University of Chicago
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1985
San Diego, California, United States of America
Areas of Interest
19th Century Philosophy
  •  5
    Where Did Hegel Go Wrong on Race?
    Hegel Bulletin 1-20. forthcoming.
    Where exactly did Hegel go wrong on race? Moellendorf helpfully tells us that Hegel's treatment of race begins systematically in the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit and that he went wrong philosophically in the use of the biological category of race. This is basically correct but requires precisification. This article considers why Hegel's category of race is not unambiguously biological. Race's biological status can be problematized from the standpoint of contemporary biology and from the stand…Read more
  •  39
    Is Racism Essentially Systemic?
    American Philosophical Quarterly 60 (4): 369-380. 2023.
    A shift in popular discourse over the last few years makes it makes it tempting to think that the answer to the question whether racism is essentially systemic is yes. My argument, however, is that there are forms of racism—things that are properly counted as instances of racism—that are distinct from and independent of systemic racism. These include ideational racism, ideological racism, racism as antipathy, and racism as prejudice and bigotry. Systemic racism does exist and is not reducible to…Read more
  •  11
    Institutional Racism and Individual Responsibility
    In Saba Bazargan-Forward & Deborah Tollefsen (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Collective Responsibility, Routledge. pp. 501-12. 2020.
    The individual officers of a social institution may not be racist and consequently not blameworthy for racism. On the other hand, the individual officers of such an institution may be racist and deserve blame for their racism. This chapter focuses on the special, idealized case of pure institutional racism in which all the individual office holders who participate in E-like institutions are free of racism. The attitude-independent model of institutional racism on which racist institutions can pr…Read more
  •  201
    Why Social Constructionists Should Embrace Minimalist Race
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 60 (S1): 37-53. 2022.
    My thesis is that social constructionists should embrace minimalist race. By this I mean they should accept the minimalist concept of race and the existence of minimalist races. They are likely to reject this suggestion because they are antirealists about biological race. But their antirealism about biological race is based on their identification of the biological concept of race with the racialist concept of race. The minimalist concept of race is free of the invidious features that make the r…Read more
  •  31
    Minimalist Biological Race
    In Naomi Zack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, Oxford University Press. pp. 150-9. 2017.
    The minimalist concept of race represents the barest characterization of the ordinary concept race possible. Minimalist races are groups of human beings distinguished by patterns of visible physical features, groups whose members are linked by a common ancestry peculiar to members of the group, and which originate from a distinctive geographic location. Minimalist races exist because there are existing human groups that satisfy the minimalist concept of race. Their existence is not precluded by …Read more
  •  56
    Rethinking Race: The Case for Deflationary Realism
    Harvard University Press. 2017.
    Many scholars and activists seek to eliminate “race”—the word and the concept—from our vocabulary. Their claim is clear: because science has shown that racial essentialism is false and because the idea of race has proved virulent, we should do away with the concept entirely. Michael O. Hardimon criticizes this line of thinking, arguing that we must recognize the real ways in which race exists in order to revise our understanding of its significance. Rethinking Race provides a novel answer to th…Read more
  •  161
    Four Ways of Thinking about Race
    The Harvard Review of Philosophy 26 103-113. 2019.
    This essay presents four ways of thinking about race. They consist of four related but distinct race concepts: the racialist concept of race, which is the traditional, pernicious, essentialist, and hierarchical concept of race; the concept of socialrace, which is the antiracist concept of race as a social construction; the minimalist concept of race, which is the deflationary concept of biological race that represents race as a matter of color, shape and geographical ancestry; and the population…Read more
  •  115
    Should We Narrow the Scope of “Racism” to Accommodate White Sensitivities?
    Critical Philosophy of Race 7 (2): 223-246. 2019.
    This article critically examines the proposal that the word "racism" should be restricted to the most egregious of racial ills. It argues that the costs of restricting the scope of the term in this way are too great and that the proposal gives too much weight to white sensitivities.
  •  89
    The Struggle for Recognition (review)
    Journal of Philosophy 94 (1): 46-54. 1997.
  •  624
    Role obligations
    Journal of Philosophy 91 (7): 333-363. 1994.
    Argues that role obligations are not marginal, "that they are central to morality and should be taken seriously." "A 'role obligation' is a moral requirement, which attaches to an institutional role, whose content is fixed by the function of the role, and whose normative force flows from the role." Rejects what he calls the doctrine of perfect adequacy which holds that role obligations are both comprehensive and transparent. Although this may have been plausible at earlier times, it is clearly i…Read more
  •  538
    The Ordinary Concept of Race
    Journal of Philosophy 100 (9): 437-455. 2003.
    The ordinary concept of race is important and poorly understood. The present article seeks to address this problem by providing a general answer to the question: What is the concept of race?
  •  75
    This book provides an authoritative account of Hegel's social philosophy at a level that presupposes no specialised knowledge of the subject. Hegel's social theory is designed to reconcile the individual with the modern social world. Michael Hardimon explores the concept of reconciliation in detail and discusses Hegel's views on the relationship between individuality and social membership, and on the family, civil society, and the state. The book is an important addition to the string of major s…Read more
  •  42
    Wallis Simpson was Wrong: Remarks on Joshua Glasgow’s A Theory of Race
    Symposia on Gender, Race and Philosophy. 2009.
    Joshua Glasgow has written a wonderful book on race (Glasgow 2009). Thoughtful, clear, and provocative, it advances the discussion in significant ways. Space is limited so I hope I can be excused for restricting my comments to Glasgow’s assessment of my 2003 Journal of Philosophy analysis of the ordinary concept of race. The last thing I would want to suggest is that this exhausts the interest of his book; for that is certainly not the case. My remarks can be regarded as testimony to just how st…Read more
  •  81
    The project of reconcilation: Hegel's social philosophy
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 21 (2): 165-195. 1992.
    The central aim of Hegel's' social philosophy (the Rechtsphilosophie) is to reconcile his contemporaries--the men and women of the nineteenth century--to the modern social world. By "the modem social world" I mean the central social institutions of that era: the family, civil society, and the state. Hegel seeks to enable his contemporaries to overcome their alienation from this world by providing them with a philosophical theory that will reveal its true nature (PR, Preface sec. 14). "The proj…Read more
  •  20
    Logic and Politics: Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (review)
    Philosophical Review 100 (3): 498-500. 1991.
  •  173
    The concept of socialrace
    Philosophy and Social Criticism (1): 0191453713498252. 2013.
    Explication of the concept of socialrace: the concept variously refers to (1) a social group that is taken to be a racialist race, (2) the social position occupied by a particular social group that is a socialrace and (3) the system of social positions that are socialraces. Socialrace is distinguished from other more familiar forms of social construction. The sense in which socialrace counts as a race concept is explained. The advantages of the term ‘socialrace’ are discussed. The desiderata for…Read more
  •  149
    Race Concepts in Medicine
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 38 (1): 6-31. 2013.
    Confusions about the place of race in medicine result in part from a failure to recognize the plurality of race concepts. Recognition that the ordinary concept of race is not identical to the racialist concept of race makes it possible to ask whether there might be a legitimate place for the deployment of concepts of race in medical contexts. Two technical race concepts are considered. The concept of social race is the concept of a social group that is taken to be a racialist race. It is apt for…Read more
  •  711
    The Idea of a Scientific Concept of Race
    Journal of Philosophical Research 37 249-282. 2012.
    This article challenges the orthodox view that there is and can be no scientifically valid concept of race applicable to human beings by presenting a candidate scientific concept of biological race. The populationist concept of race specifies that a “race” is a subdivision of Homo sapiens—a group of populations that exhibits a distinctive pattern of genetically transmitted phenotypic characters and that belongs to an endogamous biological lineage initiated by a geographically separated and repro…Read more