And It Spreads: The Observable Reality of Race
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2010
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Haverford College. Department of Philosophy
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Thesis
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eng
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Abstract
Lucius Outlaw claims that the notion of Race contradicts the philosophical commitment to Modernity. Race and Modernity are incongruent in regard to their conceptual frameworks for what constitutes people. While Modernity asserts a unity between people such that everyone is fundamentally the same, the concept of Race attempts to organize people into hierarchical groups. This contradiction requires that the two notions undergo some kind of revision. There are three possibilities for revising the incompatibility: to revise Race to work within the Modern framework, revise the framework of Modernity to include a coherent notion of Race, or revise both Race and Modernity. Outlaw revises both Race and Modernity. He treats Race and its constitutive parts as linguistic concepts that exist as a function of human cognition or recognition of them and change according to historical recognition. While the Modern view examines concepts as representing kinds that exist in the world, post-Modernism examines concepts as historically evolving and linguistic. Therefore Outlaw examines Race through a post-Modern framework. However, Outlaw’s post-Modern examination is not necessary if Race is a physically manifest and intuitively understood concept that takes on projected significance from complex social interactions. Hume’s discussion of causality provides an illustrative example of separating an observation from the projection put onto it. I will use Hume’s fundamentally Modern examination of and framework for causality to establish a parallel framework for separating the essential features of the concept of Race from projections put onto it. My framework for Race is compatible with Modernity and brings up the question of whether an accurate conception of Race requires a rejection of Modernity.