Day: January 30, 2026

As mentioned in the first essay of this series, what set me on the path of considering my philosophy of violence was the “machete that wasn’t” episode. When the person charged at me in the woods, my mind saw a machete. The metal blade was clear and distinct, though it turned out to be just a stick.

Initially, I was literally afraid for my life: I felt the fear that I was about to be hacked by a machete. Though armed, my response was to disengage and rely on my speed as a runner. When he caught me, I turned to face him and used my best weapon: I spoke to him and the situation was resolved peacefully. As this is about my faith and violence, if I had engaged the person with violence, a case could be made that it would have an acceptable action. As I sincerely believed he had a machete and he was, in fact, charging me, I would seem to have been justified in self-defense.  Even when it turned out that it was just a large stick, self-defense would also seem to have been warranted. Yet, I decided to talk rather than fight. One reason for this takes us back to my grad school days.

As a graduate student at The Ohio State University, I read far too much Descartes and became a Cartesian dualist. On this view, I am an immaterial mind that has a material body. While being an immaterial mind does not entail that there must be an afterlife in which one is subject to the consequences of sins and good deeds, it does provide a metaphysical foundation for this. As a philosopher, I am aware of the arguments against Cartesian dualism and against the possibility of existing after the death of the body. I teach some of these in my classes, such as David Hume’s view of the immortality of the soul and the classic mind-body problem. But if one considers the problem of the external world (the challenge of proving that the experienced world is really real for real), believing that I am a ghostly mind seems reasonable.  Or at least no more absurd than believing in other minds and an external reality. So, although I am probably wrong, I do believe that I am a Cartesian mind connected, in an unexplained manner, to a body. And, during that incident, it seemed that my body was in danger. As might be guessed, Cartesian dualism fits in with my faith and through that lens I would say I am a soul.

On the face of it, what justifies violence in self defense is that one is protecting their life against a wrongful threat. If I were a metaphysical materialist and believed that I am a purely physical entity, then it would make good sense to use force to protect what would presumably be my most valuable possession, which is my biological life. After all, death would be the end of me. One could even do a bit of a word game here and note that if I am my body, it is my self and self-defense would be protecting my body.

But if I am an immaterial mind that I think can exist after the death of my body, then harm to my body would not be my greatest concern. Rather, harm to my mind (soul) would be of far greater worry and I should thus prioritize protecting my soul over protecting my body. To go back to the word game, my self would be an immaterial mind that is beyond the reach of such things as machetes.

Socrates, in the Apology, said that “The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.” To steal a bit from his sentiment towards death and unrighteousness, while I might postpone death, it is inevitable. But I have some control over my actions and can decide whether to act in an unrighteous manner. And acting in an unrighteous manner to preserve my life at the expense of my soul would be a mistake, as it is said in Mark 8:36:”For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Thus, my faith (and my morality) requires that I carefully consider whether any act of self-defense is righteous or not because I believe that it is better to die than become wicked. This is thus one of the reasons why I put my body at risk rather than immediately engaging in what would probably be justified self-defense. While I do not have the right to impose my faith on others, those who profess to be Christians should take a similar approach to violence and should thus be reluctant to use violence against others. They should be more afraid of endangering their soul with evil than being afraid for their lives. As such, a Christian should engage in self-defense with great caution and should certainly not lie about killing in self-defense when they committed murder. It is, I think, completely fair to ask someone who publicly professes faith to publicly reconcile their professed faith with their acts of violence. For example, the right angelized ICE agent Ross as a Christian after he killed Renee Good and hence it is fair to ask them about faith and killing. As noted in another essay, professing to be a Christian ironically makes the killing even worse.

I also put myself at risk because of another aspect of my faith, which is that God is love and commands us to love. That is the subject of the next essay in the series.

Way back in 2015 the internet exploded over Rachel Dolezal, the former leader of Spokane’s NAACP chapter. Ms. Dolezal had claimed to be African-American, Native American and white. She also claimed that her father is black. Reporters at KXLY-TV, however, looked up her birth certificate and determined that her legal parents are both white. Her parents asserted that she is white.

While the specifics of her case were certainly interesting to many, my concern is with more general issues about race and identity. While this situation was the best-known case of a white person trying to pass as black, passing as another “race” has long been a common practice in the United States, although this has usually been people trying to pass as white. Since being accepted as white enables a person to avoid many disadvantages, it is clear why people would attempt to pass as white. Since being accepted as black generally does not confer advantages in the United States, it is not surprising that Dolezal drew so much attention. These matters raise some interesting questions and issues about race.

Borrowing language from metaphysics, one approach to race could be called race realism. This is not being realistic about race in the common use of the term “realistic.” Rather, it is accepting that race is a real feature of reality. That is, the metaphysics of the world includes categories of race. As such, a person could be objectively black or white (or a mix). Naturally, even if there are real categories of race, people could be wrong about them.

One alternative is race nominalism. This is the idea that racial categories are social constructs and do not line up with an underlying metaphysical and physical reality. This is because there is no underlying metaphysical and physical reality that objectively grounds racial categories. In this case, a person might engage in self-identification in regard to race and this might or might not be accepted by others. A person might also have others place them into a race category, which they might or might not accept.

Throughout history, some people have struggled to find an objective basis for categories of race. Before genetics, people had to use appearance and ancestry. The ancestry was, obviously, needed because people did not always look like the race category that some people wanted them to be in. One example of this is the “one drop” rule once popular in some parts of the United States: one drop of black blood made a person black, regardless of their appearance.

The discovery of genes provided some people with a new foundation for race categories as they believed that there would be a genetic basis for their racism. The idea was that just as a human can be distinguished from a cat by genes, humans could be divided into races by their genetic make-up. While humans show genetic variations that are often linked to the geographical migration and origin of their many ancestors, race genes were not found. That is, humans (not surprisingly) are all humans with some minor genetic variations. The variations are not sufficient to objectively ground race categories.

In general, the people who quested for objective foundations for race categories were (or are) racists. These searches typically involved trying to find evidence of the alleged superiority of one’s race and the inferiority of other races. That said, a person could look for foundations for race without being a racist. They could be engaged in a scientific or philosophical inquiry rather than seeking to justify social practices and behaviors.

Given the failure to find a real foundation for race categories, it makes sense to embrace race nominalism. On this view, the categories of race exist only in the mind, they designate  how people think about the world rather than how reality is carved up. Even if it is accepted that race is a social construct, there is still the matter of the rules of construction: how the categories are created and how people are placed in them

One approach, which is similar to that sometimes taken for gender, is that people can self-identify. That is, a person can declare their race and this is sufficient to be in that category. If race categories are essentially made up, this does have a certain appeal. If race is a fiction, then anyone can be the author of her own fiction.

While there are some who do accept this view, the outrage over Ms. Dolezal showed that most people reject the idea of self-identification at least when a white person endeavors to self-identify as black. Interestingly, some of those who condemned her did defend the historical passing as white by some black people. The defense is appealing since blacks endeavoring to pass as white were doing so to escape oppression and this can be justified as a form of self-defense. In the case of Ms. Dolezal, the presumption seemed to be that the self-identification was both insincere and aimed at personal gain. Regardless of her true motivation, insincere self-identification aimed at personal gain seems to be wrong on the grounds that it is a malign deception. Some might, of course, regard all attempts at passing to gain an advantage as being immoral.

Another approach is that of the social consensus. The idea is that a person’s membership in a race category depends on the acceptance of others. This could be a matter of majority acceptance (one is, for example, black if most people accept one as black) or acceptance by a specific group or social authority. The obvious problem is working out what group or authority has the right to decide membership in race categories. On the one hand, this very notion seems linked to racism: one probably thinks of white supremacists and Nazis setting race categories. On the other hand, groups also seem to want to serve as the authority for their race category. Consistency might indicate that this would also be racist.

The group or authority that decides membership in race categories might make use of a race credential system to provide a basis for their decisions. That is, they might make use of appearance and ancestry. So, Ms. Dolezal would not be black because she looks white and has white parents. The concern with this sort of approach is that it was also used by racists, such as the KKK and Nazis, to divide people by race. A more philosophical concern is the basis for using appearance and ancestry as the foundation for race categories, for what justifies their use?

This discussion does show an obvious concern with policing race categories as it seems like doing so uses the tools of racism and would thus seem to be at least a bit racist. However, arguments could be advanced as to why the policing of race categories is morally acceptable and not racist.