Introduction

Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages.

— Frederick Douglass

Making Space for Justice poses a question rarely asked by philosophers: How might understanding the activities and methods of social movements seeking justice help to answer fundamental questions about the demands of justice and advance important debates about what it takes to satisfy those demands? This book argues that what we learn from progressive social movements could be transformative for philosophical theory as well as for political practice.1 From the abolitionist movement of the nineteenth century to twenty- first- century movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, progressive social movements have been wellsprings of constructive moral inquiry as well as transformative political action. Indeed, as Michael Walzer urged in Interpretation and Social Criticism, “In so far as we can recognize it, moral progress is more a matter of (workmanlike) social criticism and political struggle, than (paradigm shattering) philosophical

2 Introduction

speculation.”2 My book articulates some of the most consequential insights to emerge from the criticism and struggles conducted by progressive social movements. My aim is to show what those insights mean for theoretical reflection about the nature of justice, as well as how they might inform new and ongoing movements seeking to promote justice.

Philosophers can certainly help to create space for justice by means of careful theorizing about the nature and sources of justice, critical analyses of moral and political thinkers and traditions, and constructing inspiring visions of political life. But this book presupposes a way of thinking about the role of philosophers that has been mostly unwelcome in philosophy since the idea of the “philosopher- king” emerged in Plato’s Republic. My argument draws on John Dewey’s pragmatism, with its insistence that the philosopher’s critical reflections— however valuable— have no special authority in the pursuit of social justice. Dewey’s refusal to claim such authority led him to argue, in a book on Ethics jointly authored with James Tufts, that the ethical theories produced by philosophers are not “incompatible rival systems which must be accepted or rejected en bloc, but . . . more or less adequate methods for surveying the problems of conduct.” Dewey and Tufts went on to contend that the aim of any comprehensive review of such theories should be the intellectual “emancipation” of the student of ethics, a process that will put the student in a position to “judge the problems of conduct for himself.”3 Making Space for Justice is rooted in the philosophical humility that underlies this Deweyan stance.

In this context, philosophical humility involves acknowledging that social movements frequently produce knowledge that makes indispensable contributions to social and political thought. As sociologists Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison have argued, social movements “are best conceived of as temporary public

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spaces, as movements of collective creation that provide societies with ideas, identities, and even ideals.” 4 On this view, social movements are essentially “forms of cognitive praxis.” Eyerman and Jamison focus on the “socially conditioned” and locally valuable knowledge that social movements produce. But I will urge that the value and validity of at least some insights emerging from the criticism and struggle of social movements cannot be limited by social or cultural boundaries. This is particularly true of the moral insights social movements produce through what I call “engaged moral inquiry.” Here, I follow William James in holding that “we all help to determine the content of ethical philosophy so far as we contribute to the [human] race’s moral life.”5 Yet I also explore the insights that social movements have generated about how to realize justice, since such insights are critical to bridging the gap between intelligent theory and effective practice. Some insights in this category will necessarily be socially conditioned and mainly relevant to particular locales. This book is not the first contribution to political philosophy to take social movements seriously. Philosophers such as David Lyons (on confronting historical injustice), Sally Haslanger (on social movements and ideology), Candace Delmas (on the duty to resist), and Chris Lebron (on Black Lives Matter) have made important contributions to our understanding of the work that many social movements do.6 Moreover, central theories defended by John Rawls, on civil disobedience, and Iris Young, on the “politics of difference,” seek to construct philosophical arguments by relying on important ideas and ideals associated with social movements. I discuss the relevant aspects of Rawls’s views in chapters 1 and 4, and important themes from Young’s work in chapters 2, 3, and 7. But Making Space for Justice is the first book to approach the criticism and struggle carried out by social movements with robust philosophical humility. I am claiming that

4 Introduction

some of the knowledge generated by social movements is as critical to understanding the nature and sources of justice, and the nature and content of core democratic values, as to determining how collective action might help to promote justice and preserve democracy.

Progressive social movements are often driven by the conviction that those on whose behalf they struggle have been wrongly denied access to valuable elements of “universal citizenship,” such as substantive equal rights, equal protection of the laws, and equal liberty.7 But these movements also teach us that justice ultimately demands what I have labeled humane regard— a combination of compassionate concern and robust respect— and that we can remedy injustice only when we properly expand the reach of society’s concern and respect. Regrettably, some of the most important elements of humane regard have never been adequately understood by familiar philosophical moral conceptions— whether utilitarian, Kantian, virtue- based, care- focused, or libertarian. I will urge that moral and political philosophy cannot defensibly remain unchanged in light of this fact.

Two changes will be critical. First, we need a deeper understanding of compassionate concern, including better accounts of how it can be developed in individuals and sustainably embodied in social institutions and practices. Second, although there is already a rich literature on the social and institutional requirements of respect, we need to better understand how respect for the moral separateness of autonomous agents can be constructively combined with compassionate concern, which emphasizes moral connectedness. Progressive social movements have consistently challenged us to reject the assumption that compassionate concern and robust respect might be inherently incompatible. This means that we need more sustained reflection, within philosophy and other disciplines, about how to constructively

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combine compassion and respect in service of humane regard. I argue, here, that social movements convincingly show that imagination in its various uses— especially sympathetic, aesthetic, epistemic, and narrative— is critical to developing our capacity for humane regard.

Social movements have also shown that even if we meet the theoretical challenges associated with understanding justice as humane regard, it can still be extremely difficult to transform societies to meet the demands of justice. As Frederick Douglass argues in “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” long- standing social orders are like “great streams” that are not easily turned from channels of injustice “worn deep in the course of ages.”8 This means that in contemporary political societies, social movements must often devote much of their effort to making cultural and political “space” for justice. That effort typically involves three related tasks: First, social movements must convince people that a given set of circumstances actually constitutes injustice and that the harms experienced by those who are subject to it ought to be addressed. Second, people must be persuaded that there is a reasonable remedy for that injustice and that is sensible to hope for its realization. Finally, they must be convinced that it is humanly and politically possible to realize the objects of that hope in practice. Making Space for Justice will explore the methods and tools by which social movements have taken on these tasks and frequently succeeded. The book will show that social movements have often found ways of expanding conceptual and perceptual space for justice by drawing on the transformative powers of imagination, but also that they have often strengthened the motivation to pursue justice by helping to inspire genuine political hope.

Part 1, “Understanding Social Movements,” comprises three chapters that explain the nature of social movements and explore

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several processes by which the constructive social change that they often enable takes place. Chapter 1 contends that constructive social movements are collective, noninstitutional endeavors in “contentious politics” (in Charles Tilly’s phrase) through which a social group asserts unaddressed needs, demands attention to insufficiently acknowledged interests, or seeks respect for the worth of some marginalized or excluded group or project. Although some theorists have feared that extra- institutional collective action is always a dangerous expression of collective irrationality, this chapter shows that the contentious politics of constructive social movements often provide invaluable lessons about the moral obligations of citizenship. One of the most important such lessons is that dissent, protest, and even collective disobedience to law can be fully justifiable expressions of conscientious citizenship. The chapter also shows that social movements are complex communities of concern and action characterized by a “division of labor.” That labor includes (a) the material sacrifice and political struggle of those who actively assert justice- claims in activities such as sit- ins, marches, boycotts, or strikes; (b) the social criticism produced by people such as philosophers, religious thinkers, historians, and artists; and, finally, (c) the leadership of moral visionaries and social innovators who, in many social movements, become public symbols of the movements’ values and goals. Constructive change sometimes takes a long time because successfully coordinating all the necessary labor of social movements is a daunting task.

Chapter 2 argues that many social movements have yielded valuable lessons about the institutions, practices, and habits of mind that are crucial supports of democratic cooperation. They have provided critical insights about the norms of public discussion that are most likely to promote democratic communication and about the kinds of reasons most likely to shape inclusive