- Princeton, NJ
United States
Elvira Basevich
University of California, Davis, Philosophy, Faculty Member
- Princeton University, University Center for human values, Department Memberadd
- I am Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis and the Laurance S. Rockefeller Visitin... moreI am Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis and the Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at Princeton's University Center of Human Values.edit
Introduction to my Book Manuscript for the Black Lives Series in Polity Press
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This essay applies Charles W. Mills’s notion of the domination contract to develop a Kantian theory of justice. The concept of domination underlining the domination contract is best understood as structural domination, which unjustifiably... more
This essay applies Charles W. Mills’s notion of the domination contract to develop a Kantian theory of justice. The concept of domination underlining the domination contract is best understood as structural domination, which unjustifiably authorizes institutions and labour practices to weaken vulnerable groups’ public standing as free, equal, and independent citizens. Though Kant’s theory of justice captures why structural domination of any kind contradicts the requirements of justice, it neglects to condemn exploitive gender- and race-based labour relations. Because the ideal of civic equality must position all persons as co-legislators of the terms of political rule, the state must dismantle exploitive race- and gender-based labour relations for all persons to command political power as civic equals.
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This essay presents the normative foundation of W.E.B. Du Bois’s constructivist theory of justice in three steps. First, I show that for Du Bois the public sphere in Anglo-European modern states consists of a dialectical interplay between... more
This essay presents the normative foundation of W.E.B. Du Bois’s constructivist theory of justice in three steps. First, I show that for Du Bois the public sphere in Anglo-European modern states consists of a dialectical interplay between reasonable persons and illiberal rogues. Second, under these nonideal circumstances, the ideal of autonomy grounds reasonable persons’ deliberative openness, an attitude of public moral regard for others which is necessary for constructing the terms of political rule. Though deliberative openness is the essential vehicle of construction, reasonable persons only have a pragmatic political obligation to forge ties of deliberative reciprocity with likeminded persons whom they trust will listen and not harm them. Finally, I present Du Bois’s defense of black suffragists’ support of the 19th Amendment to illustrate pragmatic political obligation in action. I sketch successful democratic engagement that reconstitutes a nonideal public sphere.
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In this essay I develop W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness to demonstrate the limitations of Kant’s and Rawls’s models of self-respect. I argue that neither Kant nor Rawls can explain what self-respect and resistance to... more
In this essay I develop W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness to demonstrate the limitations of Kant’s and Rawls’s models of self-respect. I argue that neither Kant nor Rawls can explain what self-respect and resistance to oppression warrants under the conditions of violent and systematic racial exclusion. I defend Du Bois’s proposal of voluntary black self-segregation during the Jim Crow era and explain why Du Bois believes that the black American community has a moral right to assert its self-respect by mitigating exposure to racial violence and animus in a white-controlled polity.
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In response to D. C. Matthew’s article “Racial Integration and the Problem of Relational Devaluation,” I assess the politics of physical beauty in the intersection between the cat- egories of race and gender. I scrutinize Matthew’s... more
In response to D. C. Matthew’s article “Racial Integration and the Problem of Relational Devaluation,” I assess the politics of physical beauty in the intersection between the cat- egories of race and gender. I scrutinize Matthew’s contention that being perceived to be physically attractive reliably results in either good treatment or high self-esteem. I argue that, on the contrary, gender can function as a means of social control, in which the appraisal of women’s bodies yields neither good treatment nor improves their self-esteem. This problem can persist among self-segregated intra-group racial communities.
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This essay develops Kant's theory of reform to theorize racial justice reform. I assess the function of Kant's philosophy of race as part of his nonideal theory of justice, which offers a racist pragmatic anthropology that uses the... more
This essay develops Kant's theory of reform to theorize racial justice reform. I assess the function of Kant's philosophy of race as part of his nonideal theory of justice, which offers a racist pragmatic anthropology that uses the concept of race to determine the practical effectiveness of legislative reason. His philosophy of race defends a teleological account of the natural history of the human species to fulfill the requirements of justice and assumes that certain racial groups have failed to develop their innate capacity for legislative reason. I show that we need an alternative Kantian nonideal theory of justice that demonstrates how legislative reason actualizes practical freedom. Rather than appeal to anthropology, I expand Kant's model of public reason to advance racial justice reform under the conditions of partial compliance to the requirements of justice in a profoundly nonideal republic such as the U.S. I then showcase the promise-and limits-of the a priori ideals of citizenship and publicity for racial justice reform and introduce the ideal of interracial civic fellowship to guide the public use of reason in nonideal circumstances.
Research Interests: Democratic Theory, Race and Racism, State Formation, Race and Ethnicity, Public Reason, and 12 moreMoral Development, Philosophy Of Race, Immanuel Kant, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Democracy, Moral Philosophy, Kant's Political Philosophy, Citizenship, Rationality, United States, Constituionalism and Constitutional Law, and Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality
W.E.B. Du Bois's socialism has provoked debate for decades. His democratic theory and critique of political economy supports democratic socialism. In this article, I offer a philosophical reconstruction of the normative foundation of his... more
W.E.B. Du Bois's socialism has provoked debate for decades. His democratic theory and critique of political economy supports democratic socialism. In this article, I offer a philosophical reconstruction of the normative foundation of his democratic socialism in three steps. First, I argue that his philosophy of the modern democratic state supports the people's advance of the principle of free and equal citizenship or civic equality. Next, I present his critique of the modern American welfare state, which asserts the fair value of political liberty and democratic control over productive activities. Finally, I introduce the method of the excluded groups from Darkwater as an ideal procedure for guiding democratic deliberation in a profoundly nonideal public sphere. The method foregrounds the voices of excluded groups to correct asymmetrical relations of practical power and to infuse democratic reason with practical intelligence, namely, new content and values that can lead to the development of a democratic socialist state.
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In this essay, I challenge Charles Mills's use of the category of moral personhood for advancing a robust anti-racist political critique in nonideal circumstances. I argue that the idea of the moral equality of persons is necessary but... more
In this essay, I challenge Charles Mills's use of the category of moral personhood for advancing a robust anti-racist political critique in nonideal circumstances. I argue that the idea of the moral equality of persons is necessary but insufficient for reparative justice. I enrich the normative basis of political critique to include: (1) a clarification of what the public recognition of moral personhood can legitimately entail as a requirement of justice enforceable by the state, especially with respect to economic reforms that advance equal opportunity and (2) a conception of non-alienated labor that assails identity-based occupational segregation in the labor market. These additional components do not exhaust the plausible bases for political critique, but enrich it in a way that the idea of moral equality alone cannot.
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In this essay, I defend the pragmatic relevance of race in history. Kant and Hegel’s racist development thesis assumes that nonwhite, non-European racial groups are defective practical agents. In response, philosophers have opted to drop... more
In this essay, I defend the pragmatic relevance of race in history. Kant and Hegel’s racist development thesis assumes that nonwhite, non-European racial groups are defective practical agents. In response, philosophers have opted to drop race from a theory of history and progress. They posit that denying its pragmatic relevance amounts to anti-racist egalitarianism. I dub this tactic ‘colorblind cosmopolitanism’ and offer grounds for its rejection. Following Du Bois, I ascribe, instead, a pragmatic role to race in history. Namely, Du Bois argues that race is an ‘instrument of progress’ that advances emancipatory struggle. He appeals to the writing of history—or historiography—to cultivate group consciousness of historical memory in order to (1) strengthen intragroup bonds among the racially oppressed, especially black Americans and (2) to create intergroup bonds that reconstruct the republic on the basis of universal ideals. I detail Du Bois’s defense of the black struggle for freedom in the wake of the U.S. Civil War to provide a concrete illustration of ‘spirit’ in American history.
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This chapter introduces W.E.B. Du Bois's original political thought and his strategies for political advocacy. It is limited to explaining the pressure he puts on the liberal social contract tradition, which prioritizes the public values... more
This chapter introduces W.E.B. Du Bois's original political thought and his strategies for political advocacy. It is limited to explaining the pressure he puts on the liberal social contract tradition, which prioritizes the public values of freedom and equality for establishing fair and inclusive terms of political membership. However, unlike most liberal theorists, Du Bois's political thought concentrates on the politics of race, colonialism, gender, and labor, among other themes, in order to redefine how political theorists and activists should build a democratic polity that is truly free and equal for all. Additionally, this chapter defines some key concepts Du Bois developed to scrutinize a white-controlled world that does not welcome black and brown persons as moral equals. These trailblazing concepts include: the doctrine of racialism, double consciousness, and Pan-Africanism. Finally, this chapter defends Du Bois's contributions to black feminist thought and American labor politics, which inspired major social justice movements in the twentieth century, in which he played a notable role.
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I draw on W.E.B. Du Bois's political thought to challenge Shalit's characterization of the role of the philosopher and the public in political theory. In drawing on Du Bois, I press three issues to clarify what it would take for a... more
I draw on W.E.B. Du Bois's political thought to challenge Shalit's characterization of the role of the philosopher and the public in political theory. In drawing on Du Bois, I press three issues to clarify what it would take for a political philosopher to take into consideration what the public thinks: (1) the relation of the method of public reflective equilibrium to history and the empirical sciences; (2) the moral education that results from the public's participation in philosophical discussions; and (3) how political philosophers should handle the public's recalcitrant ignorance and hostility in their theories. Introduction.
Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, Political Philosophy, Democratic Education, Human Rights, Democratic Theory, and 11 moreRace and Racism, Race and Ethnicity, Social Justice, Public Deliberation, Public Reason, Deliberative Democracy, Philosophy Of Race, Africana Studies, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory, and Political, Moral, and Legal Philosophy (especially Public Reason Liberalism and the Role of Religion in the Public Square)
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In this essay, I argue that Hegel's model of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) is normatively gripping for Du Bois's critique of Radical Reconstruction. My argument proceeds in three steps. First, I use Du Bois's insights to explain the nature... more
In this essay, I argue that Hegel's model of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) is normatively gripping for Du Bois's critique of Radical Reconstruction. My argument proceeds in three steps. First, I use Du Bois's insights to explain the nature of progressive political change in historical time, an account Hegel lacks. I reconstruct the normative basis of Du Bois's political critique by articulating the three essential features of public reasoning qua citizenship. Second, I defend the promise of black civic enfranchisement with respect to the institutional conditions of love and labour in the wake of the Civil War. Third, I establish the central role black freedmen played in realizing the ideals of democratic self-governance affirmed in principle but seldom realized in practice in the United States.
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In this essay, I assess the experiences of divine revelation in St. Teresa of Ávila and Simone Weil by contrasting their underlining models for the realization of the highest good. For St. Teresa, god’s manifestation is physically... more
In this essay, I assess the experiences of divine revelation in St. Teresa of Ávila and Simone Weil by contrasting their underlining models for the realization of the highest good. For St. Teresa, god’s manifestation is physically gratifying, which implicitly represents the world as part of a metaphysical order in which god intervenes to reward the good with happiness. For Weil, on the contrary, divine revelation issues from suffering, which she calls “affliction.” Against the conventional view that Weil defends a theodicy, I argue that her account of affliction highlights the problem of radical evil and senseless suffering in 20th-century Europe. In line with Kant—an unlikely ally, perhaps—she articulates the moral grounds of religion to sustain moral faith, namely: the challenge of maintaining a good will in the aftermath of senseless suffering and for resisting the natural propensity to radical evil in response to being a victim of wrongdoing.
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This chapter reviews major taxonomic approaches to the study of values, organizing discussion around the theory of political ideology as motivated social cognition. In addition, it summarizes existing research programs addressing the... more
This chapter reviews major taxonomic approaches to the study of values, organizing discussion around the theory of political ideology as motivated social cognition. In addition, it summarizes existing research programs addressing the connections among personality characteristics, value priorities, and political ideology, focusing especially on the values of equality and tradition. It is found that citizens in long-standing democracies such as Western Europe and North America tend to exhibit patterns consistent with an “elective affinities” model, which is characterized by a sorting of individuals into ideological classifications that match their underlying psychological needs and motives, but such patterns are absent or less apparent in newer Eastern European democracies. Additional data analyses are presented involving a sample of university students in Texas, and these indicate that (1) values mediate some of the effects of personality characteristics on political ideology, and (2) ideological proclivities mediate some of the effects of personality characteristics on value prioritization.