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The Racism of Philosophy's Fear of Cultural Relativism

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The Racism of Philosophy's Fear of Cultural Relativism Journal of World Philosophies Articles/99 The Racism of Philosophy’s Fear of Cultural Relativism∗ _________________________________________ SHUCHEN XIANG Institute of Foreign Philosophy, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Peking University, China ([email protected]) By looking at a canonical article representing academic philosophy’s orthodox view against cultural relativism, James Rachels’ “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism,” this paper argues that current mainstream western academic philosophy’s fear of cultural relativism is premised on a fear of the racial Other. The examples that Rachels marshals against cultural relativism default to the persistent, ubiquitous, and age-old stereotypes about the savage/barbarian Other that have dominated the history of western engagement with the non-western world. What academic philosophy fears about cultural relativism, it is argued, is the barbarians of the western imagination and not fellow human beings. The same structure that informs fears of cultural relativism, whereby people with different customs are reduced to the barbarian/savage of the western imagination, can be seen in the genesis of international law which arose as a justification for the domination of the Amerindian (parsed as “barbarians”). It is argued that implicit in arguments against cultural relativism is the preservation of the same right to dominate the Other. Finally, it is argued that the appeal of the fear of cultural relativism is that, in directing moral outrage at others, one can avoid reflecting on the failures of one’s own cultural tradition. Key words: racism; barbarian; moral universalism; cultural relativism; James Rachels; Amerindian; international law 1 Introduction This paper will illustrate how the structure of mainstream western philosophy’s fear of cultural relativism can be understood as a continuation of the pervasive racist beliefs that have dominated much of western history. I focus on a representative expression of why western philosophy takes cultural relativism to be anathema—James Rachels’ “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism” (2012)1—as a key example of how the basic structures and assumptions that underlie racist ideology are still very much present in modern philosophical discourse. Although there are many dimensions to racism and this paper cannot possibly address them all, there are a few key features of racist ideology that I focus on. Generally, we can consider western racism to involve two key features. The first is ontology. The idea of “race,” i.e., the belief in the existence of discrete, hierarchical groups among human beings, involves assumptions about the natural world that date back (at least) to Greek society.2 As I will explain more below, the Greek man, who understood himself to be “rational,” also understood himself to be the highest on a hierarchy of different races and relatedly, to transcend nature. The idea of “race,” then, is fundamentally an interpretation of what things “are” (in this case: human beings). In other words, it provides an accurate descriptive account of these things. But the structure of the idea of race does not stop ∗ I would like to thank the editors of this journal, Dr. Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach and Dr. Amy Donahue, for their extensive comments and insightful feedback on previous versions of this paper and for their surpassing professionalism. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers whose comments helped improve my work. I would also like to thank Jacob Bender for reading previous drafts of this paper. His input has greatly helped clarify my argument. _______________ Journal of World Philosophies 5 (Summer 2020): 99-120 Copyright © 2020 Shuchen Xiang. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.5.1.07 Journal of World Philosophies Articles/100 there. In the western context, because “white men” considered themselves to be the highest on the racial hierarchy and to transcend nature, they then believed that they had the right to (or, strictly speaking, the telos) to dominate the other races (who represent merely nature) and in this case, the non-Greek, whom as it will be shown, was equated with the barbarian and “natural slave.” The locus classicus of these two features that I describe can be found in Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery. In this enormously influential statement (which, as will be shown below, formed the basis of the Spanish justification for colonizing the Americas), Aristotle equates non- Greeks with barbarians and barbarians with natural slaves such that non-Greeks are natural slaves. A natural slave is one who is incapable of reason on his own and must be subjugated by a rational (i.e., male, Greek) agent in order to partake of reason: There is another sort of monarchy not uncommon among foreigners, which nearly resembles tyranny. But this is both legal and hereditary. For foreigners, being more servile in character than Hellenes, and Asiatics than Europeans, do not rebel against a despotic government. Such kingships have the nature of tyrannies because the people are by nature slaves; but there is no danger of their being overthrown, for they are hereditary and legal. For the same reason, their guards are such as a king and not such as a tyrant would employ, that is to say, they are composed of citizens, whereas the guards of tyrants are mercenaries. For kings rule according to law over voluntary subjects, but tyrants over involuntary; and the one are guarded by their fellow-citizens, the others are guarded against them (Pol.1285a18-1285a2). From this it can be seen that: (1) the proper telos and the only telos of the slave is to be a slave. Even his physical nature is commensurable with his end: the natural slave is built for hard labor and the freeman for political life. As Aquinas later explains, the slave is “almost an animated instrument of service” (quoted in Pagden 2015: 104).3 And (2) the master and slave have the same interest because the slave can partake of reason by imitating his master; in his natural state he is incapable of fulfilling his proper telos. Each thing has one telos, and the slave’s telos is to be ruled by rational men. The slave, like the animal, is all body and no mind, and as such should be ruled by those who possess reason. That the slave should be dominated is part of the natural hierarchy, because the rational dominates the non-rational. The relationship between the master and slave as described in Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery has historically been applied to that between conqueror and conquered. Augustine’s City of God quotes Cicero’s de Republica as saying that the ruling of the provinces is just as “servitude may be advantageous to the provincials” because as “they became worse and worse so long as they were free, they will improve by subjection” (quoted in Isaac 2004: 183). This subjection of the provincials operates in the same way as the soul’s rule over the body and reason’s rule over the passions and other vicious parts of the soul. In sum, there are two parts to the racist structure that is exemplified in Rachels’ argument: (1) The idea of “race” always involved unempirical myths/fantasies about the natural world (i.e., “is”), and (2) on the basis of this ontological framework, this system and its (racist) participant further make claims about how “rational” persons should behave considering these racial differences (i.e., “ought”). When looking at Rachels’ argument, as I hope to illustrate below, there are clear examples of (1) basic racist myths/fantasies used to support his thesis, as if these stories were somehow accurate historical accounts, and (2) implicit in this assumption of ontological difference/hierarchy is the further claim about what “ought” to happen (on the basis of the assumption of ontological difference/hierarchy between different kinds of humans). What “ought” to happen is that rational persons ought to restrain, according to objective moral truths that only they can understand, those who are (culturally) different, as cultural difference is a sign _______________ Journal of World Philosophies 5 (Summer 2020): 99-120 Copyright © 2020 Shuchen Xiang. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.5.1.07 Journal of World Philosophies Articles/101 of ontological difference and ontological difference is necessarily parsed hierarchically. Historically, one only assumed cultural incommensurability if one assumed that cultural difference is a symptom of ontological incommensurability, i.e., different races. The assumption of cultural (parsed as ontological) incommensurability and the concomitant fear of cultural (parsed as ontological) difference/relativism are distinctive features of racist ideology. A related problem is that, although some of Rachels’ examples are not racist myths, these examples still illustrate the problematic structure of how cultural difference was and is interpreted through a racist lens (i.e., cultural difference is assumed to be “incommensurable” or “inexplicable” and “antithetical” because it is understood as a sign of ontological difference/hierarchy). In other words, part of the history of racism in “western”4 countries involved seeing cultural difference as representing or expressing an underlying ontological difference/hierarchy and therefore as reasons to enslave, oppress, and kill native populations. Although Rachels does not explicitly claim that other cultures that participate in certain practices are inferior to those of the west, the asymmetrical structure of his argument implies this. Rachels’ argument is asymmetrical in the sense that he only employs the moral failures of other cultures to evidence global issues, such as sexism. This exclusive focus on the moral failure of others, simultaneous with his lack of self-critique and reflection on the same global issues within his own society, betrays the asymmetrical assumption that it is only ever the racial Other who is, by default, morally suspect.
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