Philippa Foot and Jonathan Harrison, on the Nature of Moral Principles

In a dialogue between Philippa Foot and Jonathan Harrison (1954) regarding the question of "when is a principle a moral principle?", Foot seems to be rather evasive in her response to the question. She describes the following sentences as examples of what we might mean when we talk about moral principles: (1) "To me, it is a matter of moral principle," (2) "I don't know much about his moral principles," and (3) "He seems to me to be a man without moral principles."¹ She says that a moral principle may be a special case of a principle of conduct. It may be a principle through which we come to understand what a person feels about what is right and wrong. However, in order for a principle to be moral, it must have some kind of background that distinguishes it from other kinds of principles (although Foot doesn't say exactly what that background might be). She also suggests that if we call a principle moral, then it must have some connection with other principles that we call moral or must have some connection with modes of conduct that we call virtuous. She concludes that the comparison of a moral principle with a moral imperative is fundamentally misleading, and that we won't be able to find suitable criteria for moral principles if we try to base our inquiry on this model.²

      Harrison responds by saying that some principles that we may hold as obligatory may not actually be obligatory. Thus, there may be a difference between what is subjectively a moral principle and what is objectively a moral principle. We may hold a principle as a moral principle without its necessarily being universalizable (applicable to everyone). However, ultimate moral principles may be applicable to everyone, while derivative moral principles may not be. Derivative moral principles may be derived from ultimate moral principles; they are contingent and variable in a way that ultimate moral principles are not.³

      Harrison explains that Foot's assessment of moral principles is rather circular, insofar as she doesn't address the question: "If the "background" of a moral principle consists of other moral principles, then what can we say about those other principles?"  Moreover, if a principle can be moral only if it has a connection with other moral principles, then how can we establish that those other principles are moral?⁴

      He also notes that we may not always act on our moral principles. Moral principles are not laws of nature; they can be disobeyed. Nor are they rules of skill, since acting morally is not the same as acting skillfully (although moral obligations may be fulfilled skillfully or may not be fulfilled through sheer ineptitude).⁵

      He also claims that a hypothetical imperative can't be a moral principle, although he admits there may be hypothetical non-moral imperatives or duties (such as the duty to practice a certain skill if it will make us better at that skill). He says the difference between a hypothetical and a categorical imperative is that a hypothetical imperative is necessary as a means to some end, while a categorical imperative is not.

      Contrary to his view, however, it can be argued that if I hold it as a moral principle, all things being equal, that I should perform some action that's morally advisable, even though that action may not be morally obligatory, then I may believe in a principle that's a hypothetical, but not categorical, directive. A categorical directive might take the form: if I see someone suffering, then I should try to alleviate that suffering and comfort the person who's suffering. This would be an example of a directive to perform an action that's obligatory, universally applicable, and not contingently a means to some end other than itself.

      Harrison notes that actions that are based on principle may not necessarily be moral actions, and that moral actions may not necessarily be based on principle (rather than the contextual variables of a particular situation). We don't always act on our moral principles, but we must do so at least occasionally if we're going to truthfully say we hold them as principles. On the other hand, if we're lacking in conscience or false to our sense of moral duty, then we may not act on our moral principles and may not feel any remorse for doing so.⁶ But we may also act on principles that we don't feel a moral duty to act on. Merely acting on principles doesn't necessarily make them moral principles. So our acting or not acting on a principle can't be an adequate criterion of whether we regard it as a moral principle. Nor can our feeling of obligation to follow a principle be an adequate criterion of whether we regard it as a moral principle. He therefore dismisses as a "terminological question" whether there may in fact be any adequate criteria for a moral principle.

FOOTNOTES

¹Philippa R. Foot and Jonathan Harrison, "Symposium: When is a Principle a Moral Principle?," in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 28, 1954, p. 98.

²Ibid. p. 110.

³Ibid., p. 125.

⁴Ibid., pp. 112-113.

⁵Ibid., pp. 117-118.

⁶Ibid., pp. 127-128.

Fragments III

Gilbert Harman, in Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (1996),¹ defends moral relativism (the position that moral claims are always relative to the choice of a moral framework, and that what is right according to one framework may not be right according to some other framework), while Judith Jarvis Thomson defends moral objectivism (the position that moral claims have objective truth conditions that aren't relative to moral frameworks, and that it's possible to find out about some claims whether they are objectively true or false). Harman argues that moral diversity and the apparent intractability of moral disagreements justify moral skepticism (the position that the truth conditions of moral claims are relative to moral frameworks, or that moral claims don't have objective truth conditions, or that it's not possible to determine the objective truth of moral claims), and that moral relativism is therefore also justified. Thomson, on the other hand, argues that what is morally right or wrong isn't simply a matter of what it's rational for an agent to want or what is relative to what an agent might want, and that we can therefore reject moral relativism.

Onora O'Neill (2003),² distinguishes between constructivism and contractualism in ethics. While constructivism may be the theory that moral justification is provided by constructed criteria or principles, contractualism may be the theory that moral justification is provided by general agreement among individuals.

      O'Neill says it may not be possible to completely separate constructivism from contractualism, since constructive reasoning may be a way of achieving agreement, and agreement may provide a basis for constructive reasoning.

What about constructivism vs. contractualism in epistemology?  Constructivism may be the theory that knowledge is constructed, while contractualism may be the theory that knowledge is agreed upon. These two theories may be mutually compatible.

Jennifer Lackey (2008) asks, "What should we do when we disagree?" She explains that if we disagree with someone and we are (1) evidential equals (there's no argument or piece of evidence bearing directly on the question that one of us is aware of and the other is not), (2) cognitive equals (there's no cognitive capacity or incapacity that one of us possesses that the other does not), and (3) epistemic peers (we've fully disclosed to each other all the reasons and arguments for our own views), then the nonconformist response is that we can continue to maintain our own views, without revision, despite the disagreement of our epistemic peers, as long as we have justified confidence in our own views, while the conformist response is that we should give equal weight to the views of our epistemic peers and should therefore revise our views if our epistemic peers disagree with us. A problem for the nonconformist view is the One against Many Problem, that the more epistemic peers disagree with us, the more implausible our own views become. A problem for the conformist view, on the other hand, is the Many against One Problem, that we may initially have only a low level of justified confidence in our own views, but those views may be bolstered if they're shared by our epistemic peers. While the nonconformist view may underemphasize the epistemic importance of disagreement, the conformist view may overemphasize it. Lackey therefore explains that her justificationist view avoids both problems: it holds that the epistemic importance of disagreement depends on the degree of justified confidence with which the belief in question is held, combined with the presence or absence of relevant symmetry breakers between our own epistemic position and those of our epistemic peers.³

FOOTNOTES

¹Gilbert Harman and Judith Jarvis Thomson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1996).

²Onora O'Neill, "Constructivism vs. Contractualism," in Ratio, Volume XVI, 4 December 2003, pp. 319-331),

³Jennifer Lackey, "What should we do when we disagree?", in Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Volume 3, edited by Tamar Szabó Gendler and John Hawthorne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 274-293.

Perspectives on Servanthood

As a teenager I went to a school whose motto is cui servire est regnare, which can be roughly translated as "whom to serve is to reign." This phrase is from a prayer attributed to St. Augustine: "O God...teach us how to know you--and live, where to serve you--and reign, when to praise you--and rejoice..."

      The phrase "whom to serve is perfect freedom" is also from a prayer attributed to St. Augustine: "Eternal God...grant us so to know you, that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whom to serve is perfect freedom."

      Servanthood is an ideal promoted by a variety of religious traditions, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

      In the gospels, Jesus says he came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45). He also washes his disciples' feet as an example of his servanthood (John 13:1-17).

      True servanthood may be found when we can freely choose to serve others. To serve is to help, to fulfill the needs of others, to obey, or to be useful to others. Perfect freedom may be found in serving freely. The true servant helps others to fulfill themselves as human beings. The true servant doesn't serve in order to be rewarded by others, because serving others is rewarding in itself. The true servant acts to promote the happiness, fulfillment, and well-being of others, and acts to promote peace and justice in society.

      In order to truly serve others, we must have humility. We can't serve others if we put our own needs before the needs of others. Humility enables us to respond to the needs of others before responding to our own. When we know the importance of humility, we can serve others without using others to serve our own needs.

      The true leader is also a servant. The true leader serves those whom they lead. True leadership is servanthood. When we freely serve others, we show our concern for them. If we love others, then we truly care about them. If we love others, then we also feel the need to serve them.

      Robert K. Greenleaf (1970), a management researcher and consultant who coined the term "servant-leadership," says that a servant-leader is a servant first, whose primary motivation is to serve, rather than a leader first, whose primary motivation is to lead. The servant-leader takes care to ensure that the highest-priority needs of others are always being served.

      Ken Blanchard (2001), a management consultant and leadership expert, explains that most organizations are hierarchical or pyramidal in nature. Leadership is from the top down, and new approaches to management can't emerge from those at the bottom of the hierarchy who have the closest contact with the organization's clients. A solution for this problem is servant-leadership, in which the organizational hierarchy or pyramid is inverted or turned upside down, so that employees at the ground level who have the closest contact with clients can better contribute to the organization's goals.

      However, Jacquelyn Grant (1993), an American theologian, scholar, and minister, criticizes the language of servanthood as having undergirded structures of power and domination that have caused suffering for oppressed people. She says that, historically, women have been seen as servants of men, and politically disenfranchised peoples have been seen as a servant class for the wealthy and powerful. Servanthood language has camouflaged servitude and subordination, instead of promoting empowerment and liberation. She therefore prefers a language or model of Christian discipleship, in which justice is seen as an integral part of the quest for unity and community.¹

      Theresa Corbin (2022), an American writer and editor, who converted to Islam at age 21, says that an Islamic perspective on servanthood is that we can serve God by following the example of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and serving others, whether they are our children, parents, neighbors, or other members of our community. We all have leadership roles to fulfill by serving others. Servanthood is the meaning of leadership as it was exemplified by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).²

      Ibn 'Arabi  (1165-1240), an Arab Andalusian Islamic philosopher, poet, and mystic, says that we're created by God to be servants of God, and that we should never abandon our servanthood (ubûdîya). The servant loves God, and God loves the servant. Servanthood is our true reality, whereby the face of God is revealed to us.³  Through servanthood, we attain humility and recognize that we depend on God for our being.

      Ernest C.H. Ng (2019), a professor of Buddhist Studies and Economics at the University of Hong Kong, explains that a Buddhist perspective on servant leadership is that the Buddha(s) and Bodhisattvas are "the embodiment of profound compassion and wisdom in their selfless mission and unrelenting effort to teach and heal all sentient beings."⁴ We can become servant leaders by following their example, and by acting in accordance with the Buddha's teachings.

      Robert Greenleaf (1977) also says that servant leadership may be characterized by such capabilities as listening, understanding, imagination, empathy, intuitive knowledge, foresight, awareness, perception, persuasion, action, conceptualizing, and healing.⁵ 

      Andrey Shirin (2014), a professor of divinity and Director of Transformational Leadership at the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Arlington, Virginia, notes that some workplace settings may be more receptive to servant leadership than others. Some leaders may have a greater desire to serve than others, and workers may vary in their receptivity to servant leadership.⁶ He explains that the modern model of servant leadership may truncate the nature of leadership by making service the single determinative criterion aligned with Christian spirituality, and that St. Augustine viewed service as just one dimension of his leadership approach.⁷

      Mitch McCrimmon (2010), a Canadian management consultant and writer, argues that servant leadership is a bad idea, because the reality in the business sector is that all managers must serve business owners if they want to keep their jobs, and they must also serve customers. If servant leadership is the idea that traditional, autocratic, and hierarchical modes of leadership should yield to newer modes of leadership that are more inclusive and that are based on teamwork and community, then it's a true but trivial idea, and it presents nothing new or distinctive. It may also have paternalistic overtones. McCrimmon therefore argues that it's possible for managers to develop collaborative, supportive, empathetic, engaging, and empowering relationships with employees without taking on the servant model.⁸

FOOTNOTES

¹Jacquelyn Grant, "The Sin of Servanthood: And the Deliverance of Discipleship," in A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering, edited by Emilie M. Townes (Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books, 1993), p. 214.

²Theresa Corbin, "Prophet Muhammad: Leader & Servant," at aboutislam.net, 23 December 2022, online at https://aboutislam.net/reading-islam/about-muhammad/muhammad-pbuh-prophet-leader-servant/

³Stephen Hirtenstein, ""Ibn 'Arabi's Bequest" and Two Other Passages from the Kitab al-Wasâ'il by Isma'il Ibn Sawdakîn," (Newsletter of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society, Spring 1977), online at https://ibnarabisociety.org/ibn-arabis-bequest-stephen-hirtenstein/

⁴Ernest C.H. Ng, "Servant Leadership Beyond Servant and Leader: A Buddhist Perspective on the Theory and Practice of Servant Leadership," in Servant Leadership, Social Entrepreneurship and the Will to Serve, edited by Luk Bouckaert and Steven van den Heuvel, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, online at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-29936-1_3#citeas

⁵Robert K. Greenleaf, "The Servant as Leader" [1970], in Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power & Greatness (New York: Paulist Press, 1977, pp. 30-49.

⁶Andrey V. Shirin, "Is Servant Leadership Inherently Christian?", in Journal of Religion and Business Ethics (Volume 3, Article 13, Oct 9, 2014), p. 7.

⁷Ibid., pp. 21-24.

⁸Mitch McCrimmon, "Why servant leadership is a bad idea," in Management.Issues, August 16, 2010, online at https://www.management-issues.com/opinion/6015/why-servant-leadership-is-a-bad-idea/

OTHER REFERENCES

Ken Blanchard, "Servant-Leadership Revisited," in The Sixth Annual Worldwide Lessons in Leadership, 2001, online at online at https://new.svdpusa.org/Portals/1/Servant-Leadership%20Revisited.pdf.

Mystification

John Berger, the British art critic, novelist, and poet, says, in Ways of Seeing (1972), that "mystification is the process of explaining away what might otherwise seem evident."¹ 

Mystification is a process of making misplaced assumptions about the purpose or meaning of a work of art in order to somehow explain or justify it.

Perhaps mystification is also a way of making the ordinary seem mysterious, and demystification is a way of making the mysterious seem ordinary. Perhaps mystification is a way of making the obvious seem obscure, and demystification is a way of making the obscure seem obvious.

Could mystification be a way of acknowledging that there are truths beyond our understanding (such as mysteries of faith, mysteries of nature, sacred or sacramental mysteries, or mysteries revealed by God)?

  

In what ways do we mystify our own being or presence in order to maintain social distance from others?

"Who am I?" --Isn't the answer to that question always a mystery?

Is my way of seeing the world only interesting insofar as it's different from the way others see the world? Is difference the defining characteristic of being interesting?

Is expressing yourself a matter of what you can do with language or is it a matter of what language can do with you?

Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus (1922), says that everything that can be thought can be thought clearly, and everything that can be said can be said clearly (4.116). However, there are things that can't be said, and of which we can't speak, because we can't formulate logical propositions about them. Wittgenstein calls the inexpressible "the mystical" (6.522).

The mystifying may be the puzzling, perplexing, bewildering, or confusing. Some examples of how it may be expressed include the sentences: "I'm mystified by their decision to promote him," "His carelessness really mystifies me," and "Her nonchalance was truly mystifying."

Mystification of language may be produced by the use of circumlocution, elaborate metaphors, idiosyncratic or unusual terminology, technical jargon, neologisms, indefinable terms, and deliberately vague or ambiguous expressions.

Demystifying or demythicizing an utterance, text, or discourse may take the form of deconstructing its mystifying or mythicizing aspects, explaining how it functions as a mystery or myth.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Polish-American rabbi, theologian, philosopher, and civil rights activist, says in Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (1959) that 

"mystery...is a dimension of all existence and may be experienced everywhere and at all times. In using the term mystery we do not mean any particular esoteric quality that may be revealed to the initiated, but the essential mystery of being as being, the nature of being as God's creation out of nothing, and therefore something which stands beyond the scope of human comprehension. We do not come upon it only at the climax of thinking or in observing strange, extraordinary facts but in the startling fact that there are facts at all: being, the universe, the unfolding of time...Everything holds the great secret. For it is the inescapable situation of all being to be involved in the infinite mystery...The world is something we apprehend but cannot comprehend."² 

Heschel also says there are three basic approaches or attitudes toward the mystery of God. The fatalist attitude is that the world is controlled by an inscrutable, blind, and irrational power that is without justice or purpose, and thus there is no meaning to be understood within the mystery. The positivist attitude is that the mystery doesn't actually exist; whatever we regard as mystery is merely that which we haven't yet explained and which we'll be able to explain at some point in the future. And the biblical attitude is that whatever is unknown to us is known by God, and whatever is concealed from us is apparent to God.³

According to Heschel, the sense of wonder, awe, and reverence in response to the presence of God leads us to an act of worship in which we acknowledge that God surpasses and transcends all mysteries. Our faith in God is expressed through the act of worship. Faith leads us think of the world in terms of God and to attempt to live in accord with what's relevant to God.

FOOTNOTES

¹John Berger, et al., Ways of Seeing (London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972), pp. 15-16.

²Abraham J. Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism, edited by Fritz A. Rothschild (London: Collier Macmillan, 1959), p. 45.

³Ibid., pp. 50-51.

Black Ontology

Some questions to be considered by black ontology include: What is (or are) the meaning(s) of being black and black being? In what ways is black being implicit or explicit, real or unreal, particular or universal? How might a phenomenological ontology of being black or blackness proceed?

      Some other questions to be considered by black ontology include: In what ways is black being defined by its possibilities for being or non-being? What distinguishes a first-person understanding of black being (by black beings themselves) from second- or third-person understandings? Is the peoplehood of black people erased by referring to them as "black beings" rather than "black people"? To the extent that black people can determine for themselves what it means to be defined by categories of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc., from where does this freedom for self-definition come and on what does it depend?

      What are the basic constituents (if any) of black being? Does black being have any ontological building blocks or foundational elements? To what extent is it a dependent kind of being (dependent on racial categories, and dependent on the black-white binary)? How is it manifested socially and culturally? To what extent is it characterized by collective agency and collective intentionality? 

      Do such questions arise from an essentialist notion of the being of black people?

      The meaning of being black may be determined by the given historical, social, and cultural situation. Being black in America today means something different from being black in China today. Being black in America in 1863 meant something different from what it meant to be black in America in 1963. Being black in black social spaces means something different from being black in white social spaces.

      Black ontology is a racial, social, and cultural ontology. David Miguel Gray (2017) explains that races are social kinds, rather than natural kinds, and that they are in part or in whole products of human actions or human decision-making processes. Investigations of racial categories are therefore social and historical investigations, quite unlike the investigations of the natural sciences.¹

      Black ontology recognizes that black people have often been objectified by white people, who have seen them as objects to be used, exploited, eradicated, or manipulated. Black ontology may therefore examine the meaning of the "black body" as transmogrified into a subhuman object by white consciousness.

      But isn't the personhood of black people erased when they are referred to as "black bodies"? Isn't it dehumanizing to refer to black people as "black bodies," as if they were things or objects (even if that's how they're seen by white supremacists)?

      Black ontologies may develop new concepts of black identity. They may form a chorus of voices against injustice and oppression, and they may express, articulate, or proclaim resistant subjectivities.

      Black ontology may also investigate the role of black social and cultural signifying practices, such as art, music, dance, fashion, religion, and language, in constituting black being.

      Perhaps what is needed at the present moment is neither an evasion (or rejection) of ontology nor an ontology of flight or escape, but rather an ontology of struggle and resistance.

     Ontology may involve not only a study of what is (or what there is) or what it is to be (the meaning of being), but also a study of the categorical structure of reality (the fundamental categories of being). Metaontology may involve a study of the methods of ontology, and of what we are doing when we ask such ontological questions as "What are we asking when we ask "What is or is not?"").

      Just as there may be logics as well as logic, epistemologies as well as epistemology, knowledges as well as knowledge, so there may be ontologies as well as ontology.

      Aren't we all ontologists insofar as we're concerned with defining who we are, and with defining our own being?

      Instead of affirming that philosophy (or even our own way of doing philosophy) has some privileged position over us and can subject us to ontological investigation (or that philosophy itself supposes that it can subject us to ontological investigation), why don't we engage in a philosophy that arises from our own being and that is radically constructed or deconstructed by our own being?

      Black feminist or afro-feminist ontology is an ontology centered on the experiences of black women or women of color. It may examine such questions as "What is the impact of repressive and hierarchical social structures on black women? What is the impact of gendered power relations? What is the impact of social conceptions of the female body, regarding such issues as reproduction, maternity, body image, and sexuality?

      Ismália De Sousa (2021) explains that while black feminist thought centers on the lived experiences of black women, it can be deployed to better understand the experiences of people and groups at the intersection of multiple axes of connection. The ontology of black feminist thought centers on the lived experiences of black women in order to better understand unbalanced social structures of power. It also examines lived experiences as sources of knowledge development, and it creates the space for subaltern voices to be heard in dialogical daily practices.²

      Emilie M. Townes (1993) describes womanist ontology as "a radical concern for is-ness in the context of African American life."³ She explains that "its primary concern is concrete existence (lived life) and the impetus for a coherent and unified relationship between body, soul, and creation. In this sense, it is consonant with African cosmology that understands all of life as sacred."⁴ Womanist ontology is also an ontology of wholeness that rejects dualisms such as self-other, mind-body, theory-practice, and individual-community. It's a relational ontology that calls us to moral responsibility and accountability.⁵

      Liz Stanley and Sue Wise (2008) explain that feminist ontology "rejects binary and oppositional notions of 'the self' and its relationships to 'the body' and 'mind' and 'emotions'; it also rejects a notion of 'self and Other' that the self supposedly defines itself against and in opposition to."⁶ They say that

"The feminist approach to the construction of self, in contrast, sees 'self' as relationally and interactionally composed, its construction being historically, culturally, and contextually specific and also subtly changing in different interactional circumstances. Thus, an alternative feminist way of understanding the dualisms of masculinist ontology--of self and other, individual and collectivity--is to treat these not as oppositions but cooperative endeavors for constructing selves--both selves--through collective relational systems of action and interaction."⁷

      Moreover,

"The ontologies of the oppressed rest on forbidden emotions and thoughts--such as loves which are supposed not to dare to speak their name but do, and white masks of apparent acquiescence on actually rebellious black faces. That is, fundamental here are actual or suspected subversions, as subversion is named and categorized within dominant ideological practices. But the ontologies of the oppressed are not merely negatively inscribed as Other, a counterpoint to dominant group ontologies and experiences. Central to the political projects of oppressed groups is the construction of an everyday life, a mundane reality often hidden from oppressors, and with it an ontological system for explaining and thus also defining and constructing the very being of members of such groups."⁸

      Pamela L. Caughie, Emily Datskou, and Rebecca Parker (2018) also argue that gender ontologies are relational and intersectional. They explain that one of the challenges for such ontologies is to find ways to leave gender variance and nonconformity dynamic but still findable.⁹

      Calvin Warren (2018) says that the question of black being is a proper metaphysical question, because "metaphysics can never provide freedom or humanity for blacks, since it is the objectification, domination, and extermination of blacks that keep the metaphysical world intact."¹⁰ Being is therefore written under erasure, since black being exists in concealment and blacks are treated as objects. "Black thinking," says Warren, "must then return to the question of Being and the relation between this question and the antiblack violence sustaining the world."¹¹

      Warren (2022) also says that the "Karen call" (a call typically made by a white middle-aged woman who weaponizes her white privilege by calling for police to come and engage in surveillance of black people who are going about their normal daily activities, thus subjecting them to possible harassment and unlawful arrest) is a persistent social phenomenon that "performs ontological labor--a guarding and surveillance of Being--requiring a vigilant policing of ontological boundaries and a marshaling of violence (state sanctioned) to prevent black encroachment."¹² The Karen call is a response to a supposed ontological emergency (actually a fraudulent, pseudo-, or non-emergency), in which black people are seen as not having the right to be in a certain place. Warren says that rather than dismissing the Karen call as an abuse of modern technology in which a cell phone is used to activate a system of surveillance, we should see it as the unfolding and appropriation of Being as a racial privilege. The preservation of such privilege, and the maintenance of its racial exclusivity, requires vigilance and surveillance.¹³

      Ron Scapp (2013), in an essay describing how the killing of Trayvon Martin might be considered an ontological problem, says that at the core of this tragic event is the fundamental issue of what it actually means for an African American male "to be" in the United States, and that "there is, in fact, no proper or legitimate place for a person of color to be."¹⁴

      George Yancy (2022) calls attention to the tragic deaths of George Floyd (2020), Ahmaud Arbery (2020), Philando Castile (2016), Eric Garner (2014) Tamir Rice (2014), Trayvon Martin (2012), Amadou Diallo (1999), Emmett Till (1955), and others who were deemed "ontologically criminal, subhuman, and ungrievable" by those who murdered them. They were perceived as "threats"and "criminals" within a distorted white imaginary and pervasive anti-black-male social ontology.¹⁵

      Fred Moten (2008) explains that one way of investigating the lived experience of African Americans is to consider what it means to be seen as dangerous, and what it means to be regarded as an inevitably disordering or deformational force, while at the same time being absolutely indispensable to normative order and form.¹⁶ He says that

"the problem of the inadequacy of any ontology to blackness, to that mode of being for which escape or apposition and not the objectifying encounter with otherness is the prime modality, must be understood in its relation to the inadequacy of calculation to being in general...blackness needs to be understood as operating at the nexus of the social and the ontological, the historical and the essential...What is inadequate to blackness is already given ontologies. The lived experience of blackness is, among other things, a constant demand for an ontology of disorder, an ontology of dehiscence, a para-ontology...That ontology will have had to have operated as a general critique of calculation."¹⁷

      Marquis Bey (2022) also rejects ontological blackness and ontological gender as inconsistent with the abolitionist gender radicality that underlies black trans feminism. Bey says these ontological categories tend toward a reification by which race and gender are treated as if they were fixed and existed objectively, independent of historical contingency and subjective intentions.¹⁸

      Victor Anderson (1995) also regards ontological blackness as a tendency toward racial reification. He uses the term "ontological blackness" to connote categorical and essentialist languages depicting black life and experience. He prefers to use bell hooks's term "postmodern blackness," which he says recognizes the importance of race as an effective category in identity formation, but also recognizes that black identities are continually being reconstituted, as African Americans inhabit diverse social spaces and communities of moral discourse.¹⁹

      Charles W. Mills (1998) explains that some characteristics of race as a politically constructed categorization are that (1) it's essentially relational rather than monadic, (2) it's dynamic rather than static, (3) it's only contingently tied to a person's physical appearance, (4) it's usually vertically defined, in terms of hierarchy and subordination, (5) it may vary both temporally in a given system and geographically through entry into a different system, (6) it's unreal in a biological sense, (7) it's real in a sociohistorical or political sense, (8) it has to be maintained through constant boundary policing, and (9) historically the most important global racial system has been that of white domination over nonwhite people.²⁰

      Mills therefore says that in response to the "dark ontologies" of white supremacy (and of slavery, colonialism, and racial segregation), which have reinforced white domination over nonwhite people, revisionist ontologies can be undertaken in one or both of two ways: (1) by recognizing the metaphysical infrastructure of dark ontologies, and (2) by eradicating the substantive conditions of black subordination.

      Axelle Karera (2022) explores the use in contemporary black studies of the concept of "paraontology," which was originated by the philosopher Nahum Chandler. She describes paraontology as "a radical disruption in the hegemonic and purist logic of ontology," saying that it's a method of reading that conceals, retreats, or shelters itself from classical ontology, and that therefore offers us "the possibility of considering blackness beyond (though always with and against) the violence of its constitution."²¹

      Farai Chipato and David Chandler (2022) describe the "Black Horizon" of social and political thought as a perspective that, rather than leading toward a plurality of ontologies, deconstructs or destabilizes the very notion of ontology. They say that "the fugitive inclinations of the Black Horizon suggest lines of flight away from concrete ontological positions towards being as a poetics...It is an aesthetic method rather than an ontologizing practice, a creative becoming that cannot provide a new foundation for thought, but remains suspended in a creative, opaque uncertainty."²²

      

FOOTNOTES

¹David Miguel Gray, "Racial Ontology: A Guide for the Perplexed. Part IIIB: Sociohistorical Theories of Race," video for WiPhi Open Access Philosophy, 2017, online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcuabrV0Cok

²Ismalia De Sousa, "Centering Black feminist thought in nursing praxis," in Nursing Inquiry, Volume 29, Issue 1, Nov. 24, 2021, online at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nin.12473

³Emilie M. Townes, "To Be Called Beloved: Womanist Ontology in PostModern Refraction," in The Annual Society of Christian Ethics, Vol. 13 (1993), p. 94.

⁴Ibid., p. 94.

⁵Ibid., p. 114.

⁶Liz Stanley and Sue Wise, "Feminist Epistemology and Ontology: Recent Debates in Feminist Social Theory," 2008, p. 348 online at https://ijsw.tiss.edu/collect/ijsw/index/assoc/HASH67b2/08dbd2b6.dir/doc.pdf

⁷Ibid., p. 348.

⁸Ibid., p. 355.

⁹Pamela L. Caughie, Emily Datskou, and Rebecca Parker, "Storm Clouds on the Horizon: Feminist Ontologies and the Problem of Gender, in Feminist Modernist Studies (1,3: 230-242), 2018.

¹⁰Calvin Warren, Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), p. 6.

¹¹Ibid., p. 7.

¹²Calvin Warren, "The Karen Call: Emergency, Destiny, and Surveillance," in Critical Philosophy of Race, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2022, p. 141.

¹³Ibid., p. 148.

¹⁴Ron Scapp, "Postscript: Being in One's Place: Race, Ontology and the Killing of Trayvon Martin," in NAES (National Association for Ethic Studies) FORum Pamphlet Series, Volume 1, Article 1, 2013, p. 5.

¹⁵George Yancy, "Introduction: Speaking Behind and To the Veil," in Black Men from behind the Veil: Ontological Interrogations, edited by George Yancy (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2022), p. 2.

¹⁶Fred Moten, "The Case of Blackness," in Criticism, Spring 2008, Vol. 50, No. 2, p. 180.

¹⁷Ibid., p. 187.

¹⁸Marquis Bey, Black Trans Feminism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2022), p. 13.

¹⁹Victor Anderson, Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (London: Bloomsbury, 1995), p. 11.

²⁰Charles W. Mills, Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 76-77.

²¹Axelle Karera, "Paraontology: Interruption, Inheritance, or a Debt One Often Regrets," in Critical Philosophy of Race, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2022, pp. 159-161.

²²Farai Chipato and David Chandler, "The Black Horizon: Alterity and Ontology in the Anthropocene," in Global Society (Routledge, August 10, 2022), p. 13, online at https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/download/0d3820337d2853d67931f13d88da3f5d71525602c55afa774c98cb40e9b3f81d/1997762/The%20Black%20Horizon%20Alterity%20and%20Ontology%20in%20the%20Anthropocene.pdf