistemology, philosophy of language, moral/political philosophy, philosophy of race, environmental ethics and the metaphysics of disability; make new interventions within on-going debates in African philosophy; consider ways in which philosophy can become epistemically inclusive, interrogating the contemporary call for 'decolonization' of philosophy. Showing how foregrounding Africa--its ideas, thinkers and problems--can help with the project of renewing and improving the discipline of philosophy worldwide, this book will stimulate and challenge everyone with an interest in philosophy, and is essential reading for upper-level undergraduate students, postgraduate students and scholars of African and Africana philosophy.

The ideas of the South African Black Consciousness Movement developed as an intellectual response to the situation of black South Africans under apartheid. Though influential, Black Consciousness ideas about how the injustice of apartheid was to be conceptualised, and what form resistance to it consequently needed to take, have always awoken controversy. Here I defend the original Black Consciousness theorists, Bantu Steve Biko and Nyameko Barney Pityana, against charges of racial inherentism, espousing a prescriptive conception of black identity, and racism. I argue that, on Biko and Pityana's account, a central aspect of the injustice of South African apartheid was a hermeneutical injustice – at first deliberately perpetrated, but structurally self-reproducing – against the oppressed groups. Thus illuminated, I argue, the ideas of the original Black Consciousness theorists have great plausibility, connect interestingly with contemporary thinking about race and justice, and are of practical relevance today both in South Africa and elsewhere.

In societies with a history of racial oppression, present-day relations between members of different racialised groups are often difficult, tense, prone to escalate into open hostility. This can partly be put down to the persistence of racist beliefs and sentiments. But it is plausible to think there are also non-racist ways in which societal relations between members of different racialised groups go seriously wrong. This is not to downplay the extent to which racism persists: rather, the point is that there exist forms of race-based interaction which, though not racist, are objectionable in their own right. Social equality theory—which understands the ideal of equality not distributively but relationally—can help us to identify and delineate some of these. Taking a social egalitarian approach, I argue that one can identify at least three types of distinctively race-based social inequality, besides racism, which need to be overcome before a society of equals can be realised: ‘racial stigma’, ‘rac...

Feminist philosophers and philosophers drawing on the German tradition of social philosophy have recently converged in stressing the importance of the concept of reification?first explicitly discussed by György Lukács?for the diagnosis of contemporary social and ethical problems. However, importing a theoretical framework alien to Lukács? original discussion has often led to the conflation of reification with other social and ethical problems. Here it is argued that a coherent conception of reification, free of implausible Marxist and idealist trappings, can be recovered from Lukács? original discussion of it: the socially induced distortion of experience such that what is in fact human action appears as mere natural happening. This phenomenon is to be distinguished from, firstly, instrumentalising objectification of persons and, secondly, person-identification failure, with which Martha Nussbaum and Axel Honneth respectively have equated reification in recent work. Reification, on the understanding of it recovered here, is problematic not just because it is an illusion, but also because it can render moral reasons for action or omission, and grounds of ethical evaluation, invisible to agents, and, moreover, because it can lead people to tolerate as inevitable undesirable situations which could in fact be changed. It can thus ground social criticism

Equality is a widely championed social ideal. But what is equality? And what action is required if present-day societies are to root out their inequalities? The Equal Society collects fourteen philosophical essays, each with a fresh perspective on these questions. The authors explore the demands of egalitarian justice, addressing issues of distribution and rectification, but equally investigating what it means for people to be equals as producers and communicators of knowledge or as members of subcultures, and considering what it would take for a society to achieve gender and racial equality. The essays collected here address not just the theory but also the practice of equality, arguing for concrete changes in institutions such as higher education, the business corporation and national constitutions, to bring about a more equal society. The Equal Society offers original approaches to themes prominent in current social and political philosophy, including relational equality, epistemic injustice, the capabilities approach, African ethics, gender equality and the philosophy of race. It includes new work by respected social and political philosophers.