Month: May 2024

Put roughly, vegetarians are defined by their refusal to eat meat. Vegans take it further and refuse to eat any animal products. There are, as vegetarians and vegans will tell you, many varieties of each and some involve nuances about what is and is not acceptable to eat. For example, some vegans will consume honey while others will not.  While this oversimplifies things, people tend to embrace these views for two broad reasons. Moral vegans/vegetarians are motivated by the belief that it is morally wrong to harm animals. Some also consider the total harm arising from the use of animals as products, such as the environmental damage and wastefulness of animal farming. The second reason is health. Some vegans/vegetarians are motivated by concerns about their physical well-being; they think consuming animal products is unhealthy. It is obviously possible to have both (and other) motivations, but I will focus on ethics in context of defining meat.

From a moral standpoint, the concern about meat (and other animal products) is the harm done to the animals. For example, the creation of veal and foie gras are both moral nightmares of animal suffering. The production of eggs and milk is also often terrible for the chickens and cows. In the case of animals harvested for their meat, even if they are treated well, they are still killed and consumed. Since vegans and vegetarians need to eat to avoid death, they turn to eating plants and plant products.

The moral justification for eating plants, which are living things, is usually based on the claim that plants do not suffer. They lack, it is argued, the sort of nervous system needed to even feel pain. As such they either lack moral status or have a status that allows them to be consumed. This is even though plants are alive. Interesting, and to the annoyance of some vegans, there has been research suggesting that plants have some degree of awareness or even intelligence. This, if true, would raise an moral concern for ethical vegans/vegetarians: if it is wrong to eat meat because of animal suffering, then it would also seem to be wrong to eat plants that can suffer. This concern can be addressed by using an argument analogous to one used to morally justify consuming meat: even if they are aware and have some intelligence, these qualities are insufficient to grant plants a moral status that would make eating them wrong. This could be done without hypocrisy since moral lines can be drawn in a principled way. For example, most people who eat meat would not eat humans because they make a moral distinction between humans and animals. A vegan/vegetarian could draw a line between plants and animals. The concern could also be addressed by eating foods that do not cause any suffering. Interestingly, one option would be synthetic meat.

While synthetic meat would be alive, it would not be part of an animal (or any living thing) that has the capacity to suffer. This would seem to make synthetic meat a non-meat from a moral viewpoint, at least from the standpoint of a moral vegan or vegetarian. Then again, a vegan could counter that the cells needed to grow the synthetic meat were taken from an animal, which would make it unacceptable. An obvious reply is that taking a few cells from an animal would not hurt it or cause suffering. This problem could also be addressed by using source animals that would be well cared for and allowed to die natural deaths. In this case, the moral objection would have to be abstract, that there is just something wrong with consuming any animal product, regardless of any other factors such as suffering.

One way to address this concern would be to create completely synthetic meat that has no direct link to an animal. This synthetic product would be identical to meat but would be completely artificial. As such, no animal would be harmed directly or indirectly in its creation and thus it would morally be not-meat. The logic would be that if meat is murder and synthetic meat is not murder, then it is not meat. While this is a bit silly, it does have a certain appeal.

It could be objected that it is not the ethics of meat that makes meat what it is. To use an analogy, a stolen potato would be morally different from an honestly acquired potato, but both would still be potatoes. As such, it could be argued that even “moral” meat would still be meat, and thus unacceptable to a certain sort of vegan or vegetarian. The challenge would be, of course, to show what it is about such “moral” meat that would still make it immoral. One obvious approach would be the costs of producing it. Synthetic meat is and probably will remain inefficient relative to using resources to grow plant-based foods. However, this would apply to anything wasteful of resources and would not be meat specific. It would, for example, apply to the wasteful process of growing almonds in California.

Given the above, synthetic meat would be morally distinct from classic meat. On the one hand, it could be contended that this would make it not-meat. As such, vegans and vegetarians could eat it and still claim to not be eating meat. On the other hand, it could simply be claimed that it would simply be moral meat and that vegans and vegetarians could not eat it without ceasing to be vegans or vegetarians. Based on the above, synthetic meat would obviously avoid the moral concerns about the suffering of animals. But it does raise moral concerns about its production, but these are not unique concerns and would apply to the production of any food.

 

While lab-grown meat is a staple chow in science fiction, researchers are working hard to make it a commercially viable product. While there are many controversial aspects to lab grown meat, one matter of dispute is whether it is meat.

As lab-grown meat startups arose, the beef industry rushed to argue that lab-grown meat should not be labeled as meat. Interestingly, legal definitions of food types do not need to correspond to ways chemists or nutritionists would define them. For example, since high fructose corn syrup has a bad reputation among consumers, the industry tried to get the name changed to “corn sugar.” To the chemist and nutritionist, high fructose corn syrup is a sugar; but the sugar industry rejects this definition—they presumably see a financial advantage in fighting this legal label. While the legal wrangling over how foods should be categorized can be interesting, it does not solve the problem of, metaphysically, what it is to be meat. This is because the legal answer is easy and obvious: it is whatever the law says, and this need have no rational foundation at all. My concern, as a philosopher, is with the issue of whether lab-grown meat is real meat.

While philosophers are often accused of lacking common sense, some philosophers think this is where philosophy should begin. That is, when trying to define what something is, a good starting point is where we already are in terms of common sense. J.S. Mill took this approach in his discussion of poetry, electing to start with the generally accepted view of poetry and working from there. This seems to be a sensible approach and will be applied to the matter of meat.

The common-sense definition of “meat” is that it is the edible flesh of an animal, most commonly the muscle tissue. While people do refer to the kernel of a nut as “nut meat”, common sense divides this sort of meat from animal meats. To illustrate, a vegan will not say, “I do not eat coconut because that is meat.” But a vegan would refuse to eat a turkey leg—because that is the meat they do not eat. As such, I will stick with animal-based meats and ignore the other uses of the term “meat.” This does mean that I am rejecting all plant-based meats. They are not, on the face of it, real meat.

On the face of it, synthetic meat would not seem to meet the common-sense definition. It is not cut from an animal since it is grown in a vat (or whatever). Thus, it would fail to be meat. On this view, it is the origin of the meat that defines it as meat. At this point, one could raise a weird sci-fi scenario: what if scientists created an animal whose body also included vegetable matter, such as potatoes growing as part of a genetically modified cow? The potatoes would be part of the animal, but they would not seem to be meat. As such, the composition of the material also matters and to be meat something must have the right composition (typically muscle tissue). On this view, composition would be a necessary condition for being meat (so cow-potatoes would not be meat). But composition would not be a sufficient condition. On this view, synthetic meat that was not cut from an animal would not be meat. While this quick and easy solution is appealing, it does not seem to be the final word.

Suppose that a cut of muscles cells is taken from a cow. This would obviously be a steak. Now suppose these meat cells were cultivated in a lab and grown into a massive slab. These cells originated from steak and are the same. As such, it would seem to be hard to claim the slab is not meat. To us an analogy, if someone took a plant cutting and grew a slab of the plant cells in the lab, it would seem undeniable that the slab would be plant. The same should also apply to meat.

There are two replies to this analogy. One is to argue that plants lack the individuality of animals and hence plant material works differently from meat. If potato was grown as a slab in the lab, it would still be potato. But meat must come from an individual animal, or it is not meat. The second reply is that the “plant” slab is not plant (to use “plant” like “meat”) since it is not coming from a plant. A slab grown from potato cells is not a potato plant and hence is not plant.

The counter to these replies is to focus on the question of what the discernible difference would be between the slabs and the plants and animals. Obviously enough, looking at them in the lab would be a dead giveaway, but that would be an unfair comparison. After all, a living cow does not look like a steak. A fair comparison would be to put a steak cut from a cow against a synthetic steak in a series of tests. Some would relate to food, such as taste testing. Some would be chemical and genetic, to see what the material is. Naturally, the tests would have to avoid being rigged. So, a test that was aimed only at telling if the meat was grown in an animal would be an example of a rigged test. If synthetic meat passed these test (it tastes like meat, has the texture of meat, looks like meat, has the amino acids of meat and so on), then it would be hard to deny that it is meat.

So far, I have only been discussing synthetic meat that can trace its origin back to non-controversial meat. But there is also the problem of completely synthetic meat. This is meat that is completely synthetic and has no causal chain linking it back to an actual animal. In the ideal, it would be chemically engineered protein that duplicates the qualities of meat. To use a science fiction example, think of the replicator from Star Trek. This fictional machine could create a perfect steak by assembling it from raw materials, no cow involved. Unless someone insists that an animal must die (or at least be cut) for meat to be meat, it would be difficult to argue that replicator meat or properly engineered protein would not be meat. After all, unless one knew that it did not come from an animal, it would pass all the empirical tests for being meat.

This does point to the obvious counter—someone could draw a line and insist that meat must, by definition, come directly from an animal to be meat. Anything else could be meat-like but would need to be distinguished from meat. This, of course, nicely mirrors what Locke said in the context of personal identity regarding the use of words, “And indeed every one will always have a liberty to speak as he pleases, and to apply what articulate sounds to what ideas he thinks fit, and change them as often as he pleases.” As such, the problem of meat could be solved by having multiple terms for various meat and meat-like things. Or we could follow the lead of Hume and conclude that “…all the nice and subtle questions concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties.” In this case, “meat” is merely a matter of language, which is to say that the problem remains unsolved

While the consumption of meat has long been a part of the endless culture war, a new front has opened–the insects and lab-grown meat battlefield. In May of 2024 my adopted state of Florida passed a law prohibiting the sale of lab-grown meat. Governor DeSantis’ website made the announcement, asserting that Florida “is taking action to stop the World Economic Forum’s goal of forcing the world to eat lab-grown meat and insects.” Perhaps as an attempt at proving the claim about insects, the page links to a World Economic Forum page that makes a case for using insects as protein and fertilizer.

In his speech about the law, DeSantis asserted that “Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals…” He was backed up by Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson who claimed that Florida farmers and American agriculture need to be protected from lab-grown meat because it is “a disgraceful attempt to undermine our proud traditions and prosperity, and is in direct opposition to authentic agriculture.”

As people often think eating bugs is gross, this is a smart culture war move. But like almost every battle of the culture war, this is a fight against a largely imaginary enemy. While the World Economic Forum and some “global elites” have pushed for synthetic meat and using bugs in agriculture, the World Economic Forum obviously cannot force the world to eat insects or synthetic meat. Even if states did nothing, people can obviously just decline to buy and consume foods they do not want.  As such, the law protects the people of Florida from nothing (except the right to choose whether to buy lab-grown meat). It is like passing a law banning the sale of exercise equipment in Florida and claiming that it is to protect Floridians from the World Health Organization and the “global elites” forcing people to exercise.

Somewhat ironically, the passage of the law simply confirms that the WEF and the “global elite” lack the power to bend the people of the United States to its will regarding bugs and lab-grown meat. After all, if they had the power to force people to do this, a single law passed in Florida would hardly suffice to stop them. But even if the “global elite” had the power to force the United States to bend to its will (but somehow not enough power to overcome a single law), they would not be able to make people eat lab-grown meat because there is not enough of it.

Currently, lab-grown meat is not a viable product that could be mass-produced to be forced onto people. That is, even if the “global elite” wanted Floridians to eat lab-grown meat, there is not enough of it. Even the most optimistic estimate from proponents of alternative proteins is that about 5% of protein will be coming from such sources in 2030. As such, the law protects the people of Florida from what amounts to nothing. But one might argue, lab-grown meat presents a significant future threat to Florida, and this justifies the law.

One obvious reply is that lab-grown meat does not seem to present a meaningful danger to consumers. While contamination of meat is always a concern, there is no reason to think that lab-grown meat would be more likely to cause food borne illness than conventional meat. After all, lab-grown meat will not be anywhere near animal feces. One could, of course, raise various sci-fi concerns about synthetic meat, but it seems unlikely that lab-grown meat would present any such dangers in the real world. This is not to deny that lab-grown meat could be contaminated, that is always a concern in our woeful system of food safety. But it is not a special concern for lab-grown meat.

There is also the obvious fact that unlike with products like cigarettes, vapes, or pain killers, lab-grown meat does not have any addictive properties or appeal that would cause people to become addicted. As such, there seems to be no meaningful harm that this law would protect consumers from. Unless one thinks that choice is harmful. While the above has focused on the consumer, Simpson seems focused on the agricultural businesses.

As noted above, Simpson claims that lab-grown meat is an attempt to undermine “proud traditions.” This is, of course, the fallacy of appeal to tradition. That something is traditional provides no proof that it is true or good; it also provides no proof that it is false or bad. It just means that it has been around for a while–and many bad things, like murder, have been around a while. But also, good things, like ice cream, have been around for a while. Also, as with almost any appeal to tradition, it is reasonable to inquire about which tradition is being appealed to. After all, agriculture has changed radically even in recent years thanks to new technologies, genetic engineering, and chemicals. But what about the matter of prosperity?

While the Republican party has traditionally professed a love for the competition of the free market and the importance of freedom of choice, this law is clearly aimed at using the state to crush the competition before the contest begins. Some might see this sort of thing as the state “picking winers and losers” or even socialism. It is most certainly not free market capitalism. I won’t offer any free market arguments of my own here, I will simply refer the reader to decades of Republican arguments in favor of the free market and freedom of consumer choice. In this case, the free-market arguments have merit: the lab-grown meat vs traditional meat fight should be settled by consumer choice and not the fiat of the ruling elite of Florida who have the authoritarian goal of preventing this freedom of choice.

Continuing with prosperity, while a successful lab-grown meat product might have a slight impact on traditional meat sales, this would still mean that companies would be making profits and paying workers. This would not lead to a general economic downturn, although it could result in a slight decline in profits for traditional meat companies. But I suspect it would also shift profits away from companies that sell existing meat alternatives, such as tofu. But, as past Republicans would have argued, this is just the competitive market of products. As such, the law is clearly aimed at protecting the elites of the meat industries from competition, under the mask of protecting the people of Florida from a nefarious global elite. As such, this is just an anti-competition law protecting a traditional industry from a possible competitor. This does show that they learned their lesson from what happened to milk: when given a choice, some consumers will opt for vegan or vegetarian options. Hence, they have taken action to try to protect meat–this indicates  the meat industry is worried that it would lose this free-market competition.

Simpson’s final point does raise an interesting metaphysical issue about the nature of authentic agriculture. While “authentic” is a rhetorical term, especially given the highly technological and chemical nature of modern agriculture, one can raise the reasonable question of whether lab-grown meat is meat. This will be addressed in an upcoming essay.

A stock argument against raising the minimum wage is built on the claim doing so would hurt small businesses. This argument has some merit. While companies like Amazon and McDonalds could increase employee wages while still making a massive profit for upper management and shareholders, a small business that is barely making a profit could be hard pressed to increase wages without running at a loss.

 To use an imaginary example, suppose Larry owns Larry’s Lawn Care and pays his workers $10 an hour. He charges his customers $20 an hour for the labor of his employees and the expenses for things like fuel and maintenance equal about $5 an hour. So, Larry makes a profit of $5 for every hour an employee works. He also draws a salary and includes this in the bills.

But if the minimum wage were increased to $15 an hour, then Larry would make no profit unless he cut expenses. If cutting expenses is an option, Larry will need to increase what he charges to make a profit from his business. This increase, some would argue, could cause a loss of business which would lead to fewer hours for employees—thus causing a loss of income or even the firing of some employees.

It could be countered that if Larry’s business is breaking even while Larry is earning a salary for his own labor, then everything is good—Larry and his workers are getting what they deserve within the context of what customers are willing to pay for the services. But if the business was experiencing a loss and could not make full payroll because the wages and the minimum cost of operating the business exceeded what customers would pay, then it could justly be claimed that the increase in wages hurt the business and employees. This is the sort of scenario commonly used in making the small business argument against minimum wage. The reasoning is that because of the alleged harms of increasing the minimum wage, it should not be increased.

But it must also be noted that operating costs (and other expenses) are also a factor that impacts profits. If fuel and equipment costs were lower, the lawn care business would have more income.  But few argue that these costs should be kept low by the government to aid small businesses. As such, the burden of keeping small businesses profitable is usually put on the employees–the lower their wages, the greater the profit. The obvious argument against the state keeping operating costs low is that keeping operating costs low would hurt other businesses and thus (possibly) hurt other employees. But this is still a choice about who is harmed and how they are harmed. Increasing what the customers pay would also shift the harms, which is also a choice.

 Interestingly, those who argue against minimum wage often accept that companies can raise prices to increase profits even when doing so could result in employees losing hours or jobs—in fact, companies are often rewarded financially for firing people. To be consistent, someone who argues that increasing minimum wage is wrong because it would hurt employees by reducing hours or costing jobs must also argue that profitable policies that result in workers losing hours or jobs would also be wrong. Otherwise, it would be clear that their argument really has nothing to do with protecting employees and everything to do with protecting profit. An honest argument of this sort would actually be refreshing: minimum wage should not be increased because owners would make less profit.

It is also often argued that an increase in minimum wage would hurt small businesses because larger companies can afford to pay these wages while still making vast profits. One easy reply is that if this is true, then small business that would be harmed could be an exception to the general increase. This would hardly be unprecedented, since there are already many regulations that are linked to the size of a business.

A second reply is that those who argue against increasing the minimum wage on this ground would also need to accept that small businesses should be protected from larger businesses in other ways. After all, if the minimum wage should not be increased because smaller businesses cannot compete with large businesses, then the state should also see to it that larger businesses do not enjoy other advantages over small businesses. If one is not willing to accept this view, then it is likely that one does not care about small businesses—one is just against increasing the minimum wage.

A third reply is the free market reply: if small businesses cannot compete in this manner, then they will go out of business just as they would if they cannot compete in other ways. While harsh, this is consistent with capitalism as practiced. But embracing this approach would, of course, mean abandoning the small business argument against increasing minimum wage.

A final response to the small business argument is to point out that the argument can be taken to be that minimum wage should not be increased because doing so would decrease the income of small business owners. This seems to assume that the owners are entitled to their profits. But employees can point out that not increasing the minimum wage (even if only to match inflation) reduces their income as inflation reduces the value of their wages. So, if reducing income is wrong, then not increasing the minimum wage to at least account for inflation would be wrong. After all the owners would still be making the same profit they were before (adjusted for inflation). As such, those who oppose increasing the minimum wage to at least account for inflation cannot consistently use the small business argument—unless they are willing to be clear that what they are concerned with is the profits of the owners rather than alleged harms that might arise to employees.

In the previous essays in this series, I looked at the invention of race and addressed the general topic of what to do about racist philosophers of the Modern Era. This essay ends the series with a discussion of my assessment of the philosophers I include in my class. In engaging in this assessment, I sought out the most critical of credible assessments of the philosophers.

I start the class with Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). His Leviathan was published in 1651, long before Linnaeus’ book and twenty-five years before Bacon’s Rebellion. This means that Hobbes was unlikely to have been aware of the  developed modern conception of race. Barbara Hall undertook an extensive analysis of Hobbes’ writings in search of evidence of possible racism. Hall finds no obvious inconsistencies between his philosophical views and his life that would reveal him as a racist and a hypocrite. Hall also finds little in his writings for or against slave trade and the European expansion in the New World. In defining racism, Hall presents the notion that a person can be considered a racist for “failing to confront racist institutions or policies and practices as surely as if they had positively acted to enforce them.” Even if this broad definition of racism is accepted, a critic should take care to note what version of racism a person is being accused of. There is, after all, an important moral distinction between being actively engaged in wrongdoing and simply failing to confront such wrongdoing.

Based on the available evidence, Hall seems to be right that Hobbes did not confront racism in his time. But there is the question of whether his failure to act (even in writing) makes him a racist. This falls under the broader moral debate about whether failing to act against an evil makes one morally accountable for that evil. While Hobbes could be justly accused of allowing evil to occur, there is no evidence that he assisted in the evils of racism or that he held what could be considered racist views. As such, Hobbes can be, at worst, only weakly condemned as a passive racist for failing to act against a system now recognized as racist.

Hall also infers that Hobbes would likely have sanctioned the slave trade and would have likely justified the conquest of the New World. But, as Hall admits, there seems to be nothing in Hobbes writing that explicitly does either. I would argue that this speculation is not sufficient to convict Hobbes. While not an Appeal to Ignorance, the inference is extremely weak. After all, a person should not be convicted based on speculation about what they might have done. When I teach Hobbes, I do note that he do not condemn the slave trade while also noting that there seems to be no racist content in his work.

After Hobbes, the class moves on on Rene Descartes and Princess Elisabeth. While there might be some undiscovered letters or writings by Descartes, his philosophical works and correspondence reveal that he “names race never and slavery twice.” There is no evidence that he condemned racism or the slave trade, so it could be argued, as Timoty Reiss does,  that he was complicit in both. There are also those who contend that his ideas, such as dualism, were used to advance racist ends and that this serves as evidence of his racism.

While the issue of whether his ideas were used for racist ends can be debated, there is the question of whether this use would prove a philosopher is racist. On the face of it, if the ideas presented by the philosopher do not seem racist and there is no evidence that they intended them to be used to advance or defend racism, then it would seem absurd to hold them accountable for how their ideas were used by others. To use an analogy, the Wright brothers hoped that their airplane would make war practically impossible. To claim that they are accountable for the use of airplanes in war or other acts of violence would thus be a mistake. As an extreme example, claiming that the Wright Brothers were terrorists because the 9/11 attackers used an airplane would obviously be absurd. As such, unless one can show the racism in Descartes own writings, what others used his ideas for is irrelevant to whether he was a racist or whether his ideas are racist in and of themselves.

I include in my class the correspondence between Descartes and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. Elisabeth’s correspondence does not seem to indicate racism on her part, but she does not seem to strongly condemn the slave trade or racism in general. As such, some would contend that she was complicit in both for failing to do so. I do note that she did not address these matters, but her philosophical works don’t have any racism to address. Somewhat ironically, she does seem to make a sexist claim about how being a woman would have a negative impact on her reasoning, something Descartes immediately rejects. This make sense as Descartes is a metaphysical dualist and regards the incorporeal substance as the substance that thinks.

After Descartes and Elisabeth, I turn to the Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yacob. When Yacob was alive, slavery was widely practiced in Ethiopia. Yacob condemned the religious argument used to justify slavery, advancing an argument based on the principle that all men were created equal by God. As such, while he lived in a society that accepted slavery, his condemnation of it and his principle of equality show that he was not a racist.

Bennedict Spinoza, perhaps because he is less well known, has not often been accused of being a racist. Michael Rosenthal does note that Spinoza wrote of a dream about a “black, scabby Brazilian” and considers that this might be “a sign of the incipient struggle against prejudice.” There does not seem to be any written evidence that Spinoza specifically condemned the slave trade or racism. He does write about human bondage in his philosophical works, but this is not about slavery in the usual sense. Rather, he focused on how people are chained by their emotions and their lack of believing Spinoza’s philosophy.  Spinoza does argue for pantheism (that everything is God and God is everything) and what impact this might have on the possibility of racism would be an interesting topic (could God be racist towards Himself?).

 Gottfried Leibniz does face some accusations of racism. He read Jesuit accounts of Chinese philosophy and noted the apparent correspondence between binary arithmetic and the I Ching, or Book of Changes. The I Ching uses broken and unbroken lines as symbols, which intrigued him. What usually gets him accused of racism is that he claimed the West had the advantage of Christian revelation and was superior to China in the natural sciences. But he said of the Chinese that “certainly they surpass us (though it is almost shameful to confess this) in practical philosophy, that is, in the precepts of ethics and politics adapted to the present life and the use of morals.” Based on such remarks,  John Harfouch argues that Leibniz was a founding figure of the racism known as “orientalism.” Leibniz’ defenders note that he seems to be expressing a religious and cultural bias rather than engaging in racism in the current sense of the term.

It is almost certain that Leibniz met Amo (also known as Anton Wilhelm). Amo was kidnapped from Africa but became a German philosopher. There does not appear to be any evidence that Leibniz expressed racist views towards Amo and there is evidence of Leibniz’ influence on Amo’s philosophy. Julia Jorati argues that Leibniz condemned slavery on the grounds that it violates natural law and is thus morally impermissible.  While I do note Leibniz’s remarks about China, there is currently nothing else to say about him in the context of racism.

The English philosopher John Locke is often accused of racism on three counts. The first is that white supremacy has Lockean roots. This raises the usual questions of whether it is true and whether a philosopher is accountable for how others use (or misuse) their views. Locke’s political philosophy seems to oppose racism. For example, Locke argues that God created everyone equal and that attempts to enslave people justify killing the would-be slaver. While some current white supremacists might profess to have Lockean views, they would need to ignore key parts of his philosophical writings.

The second is that Locke is claimed to be the author of The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina in 1669. This document supports both hereditary nobility and slavery. Locke’s defenders point out that Locke merely drafted the documents as a lawyer and that he explicitly condemns both hereditary nobility and slavery in his philosophical writing.

The third is that Locke owned stock in the The Royal African Company which ran the African slave trade for England. Locke was the secretary of Shaftsbury, who Charles II put in charge of the Council of Foreign Plantations. This made Locke the Council’s official clerk and Locke was paid in Royal African Company stock.  But both Locke and Shaftsbury soon opposed Charles II and both sold their stock in the company. Thus, while Locke did profit from slavery, he ended up divesting from the company that ran the English slave trade. And, as noted above, he argued that an attempt to enslave a person warrants responding with lethal force.

In the case of George Berkeley, there is no debate about his racism.  On October 4, 1730 Berkeley purchased “a negro man named Philip aged 14 years or thereabout” and somewhat later, he purchased “a negro man named Edward aged 20 years or thereabouts. “In 1731 “Dean Berkeley baptized three of his negroes, ‘Philip, Anthony, and Agnes Berkeley.” Berkeley justified slavery as a path for conversion to Christianity. While, as noted above, some people defend historical figures by asserting that they were just products of their time, Berkeley’s contemporary, Francis Hutcheson,  explicitly argued against slavery. Berkeley also wrote disparagingly of Irish peasants, showing that he also embraced classism. Since Berkeley is an important philosopher, I keep him in my class. I do note his ownership of slaves, but these views do not appear to have influenced his metaphysics and epistemology. That is, his metaphysical idealism (that all that exists is mental in nature) does not seem racist.

While the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft has been praised for her feminism, she has been condemned as a racist.  Claire Hynes criticizes Wollstonecraft for comparing women to objectified slaves and Moira Ferguson argues Wollstonecraft fought for the enfranchisement of white women but did so while dehumanizing black women and men. That they ignore (or are even hostile to) people of color is a charge made against some white feminists today. There are those, such as Rachel Elizabeth Cargle, who contend that sometimes feminism can be white supremacy in heels. When discussing Wollstonecraft I take the opportunity to discuss the complicated nature of feminism. The charge against her also links the discussion to current concerns and this helps show the students the relevance of dead philosophers to issues of today.

I had long thought of David Hume as being a basically decent fellow, but he has proved to be a disappointment. Felix Waldman argues that David Hume was a racist involved in the slave trade. As evidence for Hume’s involvement in slavery, Waldman points to a letter that was unknown to scholars until 2014. In this 1766 letter Hume urged his patron Lord Hertford to buy a slave plantation in Grenada. Hume facilitated the purchase by writing the French governor of Martinique in 1766 and Hume lent £400 to one of the principal investors. Hume did, however, denounce slavery. In ancient Rome.

Hume’s philosophy of racism is proven by his essay Of National Characters:

 

I Am apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negroe slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.

 

  In 1770 James Beattie of Aberdeen ably criticized Hume’s racist views. Hume seems to have been unmoved by this criticism and the last authorized edition of the essay, in 1777, is essentially unchanged. Beattie’s detailed refutation of Hume’s racist claims serves as evidence that philosophers of this time could (and did) reject racism and that other philosophers would have been aware of such arguments. This helps undercut the defense that the racism of philosophers can be excused because of ignorance or that they are products of their time.  Because of the importance of Hume’s philosophical works, I do keep him in my class while also noting his explicitly racist claims. While Hume is a clear-cut case, Immanuel Kant is more complicated.

Pauline Kleinfeld presents a reasonable case that Kant held both sexist and racist views. Kant did write, for example, that blacks have “by nature no feeling that rises above the ridiculous.” He also wrote that the native American population is “incapable of all culture.” In addition to his own alleged racism, Kant has been accused of helping lay the theoretical foundations of European racism: he writes explicitly about race and about classifying people into different races.

Daniel-Pascal Zorn offers a defense of Kant.  While Zorn agrees that Kant expresses himself in a discriminatory manner, Zoren argues that the racist premises are more likely those of his interlocutors (Hume and Forster). Kant, Zorn claims, argues against these premises in favor of the unity of humanity.  Kant’s ethical theory also seems inconsistent with racism, since that would involve treating people as means rather than ends. While Kant certainly seems to have held some discriminatory views, his philosophical importance means that he retains a place in my class.

 

In the previous essays in this series, I looked at the invention of race and some defenses offered against charges of racism directed at Modern era philosophers. In this essay, I’ll discuss the subject of what to do when a Modern era philosopher has been proven to be a racist. This would also apply, in some cases, to philosophers of other eras, including today.

One extreme option is to purge works by racist philosophers and racist works from academic philosophy. In practical terms, this would mean these philosophers would not be mentioned in institutes of learning, and their works would not be taught. A moderate option is to keep these works in the academic curriculum but address the racism or racist content honestly and directly. In my Modern Philosophy class (and others) I have opted for the second approach.

First, I need to distinguish between the non-racist ideas of a philosopher and their racist ideas or personal racism. Even major philosophers of the Modern era who were racists or who wrote racist content had considerable bodies of work devoid of racism. Hume, for example, has some explicitly racist content and appears to have been a racist. But he also wrote extensively on subjects such as metaphysics and epistemology without racist content. As a specific example, his famous analysis of causation is obviously not a racist doctrine.  

 If someone were to reject the philosophical claims and arguments of a philosopher because of their alleged racism would be to fall for the ad hominem fallacy (concluding that a claim is false because of an alleged defect in the person making the claim). To reject all philosophy by white Europeans from the Modern era on the grounds that their work originated in a racist time and place would be to fall for the genetic fallacy (concluding that something must defective simply because of its genesis). If their works have merit, then this merit exists independent of their racism and thus such works can be worth studying. Going back to Hume, his philosophical arguments have considerable merit and importance, and these warrant their inclusion in a class on Modern philosophy. But this merit should not excuse racism or racist conte. So, the racist elements should not be hidden away and should be subject to due criticism.

Second, these major philosophical figures are historically important, and their ideas shaped the world today (for good or bad). Engaging with these ideas is essential if people are going to criticize them and the world views they shaped. Ironically, if a philosopher’s views are racist and helped form the basis of white supremacy, then it would be even more important to know their works to get to the conceptual roots of racism. Care should, of course, be taken when teaching such figures to avoid indoctrination. After all, just as we would not want to brainwash students into being vegan Marxists, we would also want to avoid brainwashing them into becoming meat loving white supremacists.

Third, while inclusion in the canon might be seen as honoring these philosophers they are included not because they are right or we agree with them, but because of their importance and influence. To use an extreme example, when one studies Hitler or Stalin one is not endorsing their views. I hope.  Philosophy is, in part, about criticizing ideas and to study a philosophical view is not to praise it or honor the philosopher who created it.

But there are reasonable concerns about why thinkers are seen as important enough to include or unimportant enough to exclude. For example, many Modern philosophy classes focus entirely on the usual dead white guys and exclude women and people of color, perhaps only mentioning them in passing.  One can justly make the criticism that by including a racist in a modern philosophy class, one is excluding a non-racist who should be included. That is a reasonable point and the matter of who should be included and who should be excluded from the course content is a matter that should be discussed and re-assessed on a regular basis. This is something I have done, resulting in changes to my class. In my final essay in this series, I’ll discuss how I decided on the content for my Modern Philosophy class