Abstract
This chapter provides a conceptual analysis of Tommy J. Curry’s anti-ethical stance. In what sense is anti-ethics opposed to, or against, ethics? I argue that, despite appearances, anti-ethics is a kind of ethical theory. Close analysis reveals that the term “ethics” in the term “anti-ethics” does not refer to ethics per se, but to an idealist approach to ethics that frames white people as virtuous. I argue that Leonard Harris’ insurrectionist ethics provides a naturalistically-informed deontological framework that is useful for analyzing the normative dimensions of anti-ethics. In this way, insurrectionist ethics enables us to analyze the positive content of anti-ethics, an ethics founded on a form of ethical hope that abandons the premise of white virtue.
Anti-ethics is necessary to demystify the present concept of MAN. It is an attempt to expose the assumed ethical orientation of reason as an essential anthropological quality of the human—the futural self—as an illusion and a stratagem. …The Black male, as an anti-futural entity, resists the class mobility and assimilation alongside the oppressor. …His intimacy with death has bred a different eschatological calculus that enables him to struggle against oppression, to live within tyranny, despite the seeming permanence of the repressive conditions.
Tommy J. Curry, The Man-Not, p. 186
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Curry emphasizes dehumanization or the nonhuman. While it is certainly true that Blacks have been categorized as “chattel,” there is a case to be made that this categorization has changed. Following Charles Mills (1997), the category “subperson” might be more appropriate for Blacks depending on time and place. For Mills, “Subpersons are humanoid entities who, because of racial phenotype/genealogy/culture, are not fully human and therefore have a different and inferior schedule of rights and liberties applying to them. In other words, it is possible to get away with doing things to subpersons that one could not do to persons, because they do not have the same rights as persons” (1997, 56). It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider the nonhuman-subhuman divide. As both categories fall on the lower ends of the human spectrum, I use these categories interchangeably.
- 3.
It is unclear whether Man is a category that encompasses white men and white women (the category of the human), or whether the category Human is the broader category. At times, as when Curry first introduces the term “Man-Not,” he distinguishes (following Maria Lugones (2010, 744)) not-men and not-women. At other times, he seems to speak of “Man” in more general terms, Man signifying the genre category of the human and Man-Not signifying the genre category of the non-human (see, e.g., 2017, 188).
- 4.
For instance, in the introduction of The Man-Not, Curry writes: “I suggest that anti-ethical thought is the only way for scholars and activists to move toward a more accurate study of Black men and boys, because it is only in the recognition of the incompatibility between Black (male) life and the supposed civility of American society that we truly understand how institutions, policies, and dehumanization function to concretize the caste status of Black men and boys and, by consequence, the larger Black community” (2017, 38). The implication seems to be that ethical theory necessarily proceeds from the false premise that “Black (male) life” is compatible with “the supposed civility [ethicality] of American society.” Ethical theory thus seems destined to get the analysis wrong. However, I argue that ethical theory is possible that does not presuppose the civility/ethicality of American society.
- 5.
Unlike anti-ethics, insurrectionist ethics is a self-proclaimed ethical theory, and not just in name. Kristie Dotson explains: “Harris is concerned with standards for evaluating the adequacy of moral theories that have the goal of guiding our deliberations about what actions are forbidden, permissible or dutiful, and what goods, such as freedom from oppression, are worth advocating for in the public sphere” (2013b, 74).
- 6.
The suggestion to use the term “ante-ethics” was made by Jacoby A. Carter.
- 7.
Evidentialism has a long history. For instance, it is evident in David Hume’s work (see note 9). A classic statement of this principle is provided in William K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief” (Stephen and Pollock 1886). Curry’s commitment to evidentialism merits further discussion. Unfortunately, the literature on “the ethics of belief” is vast and beyond the scope of this paper.
- 8.
What I mean is that it is useless from the perspective of the oppressed. It goes without saying that ideology is useful for the oppressor.
- 9.
This is roughly Hume’s formulation of the principle in Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. “In our reasonings concerning matter of fact,” writes Hume, “there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence” (Beauchamp 1999, 170).
- 10.
- 11.
The aforementioned considerations do not exhaust Curry’s critique of idealist ethics, which includes an interesting argument regarding the concept of racism and its role within liberal discourse. Since ethics starts from Western man a priori (whites), notions like racism get to be defined by whites. Racism thus becomes “not death or the end of an ethical calculus or a moral evaluation itself but, ultimately, a call for all moral and liberal people in America to condemn racism as a practice. This call is not paramount; however, it is weighted next to other democratic values that preserve this great white society…that is, the very values that have justified the doom of Black bodies…At best, these appeals encourage reformism” (2017, 185). The death/nihility/non-being of the Black male ought to “[invalidate] the persuasiveness of morality, the embodied virtue, of democratic citizens.” However, under white supremacy, the death of the Black male inspires ethical thought in the form of ethical condemnations of anti-Black racism as well as proclamations of ethical self-transformation (personal transformation from “non-racist” to “anti-racist”). Such calls and personal transformations occasionally lead to reformist results that marginally benefit the Black male, but none that actually lead to his liberation. Western ethics is thus grounded in Black male death. “Their corpses are forgotten so that those who live can enjoy the illusion of futurity” (2017, 186). I intend to return to this complex ideological function in future work.
- 12.
“There is no human progress without the discord of social conflict, insurrections, and revolutions. These are instrumental social actions. The outcomes are uncertain. Even if one is committed to an evolutionary view of change, there is no history of evolution without the history of insurrections, revolts, and revolutions. The uses of intelligence, dramatic rehearsal, dialogue, and discourse are hardly the sole modes through which institutions fundamentally change” (2002, 203). Importantly, while Harris maintains that insurrectionist acts are “instrumental,” he does not seem to hold the view that insurrectionist acts are instrumentally justifiable, for in order to be instrumentally justifiable the desired outcome would have to be likely on the evidence (which, he is clear, liberation is unlikely).
- 13.
We must distinguish what an action is directed at from what an agent thinks the action is likely to bring about. An action is directed at a certain end or goal. The end or goal is the desired consequence, the expected outcome if the action is successful. A slave revolt, for example, is directed at liberating the slave from the oppressor. An agent who participates in a slave revolt might be said to “hope” for liberation. That the agent desires or intends to achieve liberation does not imply that the agent “hopes” for liberation in the sense that denotes what the agent thinks is likely to occur by his action (i.e., a propositional attitude). The agent may act with the intention of achieving liberation knowing full well that the slave revolt is likely to fail.
- 14.
Derrick Bell recalls a conversation with Mrs. MacDonald when he asked her where she found the courage to continue working for civil rights in the face of intimidation, powerlessness, and violence: “‘Derrick,’ she said slowly, seriously, ‘I am an old woman. I lives to harass white folks.’” Bell comments: “Mrs. MacDonald did not say she risked everything because she hoped or expected to win out over the whites who, as she well knew, held all the economic and political power, and the guns as well. Rather, she recognized that—powerless as she was—she had and intended to use courage and determination as weapons ‘to harass white folks.’ Her fight, in itself, gave her strength and empowerment in a society that relentlessly attempted to wear her down. Mrs. MacDonald did not even hint that her harassment would topple whites’ well-entrenched power; rather, her goal was defiance; and its harassing effect was more potent precisely because she placed herself in confrontation with her oppressors with full knowledge of their power and willingness to use it. Mrs. MacDonald avoided discouragement and defeat because at the point that she determined to resist her oppression, she was triumphant” (1992a, 378–379).
- 15.
In this way, insurrectionist/anti-ethics is committed to a conception of humanity, as Harris points out and Lee McBride III emphasizes: “Insurrectionist ethicists maintain conceptions of personhood and humanity that motivate moral action against obvious injustice or brutality, justifying militancy and radical action on the behalf of persecuted peoples. …This commitment to humanity, to the recognition and dignity of oppressed persons, offers ardent motivation to engage in insurrectionist moral action” (McBride III 2017, 228–229). Ethics is, inter alia, the attempt to bring a certain conception of the human community into being. “We are not entrapped in the current world where we can only imagine likely possibilities for the immediate future. We can imagine unlikely worlds that do not exist” (Harris 2018, 155). Given this “hermetic, unsubstantiated, and unmitigated acceptance of persons as agents due dignity,” the community should be transformed so that it aligns with the ideal of humanity (Harris 2018, 155).
- 16.
- 17.
Kant’s alternative presentation of this first formulation is: “act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature” (Gregor 1996, 73; Kant’s emphases are removed from all quotations). The difference in these two presentations, according to Wood, is that the first refers to “law” qua legal doctrine, i.e., a normative principle; hence, to ask “whether you could will your maxim to be a universal law, is to ask whether you could will that all others should be permitted to follow it.” The second presentation refers to a “law of nature,” i.e., “a universal rule against which it is causally impossible for anyone to act” (1999, 80).
- 18.
For a reconstruction and critique of Kant’s first formulation of the categorical imperative, see Wood, “The Formula of Universal Law,” Kant’s Ethical Thought (1999, 76–110).
- 19.
However, I say that Harris “might” agree with Kant’s FH principle, because Harris expresses hesitancy about accepting an anthropocentric view of humanity or personhood. He points out that if a certain conception of humanity in the traditions of Buddhism or Jainism is correct, “then all sentient beings are due the kind of status that warrants seeing them as possessors of inalienable goods” (2020, 144).
- 20.
For example, Harris writes that the view that persons inherently have worth (dignity) is “false because it postulates an intrinsic being as if there were a static sui generis species being” (2020, 151).
References
Beauchamp, Tom L., ed. 1999. David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Oxford Philosophical Texts, 1748. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Original edition.
Bell, Derrick. 1992a. Racial Realism. Connecticut Law Review 24: 363–379.
———. 1992b. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. Basic Books.
Carter, Jacoby Adeshei. 2013. The Insurrectionist Challenge to Pragmatism and Maria W. Stewart’s Feminist Insurrectionist Ethics. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy 49 (1): 54–73.
Curry, Tommy J. 2008. Saved by the Bell: Derrick Bell’s Racial Realism as Pedagogy. Philosophical Studies in Education 39: 35–46.
———. 2009. Will the Real CRT Please Stand Up? The Dangers of Philosophical Contributions to Critical Race Theory. The Cut 2 (1): 1–47.
———. 2010. The Derelictical Crisis of African American Philosophy: How African American Philosophy Fails to Contribute to the Study of African-Descended People. Journal of Black Studies 42 (3): 314–333. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934710367899.
———. 2011. The Political Economy of Reparations: An Anti-ethical Consideration of Atonement and Racial Reconciliation Under Colonial Moralism. Race, Gender & Class 18 (1/2): 125–146.
———. 2017. The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
———. 2021a. He Never Mattered: Poor Black Males and the Dark Logic of Intersectional Invisibility. In The Movement for Black Lives: Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Brandon Hogan, Michael Cholbi, and Alex Madva, 59–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2021b. II–Must There Be an Empirical Basis for the Theorization of Racialized Subjects in Race-Gender Theory? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 121 (1): 21–44. https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoaa021.
Darity Jr., William A., and A. Kirsten Mullen. 2020. From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century. UNC Press Books.
Dotson, Kristie. 2013a. How Is This Paper Philosophy? Comparative Philosophy 3 (1): 121–121.
———. 2013b. Querying Leonard Harris’ Insurrectionist Standards. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy 49 (1): 74–92.
Gregor, Mary J., ed. 1996. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Practical philosophy. Cambridge University Press.
Harris, Leonard. 2000. In Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917, ed. Leonard Harris, 2nd ed. Kendall Hunt Publishing.
———. 2002. Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism. In Ethical Issues for a New Millennium, ed. John Howie, 192–210. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
———. 2013. Walker: Naturalism and Liberation. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (1): 93–111. https://doi.org/10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.49.1.93.
———. (2018). Dignity and Subjection. In Lee A. McBride III (Ed.), A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader (pp. 143–158). Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
Harris, Leonard, and Lee A. McBride III. 2020. A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Kulish, Nicholas. 2022. After Raising $90 Million in 2020, Black Lives Matter Has $42 Million in Assets. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/business/blm-black-lives-matter-finances.html. Accessed 17 May 2022.
Lugones, María. 2010. Toward a Decolonial Feminism. Hypatia 25 (4): 742–759. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2010.01137.x.
McBride, I.I.I., and A. Lee. 2017. Insurrectionist Ethics and Racism. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, 225–234. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mills, Charles W. 1997. The Racial Contract. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Mitchell, Megan. 2021. Moral Responsibility for Racial Oppression. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-021-10189-1.
Newton, Huey P. 2009. Revolutionary Suicide. Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition. New York: Penguin. Original Edition, 1973.
Shelby, Tommie. 2003. Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory. The Philosophical Forum 34 (2): 153–188. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9191.00132.
———. 2014. Racism, Moralism, and Social Criticism. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 11 (1): 57–74. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1742058x14000010.
Sidgwick, Henry. 2019. The Methods of Ethics. Good Press. Original edition, 1874.
Stephen, Leslie, and Frederick Pollock, eds. 1886. Lectures and Essays by the Late William Kingdon Clifford, F.R.S. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan.
Urquidez, Alberto G. 2020. (Re-)defining Racism: A Philosophical Analysis. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. 2021. Reply to My Critics: (Re-)defining Racism: A Philosophical Analysis. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24: 679–698.
Walker, David. 1965. In Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, ed. Charles M. Wiltse. New York: Hill and Wang. Original Edition, 1829.
Wood, Allen W. (1999). Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Acknowledgements
Many of the ideas in this paper benefited from conversations with Marielynn Herrera, Justin Litaker, Megan Mitchell, and Jacoby A. Carter. I am grateful to Megan Mitchell (2021) for her review of my (Re-)Defining Racism. Her comments compelled me to think more deeply about responsibility for implicit racial bias and ultimately led me to write this paper. I am grateful to Jacoby A. Carter for the opportunity to discuss an earlier draft of this paper with students in his course, “Philosophical Assumptions and Social Conflict,” and for providing insightful comments on a previous draft.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Urquidez, A.G. (2023). Anti-ethics as Insurrectionist Ethics: An Analysis of the Normative Foundations of Philosophies Born of Struggle. In: Carter, J.A., Scriven, D. (eds) Insurrectionist Ethics. African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-16740-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-16741-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)