•  9
    Race and the Problem of Empty Concept Dependency
    Philosophy 99 (1): 99-122. 2024.
    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 con…Read more
  •  23
    Epistemic redress
    Synthese 200 (3): 1-21. 2022.
    Is it possible to redress a wrong specifically in one’s capacity as a knower? Epistemic justice has largely been conceived of as either an ideal goal guiding present and future societal endeavours, or a set of ameliorative character virtues. Yet there is also a backward-looking component of epistemic justice, which has so far been neglected. I argue that exercises of our cognitive and epistemic capacities can constitute moral redress for wrong actions and wrongful harms for which we are responsi…Read more
  •  30
    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 uni…Read more
  •  15
    ABSTRACTColleen Murphy has argued that in circumstances of societal transition only one special type of justice is applicable: ‘transitional justice’, a type of justice not reducible to any other type or types. I take issue with Murphy’s conclusion, showing that retributive, distributive and corrective justice all feature as isolable component parts in her own positive account of transitional justice. I also argue that restorative justice is applicable and important in transitional societies whe…Read more
  •  51
    Black Consciousness as Overcoming Hermeneutical Injustice
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 34 (4): 573-592. 2017.
    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, e…Read more
  •  35
    Racial Inequality
    Philosophical Papers 45 (1-2): 37-74. 2016.
    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…Read more
  • Philosophy in Africa, Africa in Philosophy (edited book)
    with Lungisile Ntsebeza
    TBA. forthcoming.
  •  6
    The Critical Imagination
    Philosophical Quarterly 65 (260): 570-572. 2015.
  •  88
    Affirmative Action and the Choice of Amends
    Philosophia 43 (1): 113-134. 2015.
    Affirmative action is often implemented as a way of making redress to victims of past injustices. But critics of this practice have launched a three-pronged assault against it. Firstly, they point out that beneficiaries of preferential policies tend not to benefit to the same extent as they were harmed by past injustices. Secondly, when its defenders point to the wider benefits of affirmative action , critics maintain that such ends could never be sufficiently weighty to permit violating equal t…Read more
  •  38
    Reification and Social Criticism
    Philosophical Papers 42 (1). 2013.
    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 reif…Read more
  •  20
    The Equal Society collects fourteen new scholarly essays by established and emerging researchers, addressing political, legal, and ethical aspects of equality, and providing fresh perspectives on topics such as relational equality, epistemic injustice, the capabilities approach, African ethics, gender equality, and philosophy of race.