I was first exposed to your wonderful works through The Aptness of Anger, about which I have two lingering questions that have always intrigued me – a) if you were to develop an aptness-centric account or defense of anger, how extensive would that account be, as compared with, say, Fanon or Sartre’s conception of violence; b) some may argue that there are inevitable conflicts between prerogatives orientated about the apt, and the more narrow, instrumentalist set of prerogatives orientated about achieving certain ends – how do you think the former and the latter ought to be weighed, and how could we resolve such tensions in our actions?
You’re right to press me on the relationship between anger – and my defence of its (sometimes) aptness even when counterproductive – and violence. In the paper I touch on that issue very briefly, noting that we can, and indeed often do, get angry without getting violent. Indeed, from an evolutionary psychology perspective, the function of anger as an affect programme is to avoid costly violent interactions while securing the goods that might be offered by them. Most adult humans are perfectly capable of becoming angry without becoming physically violent. Of course, what we mean by violence matters here. A physical attack on someone’s body is a clear case of violence. But are ‘attacks’ on property – the smashing of windows, the tearing down of monuments – violence? Are group chants, marches, and other intimidating displays? Were the Black Panthers? Was Malcolm X? Are the so-called ‘rioters’ protesting Modi’s crackdown on Muslims in Uttar Pradesh? The political right gets upset by what they see as malicious (and hyperbolic) concept creep of ‘violence’ into the non-physical realm: complaints about the ‘violence’ enacted by words and symbols. But the political right is extremely happy to call things that do not involve physical attack on people’s bodies ‘violence’, including the mere presence of marginalised people where they aren’t expected to be. Consider the Black Panthers, who were considered violent and a threat to national security for legally bearing arms in predominantly white spaces – the same activity that white 2nd amendment fundamentalists claim is just an exercise of their constitutional rights.
In any case, the fact that, for most of us, it is possible to get angry without getting violent, at least narrowly construed, means that my defence of anger – as an emotion that is sometimes a fitting response to the facts, even if ultimately a counterproductive one – is not ipso facto a defence of violence, narrowly constructed. But I am not saying that violence is never justified in political struggle. Self-defence seems justified in the case of an unjustified attack where there is no reasonable recourse to non-violent means available. What are the proper bounds of ‘self-defence’? Our understanding of that notion tends to operate on one of two levels: the level of the individual (facing e.g. an armed robber) or the level of the nation state (facing e.g. a foreign invasion). What about the self-defence of sub-national groups: minority ethnic populations, colonised populations, an economic underclass? Often it is the case that violence, again narrowly understood, is not a prudentially wise strategy, precisely because the state holds a near monopoly in violent means. But as a matter of principle?
Your second question is about cases where an instance of anger would be apt – i.e. emotionally fitting to the facts of the world – but counterproductive with respect to a particular goal. I agree that there are such cases. Indeed, this is a central point of my paper – that there are cases in which anger can be prudentially or instrumentally bad but nonetheless apt. In such cases, I say, subjects face a difficult choice between getting aptly angry and swallowing their anger in order to pursue some positive end. That victims of injustice often fact such difficult choices is itself a feature of injustice. That said, I think it’s important not to exaggerate the counterproductivity of anger. Anger has, historically speaking, played an enormously important role in radical politics. It’s in the material interests of those who benefit from the status quo to deny this, which I think accounts for many middle class white calls for civility. Anger motivates, galvanises, loosens the imagination. One of the most important early events in the U.S. women’s liberation movement, to take a single example, was when Shulamith Firestone and Jo Freeman collaborated on a women’s resolution at the National Conference for New Politics in 1967, which in turn led to the formation of the first women’s group in the country. Looking back, Freeman said that neither she nor Firestone would have done this on her own: ‘but together we fed on each other’s rage’.
How should we – individuals and groups – balance considerations of aptness and other sorts of instrumental considerations? I don’t know. Or, rather, I don’t think there is a blanket answer. Making these decisions requires good political judgment, learning from history, collective deliberation, and a certain pragmatist spirit. Political solidarity can sometimes transform things that are individual burdens – impossible choices between, say, getting angry and making things better – into terms of collective struggle.
I am fascinated by your critique of Effective Altruism, both in your review of MacAskill’s book and in your other writings. Amongst your various critiques, what stands out most starkly is the observation of its fixation with a narrow kind of aggregative normative framework in assessing morality on basis of efficacy outcomes. Do you think there is ever room for consequentialism to build in considerations of integrity or agent-centric prerogatives (e.g. visiting a friend in hospital because they are your friend, as opposed to because the utility it generates)?
One can build pretty much anything into consequentialism, including side-constraints, special duties, agent-centric prerogatives, etc. Whether such a theory remains consequentialist is of course a question, but not, I think, an interesting one. My real critique of EA is not that it is ‘too’ consequentialist. If EA is just the view that one must commit a substantial amount of one’s resources to doing good, and that insofar as one is doing this, one must (roughly) maximise the expected good of one’s actions, then this isn’t a consequentialist view, in the standard sense, since it does not demand that all of our actions be governed by a maximising norm. In fact, it’s not even a particularly novel view – what major religious tradition hasn’t thought that a substantial part of our lives should be committed to altruistic action? My real worry about EA isn’t what it says ‘on the tin’, but its life as a social and political movement. It is striking to me that the people who are drawn to EA are on the whole people who are uninterested in the most emancipatory social and political movements ever known – feminism, anti-racism, the labour movement. It is also striking to me that the people who are drawn to EA are overwhelmingly rich (sometimes super-rich; think Elon Musk), white, Western and highly educated. A certain sort of philosopher says that this doesn’t tell us anything about ‘EA itself’. On a different view, this tells us a huge amount about the social and political function that is being played by EA.
In reading your co-authored piece with Simpson on no-platforming, I was wondering if a potential danger to constructing a defense of no-platforming on the basis of standards of expertise governing teaching and research may be that these standards are in turn themselves constrained or constructed by the dominant zeitgeist or hegemonic power structures, which may lead to cases where subaltern or radical voices are no-platformed by student populations that largely bear the demographic and epistemic arrogance of the dominant groups in societies (I’m thinking here mostly of campuses in semi-authoritarian or authoritarian states, run by genuine zealots and pro-governmental activists). May there also not be more to be said of expanding the “harms” account into one that incorporates social and deep psychological harms, as a potential ground for no-platforming?
I think that’s a serious worry. I’d be interested to know if you have particular cases in mind. We don’t even have to think about students who are formed by a dominant (authoritarian) zeitgeist – we can simply think of academics who are. What happens when such academics exercise their academic ‘freedom’, excluding the expression of views that are not conducive to the interests of the authoritarian regime that they tacitly or explicitly serve? We of course want to say that this isn’t really academic freedom. And it isn’t. But once we have an authoritarian state in which the intellectual class has fully adopted and indeed is a mouthpiece for state ideology, it is too late. But we should take hope from the fact that all authoritarian states have their intellectual dissidents. It is of deep importance that such people are included in – and protected by – the wider international academic community.
Some have argued that your works straddle the Continental and Analytical traditions – how do you feel about the whole classificatory concept of the “Continental-Analytical divide”? I personally find this dichotomy unhelpful and unnuanced – but what are your thoughts?
I don’t think there is a deep difference between analytic and Continental philosophy, in the sense of some methodological axioms or commitments that are shared by all and only members of one group but not the other. But I think there are differences in training, writing style, orientation towards history, and taste that are roughly tracked by the distinction. So it’s of sociological use, though I don’t think the distinction itself is a philosophically deep one. I’m happy being thought of as someone who straddles both traditions, in large part because – as a matter of training – I do. I did my undergrad at Yale, where I took almost all my philosophy courses in the history of philosophy, especially post-Kantian philosophy, and did almost no analytic philosophy. (I came to Oxford not knowing who Quine or Kripke were.)
If you are a genealogical sceptic keen to respond to the arguments you make in The Archimedean Urge (or rather, if you’re seeking to further develop the argument you make in the piece), what issues of concern would you raise and potentially explore? I have always wondered if the very articulation of genealogical skepticism itself could be read as a large-scale, political speech-act – one that seeks to dismantle the façade of absoluteness in philosophical canon and dogma; a polemical gesture that is less about identifying the “truth” (of geneaological skepticism) than shaking up established structures.
I think there’s a lot to say here, and I’ve said some of these things in a recent paper in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, called ‘Genealogy, Epistemology, Worldmaking’. The first thing to say is this. Even if the genealogical sceptic (or the traditional external world sceptic) is self-defeating – and so cannot provide me with a compelling reason to think I do not know – this doesn’t mean that he can’t still rob me of my knowledge. I’ll quote from the Aristotelian Society paper: ‘In so far as we are untroubled by genealogical anxiety, we can simply leave the critical genealogist in his fortress. But for those already in the grip of genealogical anxiety, this is not a real option. For such people, the sceptic is not inside a fortress, but lurking in our own hearts. Perhaps the genealogical sceptic can provide me no compelling reason to think I do not know. But what positive reason do I have for thinking that I do know? In so far as my beliefs are in fact knowledge, the genealogical sceptic reminds me, it must be because they are formed on the basis of a special, knowledge-conferring mechanism—a specialness that does not characterize the methods used by those with different contingent formations. Put another way, if I am committed to the claim that my genealogically contingent beliefs are justified, it seems that I am eo ipso committed to the claim that I am the beneficiary of what we might call good genealogical luck. Thus the critical genealogist exercises a kind of meta-epistemic power: a power to reveal what we tacitly presume about ourselves in so far as we believe that our genealogically contingent beliefs are in fact knowledge. In order to not merely dismiss the genealogical sceptic but moreover explain why he is wrong, I must believe myself to be genealogically lucky’.
I go on to discuss why it is that many of us – especially those shaped by secular, democratic cultures – will find it uncomfortable (not just epistemically, but ethically) to insist on our genealogical luckiness. I’ll quote again: ‘It is one thing to counter the external-world sceptic by insisting that my brain-in-a-vat counterpart is simply unlucky—and another to counter the critical genealogist by insisting that my counterpart with a different historical or cultural formation is similarly unlucky. There are no brains-in-vats. But there do appear to be real people, equally intelligent, equally motivated by a concern for truth, equally sincere, who—because of their different historical and cultural formations—disagree with us. To think of oneself—or, more generally, one’s particular community, sect, class, sex, culture, or historical moment—as genealogically lucky opens oneself up to accusations of chauvinism and hubris. Such accusations are not idle. They come from a recognition that claims to ‘genealogical luckiness’ can be used—and often have been used—to legitimate the domination of the putatively unlucky.’
But so far we have still been in the realm of epistemology. I think there can be non-epistemological upshots to critical genealogies. At the minimum, as many historians of ideas (especially Quentin Skinner) have emphasised, genealogies can reveal what we previously thought of as necessary ways of thinking or practices or social arrangements as merely contingent, opening up the practical possibility space. The effect can be both liberating and disturbing: why conceptualise our worlds as we do, rather than in some other way? Finally, I think that critical genealogy can reveal to us something about the role of human agency and power in the shaping of our contemporary representations, thereby empowering us to reshape them anew. (This is how I read Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals.)
I think you’re also right about genealogical critique – ‘you only say that because you…!’ – as a form of political speech act. Certainly genealogical revelations can feel very destabilising, even if we don’t know why, and even if they shouldn’t be. And they are particularly effective at striking at the heart of authority – they have something of the ‘you’re not my real dad!’ feel about them — though they can also be used to buttress authority. So there’s nothing inherently progressive about genealogical arguments (again, see Nietzsche).
I have always felt that when it comes to philosophisingation about sex, most philosophers tend to neglect the innate situatedness of sex as a ritual or a cultural practice within contingent but powerful political structures – could you tell us a bit more about your fascinating work on sex, perhaps even with a glimpse into your forthcoming book in 2020?
I guess it depends on who you think of as philosophers. If the great feminists theorists of sex – Simone de Beauvoir, Catharine MacKinnon, Shulamith Firestone, Adrienne Rich, bell hooks, Audre Lorde – count, then certainly philosophers have thought a huge amount about the way in which politics shape sex. But even within feminism this way of thinking about sex, as an inescapably political phenomenon, has fallen out of favour in the last few decades. It’s not hard to see why. Thinking of sex as a political phenomenon opens up the possibility that consensual sex between adults is susceptible to moral critique, which in turn can threaten to erode hard-won protections for non-normative sexualities, especially the sexual freedom of all women and gay men. This is why the political critique of sex offered by radical feminists gave way to sex positivity. But the alternative, which treats consensual sex as a pre-political, wholly private matter, protected from normative scrutiny, is unsatisfying, both descriptively (sex isn’t pre-political) and normatively (lack of consent isn’t the only sign of problematic sex). In my book I try to offer an account of sex that takes seriously its political and culturally specific nature, but that resists reductive or authoritarian piety. Within that broad frame I take on a number of issues that I think are important to our specific moment: the cultural hysteria around the false rape accusation and MeToo ‘lynchings’, the sexual ethics of pedagogy, internet porn, incels and the ‘distribution’ of sex, and sex and the carceral state.
Massive congratulations on your recent appointment to the Chichele Professorship – how do you feel about this, and what initiatives or plans have you got in the pipeline for your tenure?
I am of course deeply delighted. At the same time I could not feel more despairing at the state of global politics – the rise of ethnonationalism in the U.K., U.S., India, Brazil and elsewhere, Australia being razed to the ground while its leader reassures the coal industry. What does it mean to take up a chair in social and political theory at this moment? There are things of course that I would like to do: research projects on genealogy (I’m writing a book on this), political epistemology, feminism and social theory; facilitating conversations between academics and non-academics about the state of the British left; expanding our teaching of political theory, with a particular focus on feminist, critical race and non-Western theory (I currently co-teach a course with Professor Sophie Smith on what we can learn from feminist theory about the future of work, the environment, technology, and so on); bringing interesting people to Oxford to speak with our students (last year I helped to bring one of the brilliant authors of Revolting Prostitutes to Oxford, and Catharine MacKinnon has agreed to make a visit next year). And yet…what does it mean to theorise in a time of crisis?
What can philosophers do in their theorising to bridge the gap between theory and practice? And how could we dismantle the persistence of privilege in the upper ranks of the tradition?
Well this really is the question, and the reason for my handwringing in answer to your previous question. There of course are theorists who have had a tremendous impact on the material and ideological reality of politics – Marx is a case in point, as is MacKinnon. So we shouldn’t despair. But neither should we be complacent. Merely theorising aboutimportant things (e.g. climate change) isn’t the same as doing something important (arresting climate change). One thing we need, as practically-minded theorists, is a social theory adequate to the 21st century – what are the levers of ideological and material change today, now? I don’t see any reason to think that there are timeless, universal answers to the question of social change.
When reading feminist epistemological works, I have always wondered as to how much of these works are foundationally “feminist”, insofar as many of them just seem to be sensible and powerful critiques (I’m thinking Fricker, Harding) – rooted in the critical tradition – of privileged traditions that erase lived experiences of all who do not conform to the stereotypical vantage point embedded within philosophy, which is a large subset that includes but perhaps not necessarily exclusively constitutes women. Is the labelling of “feminist epistemology” helpful?
This reminds me of something Martha Nussbaum once wrote in the New York Review of Books: ‘To do feminist philosophy is simply to get on with the tough work of theorizing in a rigorous and thoroughgoing way, but without the blind spots, the ignorance of fact, and the moral obtuseness that have characterized much philosophical thought about women and sex and the family and ethics in the male-dominated academy. It is in this way and no other, I think, that women in philosophy can go beyond the past achievements of males.’ If this is at least true of some feminist philosophy – for what it’s worth I don’t think it’s true of someone like Beauvoir, MacKinnon or Butler, but then Nussbaum here is actually making a normative claim in the guise of a descriptive one – then there’s a question of why call this sort of thing ‘feminist’ philosophy at all. Why isn’t it just philosophy done by people who happen to be feminists? One answer — I’m not saying this is ultimately decisive – is that it’s politically important to mark where these methodological interventions come from. ‘Feminist’ in ‘feminist philosophy’ then names an origin, recalling us to the social and political forces that shape the discipline. But then calling some philosophical view or methodological intervention ‘feminist’ also makes many people dismiss it out of hand. It’s a double-edged sword.
As someone who works across so many traditions and fields – from epistemology to political theory, from metaphilosophy and historical analysis to metaphysics, what are the biggest challenges you’ve encountered, and how have you overcome them?
Never feeling like I know enough, and never having enough time to learn everything I want to know, or reading everything I want to read. I haven’t found a solution.
If there’s one piece of advice you’d give to aspiring philosophers and political theorists, what would it be?
Resist disciplinary chauvinism, even when – especially when – it’s practiced by people you admire. If you’re an analytic philosopher or theorist, don’t be the kind who dismisses Hegel or Foucault or Fanon out of hand; if you’re a critical theorist, a Continental theorist, or a historian of political thought, don’t assume that analytic philosophy is all just recondite logic games; whatever sort of theorist you are, read the work of the great post-war feminist theorists – MacKinnon, Rich, Firestone, hooks, Davis, Hill Collins – before voicing your thoughts about feminism. I was recently told by a graduate student at a top philosophy department (not Oxford) that he knew Freud wasn’t worth reading without ever having read him, because he had told as much ‘by the internet’. I saw this as a disturbing symptom of a collapsing academic job market: when one has to hyperspecialize, it’s easier to think that everything that is outside one’s niche is trash than to admit that one might be missing out. But this impulse must be resisted. At an interpersonal level, it makes one a jerk, and we need fewer of those. At a disciplinary level, it conduces to shoddy and insular work. I don’t mean to counsel the impossible; students (especially UK grad students) and early career researchers don’t have enough time, and are under a lot of pressure. We can’t read everything. (I wish we could read everything.) But our intellectual hearts can be more or less open.