IMPORTANT, ESSAY SHOULD BE WRITTEN THIS WAY:
- Need for in text citation every time a source is cited using harvard style (ex: Kant, 1995, p.15).
- Need to analyze what ‘fundamental’ means in this question in the introduction.
- this essay needs to show how race is or is not fundamental to their moral thoughts and also evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments and defend the argument of the essay.
- This essay should be built on the readings i have provided in pdf and below cited, they are my primary readings and need to be the central source of information.
KANT:
– PDF 1: Some of Kant’s comments on race are collected in chapter 4 of Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (1997)
– PDF 2: (could be used as counter argument) For the view that Kant was personally racist but that his moral theory is not at heart racist, see Thomas Hill and Bernard Boxill, ‘Kant and race’, in Bernard Boxill, ed., Race and Racism (2001),
– PDF 3: critique of Kant’s racism is Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, ‘The color of reason: the idea of “race” in Kant’s anthroplogy’, The Bucknell Review 38:2 (1995)
– PDF 4: Robert Bernasconi also argues that Kant’s moral theory is at heart racist. Start with his ‘Will the real Kant please stand up’, Radical Philosophy 117 (2003)
– PDF 5: A typically penetrating account is offered by Charles Mills, ‘Kant’s untermenschen’
– PDF 6: How could Kant (and others) profess universal claims about humanity and yet exclude so many? An answer is given by Thomas McCarthy in chapter 2 of Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development (2009)
LOCKE:
– PDF 7 – LOCKE: John Bishop argues that Locke’s political arguments were essentially designed to justify dispossessing Native Americans, in ‘Locke’s theory of original appropriation and the right of settlement in Iroquois territory’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27:3 (1997).
– (web link to view chp) For a counter-argument, see Kathy Squadrito, CHP 6 ‘Locke and the dispossession of the American Indian’, in Ward and Lott.
web link: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Philosophers_on_Race/UauQbwLOxo8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=+‘Locke+and+the+dispossession+of+the+American+Indian&pg=PA101&printsec=frontcover
– PDF 8: POV that LOCKE is racist: Robert Bernasconi and Anika Maaza Mann, ‘The contradictions of racism: Locke, slavery, and the Two Treatises’, in Valls
– PDF 9: David Armitage, ‘John Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises of Government’, Political Theory 32:5 (2004), on connections between the Two Treatises and Locke’s 1682 revisions to the Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas.
- What matters most is that you offer a clear answer to the essay question, that you build convincing arguments to defend that answer, and that in doing so you select and draw upon relevant literature in ways that serve your arguments. In this sense, your essay should certainly be analytical rather than just descriptive.
- “Critically” evaluating: While you are expected to robustly account for the author’s ideas and argument, you need to have a clear argument of your own. That argument should explain to your reader what is important, significant, interesting, contradictory, or insufficient about the text’s conceptualization. Such arguments are often produced by examining not only what an author says, but also how they say it. How are concepts being deployed? What do they assume or take for granted? What are the salient conceptual oppositions or contrasts or juxtapositions? This is part of the process of figuring out how an author puts together their argument and what is perhaps important (or disturbing or unusual) about it.
- It’s always good to anticipate any likely objections to the argument that you are making and to pre- empt those objections. What points might a critic make to try to call your argument into question? How would you respond to those points?
- At the same time, it’s important not to end up sitting on the fence. It’s not a good thing to say “there are arguments for X and arguments for not-X” and just leave it at that. You should take a position in response to the question and argue in defence of that position. Dealing with any potential objections to your arguments should be part of that process.
- Your emphasis should be on interpretation rather than recounting historical/empirical detail. For example, for question 1, giving us lots of detail about what Kant thought about the different races does not tell us how fundamental race was to his theory. That is not a conclusion you can simply read off from what Kant writes: it is a separate step – an interpretation, an inference based on what he wrote but not contained in what he wrote.
- There is no need to compare the 2 authers, you can talk about 1 and then talk about the other one in a seperate section. you can compare but it is not a requirement.
ESSAY PLAN:
Your essay should include:
- an introduction which clearly states your thesis (your answer to the question, summarised in one or two sentences), briefly explains the arguments that you’ll make to defend that thesis, justifies your choice of case studies (if applicable), and offers a brief “roadmap” of the essay explaining very concisely how it will be structured
- a main body, in which you build those arguments to defend your thesis: Point, Evidence, Explanation, weakness of argument and strengths, counter argument + weakness and strength of counter argument – analyze if argument is sound or not. but keep it relevant to what you’re arguing)
- a conclusion, in which you briefly summarise your thesis and arguments, evaluate them and reflect on their significance – why do these arguments matter?