In Why Not Socialism? (2009), G. A. Cohen proposes a set of egalitarian principles presented as a statement of the socialist philosophical position. Of these, Cohen’s principle of community has drawn recent attention with its claim that any significant material inequality (or, more generally inequality in life outcomes) undermines community between people and, thus, ought to be condemned.

Why does inequality undermine community in this way? According to one common reading—put forward by James Otteson (2014) and Jason Brennan (2015) among many others—Cohen’s claim is that inequality strips away the common ground that wealthy and poor individuals once shared such that they are left with no basis for relating meaningfully to one another. By contrast, this paper proposes an alternative reading of Cohen’s principle whereby inequality is taken to undermine community because it introduces an underlying source of antagonism between individuals that is reflected in the various taboos that constrict the domain of socially-acceptable discourse.

The paper argues that the alternative interpretation ought to be preferred because it makes better sense of the thought experiment Cohen uses to support his principle; better coheres with Cohen’s other writings (most notably essays appearing in Rescuing Justice and Equality (2008)); and gives the principle greater normative weight.

A further advantage of the interpretation is that it avoids a serious objection raised by Brennan against the standard reading of the principle of community. Specifically, Brennan argues that the principle of community—at least, as it has traditionally been interpreted—is both unsupported by the arguments Cohen provides and entails the unacceptable conclusion that any sort of lifestyle diversity undermines community. The paper will concede the argument, but contends that the alternative interpretation avoids this objection and, thus, ought to be preferred to the standard reading on the grounds of charitable interpretation.

Both popularly and philosophically, race in the U.S. is most often talked about in terms of black and white, sometimes as though these are the only two races in the country, and other times in terms of a kind of spectrum running from whiteness to blackness. This binary is usually implicit, borne out by the focus of examples. Such a conception does not map onto actual racial structures in the U.S. I will criticize this binary, focusing on Indigenous Peoples, who have never fit into it, either in theory nor in practice. Victims of historical exclusion, land theft, cultural liquidation, murder, and outright genocide, the Native American peoples were never integrated into a racially-ordered U.S. society en masse and thus problematize traditional models of race. In order to account for the experiences of Native Americans, I believe it is necessary to construct a new theory of the meaning of race. In assembling this theory, I will attempt to bridge philosophical critical race studies and Native American studies, surveying leading conceptions of race to see whether and to what extent they are applicable to Native Americans, and examine them for aspects that should be adopted or modified, and aspects that are best discarded. I will argue for a conception of race that is nonessential, socially constructed, and spatio-temporally located, subject to change over time and reinterpretation across localities. Having established a conception of race that can include Native Americans, I will discuss the implications of a Native American race in greater detail, including how it might be politically useful, while also keeping in mind the practical and theoretical dangers of essentializing a Native race concept. Finally, I will take up an important question that will be suggested by my theory of race: whether or not all Indigenous Peoples around the globe are, in fact, a single race. I will not purport to prove this thesis but, more modestly, suggest that it is descriptively plausible and potentially efficacious. My intent is that the theory I provide will be both conceptually and socially useful, that it will be able to make sense of common race talk while also providing normative support to anti-domination projects, broadly construed, particularly the processes of solidarity and coalition-building between and among oppressed racial groups.

In this paper I will propose an alternative approach to certain kinds of questions in social ontology and social metaphysics. This represents a reaction to a trend in contemporary social ontology which uses social ontological theories to defend certain positions in normative political philosophy. I will argue that many social ontological claims are themselves essentially normative claims and that the relationship between social ontology and normative political and social theory cannot be one of grounding the political in the metaphysical. To do so, I will describe and defend what I will call the ethical approach to social ontology and apply it to a contemporary debate over the structure of collective intentions. I will defend the coherence of adopting the ethical stance by defending two claims: (1) that the social world and the means we have of producing it are not fixed and are produced through human activity; (2) that social objects and our means of producing them are subject to ethical evaluation. Following this, I will apply this approach to the debate over collective intentions and discuss the implications of the approach for future work in social ontology.

Disputes have continued since Pitkin’s seminal work on representation regarding the representative’s obligations to enact the popular mandate and, when appropriate, to act as an independent maker of decisions. While much has since been written regarding the forms through which popular mandates might be best realized, and—though considerably less—about those occasions on which a representative is empowered to act independently of such mandates, surprisingly little has been said about the normative grounding of these obligations. More recent work in political science has even proffered an account of political representation purged of normativity altogether—hence without invoking obligations—suggesting that if a relevant audience in the right circumstances recognizes an individual to be a representative, he or she should be understood as a representative. Such an approach undervalues normative dimensions that I will argue are central to our best understanding of political representation. Although an account that identifies representation with democratic legitimacy would indeed be too narrow, an account that says nothing about obligations held by representatives both with regard to those they represent and with regard to the frameworks within which representation occurs remains inadequate. Considerations invoked in a non-normative “general account” regarding what constitutes representation—determining the relevant audience, specifying appropriate circumstances, and providing criteria for the selection of representatives— end up requiring judgments that are best seen as irreducibly normative after all. Such an account further threatens to completely sever the activity of a representative from the interests of a constituency. We can better begin to discern normative features of political representation by considering the role of representative and the practice of representation more carefully.

Recently, the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory has been a topic of central interest to political philosophers and philosophers of education. The divide is often thought to map a difference in theoretical methodology in so far as ideal theorists derive their theories under a different set of assumptions than non-ideal theorists. Political theorists who favor ideal theories defend the value of developing theories of justice that assume full compliance, complete and universal virtue, or unfeasible political conditions. Political theorists who favor non-ideal theory argue that ideal theory is hopeless, irrelevant, or unnecessary to the achievement and development of feasible political goals. These two methodological commitments are not on the face of it incompatible or in tension with each other. Consequently, the ecumenical position suggests that ideal theory can be harmoniously pursued alongside non-ideal theory. They are simply two different theoretical tasks. But this way of understanding what divides ideal from non-ideal theorizing misrepresents the central issue as a mere academic concern for theorists. In so doing, it ignores the much deeper way in which these two ways of thinking about justice pervade our experiences as agents in the moral and political sphere and can lead to practical tensions.

In this paper, I discuss educators as a prime exemplar of agents who not only experience the tension between ideal and non-ideal ways of thinking, but for whom understanding and coming to terms with this tension is of great practical import. I argue that it is central to the educator’s role as educator and as citizen to engage in ideal and non-ideal thinking. This is because the educator is essentially engaged in two tasks. The first task is educating future citizens. In so far, as the educator is involved in this task he is playing a role in making certain future social facts true. These facts are some of the ones on which the justice of our future society supervene. The second task an educator is engaged in is preparing students with the skills and knowledge they need to navigate the world as they will find it. In pursuing this task, the educator is assuming certain social facts, some of them unjust. These two goals lead to difficult tensions in how educators carry out their work. I argue that this tension can be best resolved if we understand the ideal theorizing engaged in by educators as an expression of respect towards his fellow citizens. I argue that this expressive component is crucial to the educator’s role as educator and as citizen.

In section I, I elucidate the ideal/non-ideal distinction. In section II, I describe three examples of educators that show ideal and non-ideal thinking at work. In section III, I argue that it is essential to the role of an educator to engage in both ideal and non-ideal thinking. In the fourth section, I offer a defense of the importance of the expressive value of ideal thinking. In the final section, I argue that political theorists can learn something important about the ideal/non-ideal divide by reflecting on the case of educators.