KCL Philosophy Review- Issue 2 [Winter 2023]

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Consider a 6-sided dice with equal dimensions on each side. By classical probability, you would expect to see a “1”, as likely as you would see a “6”, when you roll the dice once.

With all probability as equal and perfect, the odds of receiving different outcomes would be equal. When conducting an experiment, to test the fairness of the dice, you roll the dice multiple times, and then you would find the dice will show a “2” around a sixth of the time it is rolled. This process of repeating a certain procedure to find the probability of an outcome is described as the Frequentist measure of probability.

But what happens when we want to understand the probability of an outcome which isn’t equal and symmetric (as in classical probability), or the variables are not fixed or under identical conditions (as in the Frequentist’s case). Assume you are visiting a doctor while suffering from a stomach-ache.

You have visited the doctor a few times before, so they store your medical history and can make an educated guess on the condition you may have. The doctor asks you a few questions regarding your issue and as you answer, the doctor updates his hypothesis and becomes more or possible less confident in it. Once he attains the degree of confidence in his guess in consideration with the new

information provided, he diagnoses you with food poisoning. The process of updating one’s beliefs with additional evidence is known as the Bayesian epistemology.

After exploring the principle of conditionalization, central to Bayesian epistemology, this article presents the key supporting argument for the principle of conditionalization through the Dutch Book argument. This article then dissects Van Fraassen’s improvements to the argument.

Bayesian epistemology Bayesian epistemology gathers its roots from Bayes’ formula, which introduces conditionalization of a probability onto an outcome. Conditionalization tells us how to reallocate our belief when given new evidence. In a Bayesian setting, you start with a prior degree of belief attained from an outcome. As you collect more evidence, you condition your previous belief and re-evaluate your belief based on this new information.

Now, if you update your degree of belief to an extent it does not rationally match the new evidence, you are violating the Bayesian principle of probabilism. Remember, the probabilities involved in Bayesian epistemology are not as concrete as that of the Classical or Frequentist setting. Hence, it 3|Page

is harder to conceptualise the numeric probabilities of an outcome in a Bayesian setting in comparison to the classical and Frequentist method.

The Dutch Book Argument The model, the Dutch Book Argument, was proposed to provide foundation for calculating probabilities and conditionalization under Bayesian settings.

The Dutch Book argument is presented by David Lewis (1999), following one main train of thought: your beliefs define your actions. In a case regarding bets as the Dutch Book, is supporting the belief, the likelihood of event A occurring is greater than event B occurring, one would put more money on placing a bet with event A. According to Lewis, one could show the conditionalization of beliefs with the additional evidence from the Dutch Book incidence. The aim here is to show the updated degree of belief of stemming from a combination of the past belief with the updated evidence. If an agent playing the Dutch Book has updated their belief to the degree it does not correspond to the degree of the evidence, then we can create a series of Dutch Book bets that will cause the agent to lose in any event if they proceed with the game (Vineberg, 2022). Hence the conditionalization of our beliefs should be based solely on the evidence. It further suggests the Dutch Book argument provides a stronger method of understanding probabilities in Bayesian epistemology.

unfavourable evidence is discovered. In this case, Van Fraassen suggests reflection to support the principle of conditionalization in the Dutch Book argument. An agent who violates the principle of reflection is then liable to the Dutch Book betting strategy and is doomed to lose their bets in placing a side bet, preventing their own escape (Vineberg, 2022). However, more assumptions are formed. Calculating credence is already difficult but estimation of another’s belief in a game is harder. By placing a side bet on the agent’s degree of belief, the Dutch Book strategy then progresses into an impossible game of poker without solving the initial problem of the strategy. Hence the principle of reflection does not necessarily provide addition the Dutch Book argument.

The Dutch Book argument for conditionalization is hence left uncertain with many assumptions which has led philosophers (Rescorla, Howson) to improve the argument.

References Lewis, D. (1999). Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology. Cambridge University Press.

Van Fraassen, B. (1989). Laws and Symmetry.

Oxford University Press.

Vineberg, S. (2022, Fall). Dutch Book Arguments. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved December 1, 2023, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dutchbook/#toc

Improving the argument However, some philosophers feel that the assumptions, made from the Dutch Book argument, are destructive and hence invalidates the argument. Fraassen argues the Dutch Book strategy is not functional if the agent trusts initially in the game since the agent can withdraw from the game if 4|Page

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Philosophical debate has pondered metaphysics, which explores the nature of reality and existence, for centuries. The lack of scientific evidence and the sheer number of unanswered theories make metaphysics a fascinating branch of philosophy. The greatest debate of our existence questions whether our perceived reality is anything more than an illusion. This essay will, therefore, explore the relationship between the mind and the soul, discussing Avicenna’s ‘floating man’ thought experiment, Descartes’ conundrums and the ‘Brain in a Vat’ hypothesis furthered by science fiction narratives.

The ‘Floating Man’ (Avicenna) According to the Persian philosopher Avicenna, the ‘Floating Man’ experiment is a profound investigation into the complexities of self-awareness, the nature of the soul and the intricate dynamics defining the interaction between mind and body. Avicenna asks us to imagine a situation where all psychological sensations and sensory experiences are absent, but the person is nevertheless vividly aware of their own existence.

This thought experiment suggests the existence of an incorporeal soul, or selfawareness that is separate from the physical body. As a result, Avicenna presents an argument against notions of the mind-body connection, requiring us to reevaluate the fundamental essence of who we are in a way that goes beyond conventional lines of reasoning.

‘Cogito, ergo sum’ (Descartes) Descartes, a leader in contemporary philosophy, famously stated ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ which translates to ‘I think, therefore I am’. This statement anchored his core position in metaphysics. He separates himself from the common debate of sensory experiences in search of the unanswerable truth and instead emphasises thought as the foundation for certainty. He argues that our ability to question and contemplate is enough to be indisputable proof of one’s existence.

We can contrast Descartes with Avicenna’s ‘Floating Man’ thought experiment. This unveils the subtle ways in which both philosophers attempt to anchor our knowledge of our existence in unquestionable self-knowledge. Descartes stresses that certainty is enough to prove our thinking and existence, whereas Avicenna challenges us to consider the nature of self-awareness independent of external stimuli by taking us through a mental scenario devoid of sensory sensations. This analogy forces us to examine 6|Page

the various strands woven into these narratives and how each adds to our metaphysical comprehension.

Descartes and Avicenna ask us to consider the nature of self-knowledge and the underlying assumptions that support our conviction about existence.

‘Brain in a Vat’ Hypothesis – The Matrix Moment The ‘brain in a vat’ concept is a fascinating modern investigation that has been played out in many science fiction narratives, like The Matrix. Within this imaginary world, our experiences, ideas and senses are proposed to be fully virtual, similar to the characters in a computer-generated reality. Profound questions concerning the nature of reality itself and the veracity of our existence arise from the implications of living in a world where every aspect of our reality is manipulable. This scenario provides a stimulating prism through which we can compare and contrast different philosophical viewpoints.

When comparing Descartes’ scepticism and Avicenna’s reflection on self-awareness in the absence of sensory experiences to the ‘Brain in a Vat’ hypothesis, we find there is a common concern regarding the veracity of our knowledge and the essence of knowing oneself.

Descartes and the ‘Brain in a Vat’ theory struggle with widespread deception and the challenge of building a solid basis for knowledge. To this, Avicenna’s ‘Floating Man’ adds a scenario that disentangles selfawareness from the outside world, highlighting the soul’s incorporeal nature.

Despite this common theme, context and method differ. Descartes challenges the veracity of sensory experiences by relying on radical doubt and introspection. Avicenna’s

thought experiment highlights the soul’s separation from the body whilst simultaneously questioning sensory perceptions.

Conversely, the ‘Brain in a Vat’ theory questions the basic structure of our existence in the digital age by transporting the contemplation into a futuristic setting in which cutting-edge technology acts as a catalyst for virtual reality.

Even though self-awareness is present in all these experiments, each offers a unique perspective on our existence that allows us to consider the limits of reality, knowledge, and our own nature. The ‘Brain in a Vat’ theory illustrates how metaphysical research is always changing with developments in technology.

Conclusion Whilst contemplating metaphysical musings, we have explored classical thought experiments, traversed Cartesian hypotheses and contemplated science fiction theories like the ‘Brain in a vat’ idea. While these theories each attempt to explain our existence, the question of whether we might merely be brains in a vat is yet to be answered.

References Beck, R.N. (1953). Descartes’s Cogito Reexamined. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 14(2), p.212. doi:10.2307/2103328.

Halme, N. (2022). The Floating Man And The Methodological Grounds For Avicenna’s Immaterial Soul . HiPo: The Langara Student Journal of History and Political Science, 5 (3), 15-20. Available at: https://arcabc.ca/islandora/object/lc%3A478 8/datastream/PDF/view.

Steinitz, Y. (1994). Brains in a Vat: Different Perspectives. The Philosophical Quarterly, 44(175), p.213. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/2219742.

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We begin 2024 with almost all key areas of society, such as the family, economy, politics, and education in a state of crisis, or on the way to it. The question arises: what exactly is causing such disturbing consequences across these realms of life, and how can we improve the situation for the better, if at all? This article examines the evolution of ideas in society and their impact on reality in the context of these questions.

Let's look at the evolution of ideas in society.

First, there is reality, we exist in it and try to understand it. The discovery of a certain object of reality leads to its designation as a symbol - this is how an idea, a model of reality, is born. This idea exists for a certain period of time and reflects a certain aspect of the past reality. However, over time, reality changes, and if the designated object loses its correspondence to the sign or disappears, a new type of idea is born - a simulacrum.

Simulacra are substitutes and heirs of nonexistent objects of reality, which continue to play the role of reality by simulating it. The trick is that this simulacrum, as an idea, continues to exist only until there is an ultimatum request for the manifestation of the previous initial object of reality that performed the original functions. If the functional inconsistency of the simulacrum with reality is exposed, its crisis as an idea occurs.

We live in the age of information, and the speed of its transmission shapes reality. Every second, terabytes of information appear, disappear or are corrupted during its distribution. As the end user, generator and moderator of this information, we do not

have time to process it in accordance with the standards of past centuries when the rhythm of life was much slower. We therefore begin to use new methods of processing it, focusing either on very narrow and highly detailed aspects of reality or on a very broad and extremely abstract model of reality. As a result, the connection between reality and the symbols that represent it is diminishing, which, in turn, leads to faster cycles of information evolution and an increase in the number of local social crises associated with it.

Social relationships are a good example of a simulacrum in crisis. Family, friendship, professional, and general social relations have all been systematically moving towards crisis since the very beginning of the Internet. The instantaneous and global nature of communication has led to a rethinking of previous communication formats, and at the same time, it has transformed them into a different state where the virtual dominates the real - simulacrum. The longer social interaction is simulated, the less real it is, and the less memory of it remains. Taken together, this situation makes processes that, by definition, can only exist in the physical world become increasingly difficult to perform. In developed countries, the number of single people is increasing, whilst birth rates, life expectancy and family sizes are falling, the quality of school and university education is deteriorating, and the culture is stuck in postmodernism. And as for politics – the less said about that, the better.

After the simulacrum of global security was exposed first in 2020 by the global Covid-19 pandemic and then by the outbreak of 8|Page

Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022, a crisis has emerged in the notion of security that was formed as a guarantor of peace after World War II and the collapse of the USSR. The crisis in social relations has directly affected the way global organisations make decisions. Event forecasting algorithms based on statistics available in datasets and designed to automate decision-making are technically incapable of predicting unpredictable trends and randomness in the world. Unexpectedness is precisely the ultimatum demand for conformity with reality, which is why the existing simulacrum of the political (a product of simulation of reality) is creating perhaps the most ambitious crisis of this century.

References Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and Simulation. University of Michigan Press.

So is there a solution?

If we can agree on the assumption that simulacra that distort the reality of our society are evil and a state in which ideas reflect reality more accurately is our vision of a brighter future, there are several possible ways out of this crisis. It is important to focus on developing critical thinking and methods of analysing and exposing the simulacrum. It is necessary to completely rethink social relations in society and develop new approaches to information management.

Society should consider returning to more effective use of traditional means of communication and interaction. Virtual connections should not replace real ones but rather serve as a complement to them. A commonly accepted paradigm and effective ethical standards for software development should be formed. And finally, the key is to realise that it is society, its values and decisions that determine the direction in which the evolution of ideas moves.

Conscious and responsible existence should be the key to overcoming the crisis and restoring the connection between reality and its ideas.

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“Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one…cities will never have rest from their evils.” Plato Socrates, as Plato’s protagonist of The Republic, undertakes the herculean task of outlining an ideal state. His lengthy exercise with the characters Thrasymachus, a sophist, and Glaucon, a wealthy merchant, lead him to speak, among many other topics, of a hypothetical philosopher-king who would best rule Kallipolis. Plato, as argued through Socrates, believed that a state in the hands of common men, or of the Machiavellian sophists who represented them, would inevitably be steered to ruin. This article demonstrates Plato’s argument that the rule of philosopher-kings is the best form of government because it avoids the pitfalls of rule by the demos, it is led by him who is least ambitious, and, underpinning the former two, it is led by him who is most rational and virtuous. As argued by Plato, the wise philosopher who selflessly answers the call of duty, rather than lusting after power, will bring harmony to a state because he can see matters most dispassionately, truthfully, and lucidly.

The context of Plato’s life elucidates why he reached the above thesis. He was born around 428 B.C. after the commencement of the Peloponnesian War.

In his youth, he observed the triumph of Sparta over Athens and was even related to some of “the Thirty” Spartan tyrants who collectively presided over Athens after their victory. He was influenced by many earlier philosophers including Pythagoras and Heraclitus, but none had a greater effect on him than his mentor, Socrates. According to Plato, “Socrates was unique as a teacher in refusing to accept payment, in refusing to put his talents to … [argue] in the assembly or courts, and… in his method of careful questioning of anyone reputed to possess either knowledge or virtue.”

In 399 B.C., Socrates was condemned to death

by Athenian magistrates for impiety and corrupting the youth; Plato bore witness to this travesty. These formative experiences made him critical of Athenian democracy, 11 | P a g e

best described by Pericles as “justice…in the hands of the many”. The Republic is an overt display of scepticism against this popular rule and an endorsement of government by the objective, temperate, courageous, and wise few.

The concept of a philosopher-king fits in with Plato’s idea of the “just State”: in this Kallipolis, every person undertakes an allocated role based on what they are qualified to do; society is strictly regimented along a caste-like hierarchy. Those possessing the abovementioned qualities are preordained to govern. Yet such qualities are incredibly rare; they can only be found in the most philosophical and rational minority, not in the common man. Neither can they be found in Sophists: for-profit rhetoricians who were the main antagonists of Socrates in his life and The Republic. While Sophists are individuals, rule by them would still not satisfy Plato’s vision as “Sophists…in fact, teach nothing but the opinion of the many.”

Therefore, for Plato, the ethos of the masses and the Sophists are to be viewed interchangeably. As phrased by Glaucon, “certain professors of education must be wrong when they put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blind eyes.” For the author and his protagonist, knowledge cannot be bought, sold or inserted by someone else; it must be attained by a rare and virtuous rationality that looks beneath the façade of mere being to comprehend the true form of things. This knowledge is not found in the masses of men, or in Sophists who argue on their behalf; “to them... the truth would be literally nothing but shadows of the images.” Therefore, rule by philosopher-kings is ideal, because rule by common men connotes rule by those lacking true knowledge.

These same common men whom Plato discredits are those who yearn to rule most.

He recognized that those most hungry for dominion are least fit for it and perceived the power-hungry agenda of the Sophists who avariciously charged their pupils and stomped out Socrates’ free-thinking. Plato argues that rule by the reluctant and disinterested is best because they will not abuse the power bestowed upon them. Philosopher-kings, in particular, best represent this quality as their minds are “fixed upon true being,” and “surely [have] no time to look down upon the affairs of earth, or be filled with malice and envy, contending against men”. Despite their preoccupation with divine ideals, their nobility will impel them to abandon their solitude and guide the masses of mankind along as their political leader. In the allegory of the cave, as will be further discussed, the freed prisoner voluntarily descends back into the cave to liberate his former comrades and enlighten them to the true nature of things. Though he learned to thrive in the bright domain of the sun, this man (purportedly Socrates) sacrificed his own self-interest in the service of disseminating truth to others. It is implied that if philosopher-kings were self-serving, they would never engage in affairs of state – with prisoners of the cave – which they view to be trivial compared to the divine pursuit of truth, beauty, justice, and courage. Therefore, rule by a philosopher-king is best because he knows that power is not the ultimate end; he has an eye beyond such mundane and earthly things, towards divine light.

Lastly, Plato argues that rule by philosopherkings is best because they are the most wise, competent, and objective. This idea is most important and underpins the former two since wisdom and clarity cannot be found in the mediocre hordes of common men or in those who make power the object of their aim. Socrates declares that “no state can be happy which is not designed by artists who imitate the heavenly pattern” and 12 | P a g e

philosophers are the few mortals amongst men who can perceive and imitate said pattern; that is why they should be made kings. As previously touched upon, the allegory of the cave sees a group of “human beings living in an underground den… [since] childhood, and have their legs and necks chained before them… behind them a fire is blazing at a distance,” so they can see the silhouettes of objects passing behind them, illuminated by the fire on the cave wall.

Prisoners perceive these shadows to be the very objects themselves and Socrates likens the “prison-house to the world of sight, the light of the fire is the light of the sun.” When one of these prisoners attains the means to leave the cave, he is blinded by the sun and the clarity of real forms, but eventually, he acclimates to life on the surface and is instead enabled to see by the clarity of the sun. His ability to acclimate to surface life represents his profound wisdom, the surface world itself represents the dimension of imperceptible beauty, truth, and knowledge, behind the mirage of human awareness, (laid out in the theory of forms), and the bright sun is “the good”. This man, the philosopher-king, is able to perceive the true form of things, whereas the lot of humanity, still stuck in the cave, believes their perception of shadows to be the most accurate experience of reality. With his knowledge, the philosopher-king, if trusted, could help the prisoners out of the cave and, at least partially, reveal to them the true nature of reality; therefore, the powers of state ought to be entrusted to him as the most competent and insightful individual.

as faux-philosophers “who aspire after a profession which is above them and [of] which they are unworthy.” The ineptitudes of these common men are enough to impel the philosopher to leave his contemplative existence in the domain of the sun and descend upon the affairs of state, whereby he might lead masses as the wisest among them.

Therefore, Plato believes more truth is to be found in the individual judgement of philosopher-kings than in public opinion and endorses an illiberal government led by them.

References Boas, G. (1948). ‘Fact and Legend in the Biography of Plato’, The Philosophical Review, 57(5), 439–57. doi: 10.2307/2181715 Lane, Melissa. (2003). ‘Socrates and Plato: An Introduction’, in Christopher Rowe and Malcolm Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (pp. 155-63). Cambridge University Press.

Plato. (2011), Book I- VII. In Benjamin Jowett (Tr.) The Republic (pp. 3-108). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Thucydides. (1996) , ‘Pericles’ Funeral Oration’, Richard Hooker (Tr.) University of Minnesota Human Rights Library, Available at: http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/education/thucydid es.html.

Wikipedia contributors. (2023, December 24).

Leonidas Drosis. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved December,2023 from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=L eonidas_Drosis&oldid=1191525277.

Since philosopher-kings can perceive the true nature of forms, government by them is the ideal kind, according to Plato. The basis of this wisdom differentiates them from all others and enables them to reside above the domain of earthly power. Sophists are unable to achieve this task and must rightly be regarded 13 | P a g e

Throughout the course of a normal human life, we require a nearly unthinkable amount of support to become an independent person.

Being fed, nurtured, educated, employed, loved – all of these things rely on our relationships with others, a relationship of give and take. Yet many individuals around the world live as recluses or nomads, benefitting from the ways in which societies (governments and individuals both) contribute to the well-being of the commons without giving anything in return, through their labour or through taxation. The question I seek to examine is: what debts do we take on during our existence, primarily in the context of welfare? Do we owe it to general society and the economy at large to participate in its give-and-take?

To owe is to be morally compelled to do something for another. When I say I owe you five dollars for lunch, there is no legal framework, mandate, or physical force causing me to give you those five dollars. I owe it to you, as I borrowed it from you. It is my moral duty to return what I have borrowed: this is called the debt. In this article, we will examine debt in the moral sense, not the legal sense. Debt is the consequence of the moral stance that we should return what we borrow, i.e., a debt unpaid is a debt owed.

There are two senses in which someone can have a debt. The first of which I have already mentioned, is the contractual debt. I engage, in a consensual and uncoerced manner, in a sort of contract with you – I will take something from you now, and I take upon myself the moral obligation to return it. The strength of this moral compulsion is the foundation of contractual debt. The stronger the compulsion, the more reliable my repayment to you will be. The second sort of debt is what I call a societal debt. This is a debt that you have no choice but to bear the burden of. It is a moral expectation, or a duty, that you fulfil these debts. For example, one is expected to take care of one’s parents in their old age rather than abandon them, or even the moral compulsion to call the ambulance for someone who appears injured. We owe it to others to repay our societal debt, not because we have chosen to take on this debt, but because collectively, the lives of individuals in a society are better overall when we owe them certain modes of conduct. I will primarily examine contractual debts, as societal debts usually exist as dogmas.

Firstly, let us consider the birth of a person.

Individuals do not have any agency in whether they are born or not. They are simply born.

Individuals can only take on a contractual debt for something they, consensually and 14 | P a g e

uncoerced, chose to borrow. Because of this, the matter of one’s life is not in contractual debt. This extends further: we take it that individuals before a certain age have limited agency in their actions. Until a person can, in a consensual and uncoerced manner, choose anything in their lives, they cannot contractually accumulate debt in this manner.

The food we are fed as babies, the shelter we are protected in, the welfare our family might benefit from, are all such things that, morally speaking, we cannot accumulate a contractual debt from. This dependency means we cannot even analyse the question of whether a baby might eventually owe their parents the money they spent on childcare. Importantly, this has a consequence on debt transferring to next of kin. When a parent dies, and they possess a contractual debt, it is immoral to pursue the debt by the next of kin if they did not agree to insure the parent’s defaulting of the debt.

More interestingly, once individuals come of age and possess agency, the choices they make about what to borrow suddenly become morally important. Governments provide welfare for citizens. Different countries provide different types of public welfare, be it free or subsidized health services, education, housing, etc. Do individuals accumulate debt for this type of benefit? I posit not. It is the case that individuals do not choose what state they are born into, or what other citizenships they are eligible for. This lack of agency means that, when a welfare program is ubiquitous (i.e., all citizens receive the same benefit from it, whether they claim it or not), individuals cannot accumulate a debt from receiving it.

When a welfare program is not ubiquitous (e.g., unemployment/disability benefits, or other such additional benefits one must claim), I still posit that it is morally dubious to say one accumulates a debt from receiving this welfare. Let us take it to be the case that individuals do take on some contractual debt

when registering for a type of welfare which is reserved for a special class of individuals.

When this is the case, we would say that individuals owe this benefit back to society (we can conceptualize it as a “borrowing” of the public good), or must earn said benefit. To repay a debt after benefitting from welfare, individuals must provide some value to the public good – either engaging in labour or using their capital will satisfy the exchange.

Most individuals only possess labour – we cannot expect those on benefits to be capital owners. This means individuals are morally obliged to work for their benefits, a fate avoidable by accumulating capital, or wealth.

The conclusion we reach is that those who rely on benefits are morally obliged to work and those who possess wealth are not morally obliged to work. Compare this with the reality of labour markets: those without capital/wealth must engage in wage labour to live, and those with capital/wealth have the ability to avoid labour by collecting rents.

Those with capital and wealth appear morally unburdened, and the wage labourer is inherently at higher risk of an inability to satisfy their moral debts. This moral conclusion entrenches the reality of labour markets as a moral structure: that those without capital and wealth are morally worse off than those with capital and wealth. To work is to avoid immorality if you are poor, yet one can avoid labour without immorality if you possess wealth or capital. I take this conclusion to be morally repugnant and invite the reader to examine their own moral notions of morality and labour and their compatibility with this conclusion. To take this conclusion as morally repugnant is to reject the notion that one should accumulate a contractual debt by claiming benefits.

It is not the case that one acquires a contractual debt by collecting benefits.

Governments do not expect individuals to 15 | P a g e

repay every cent collected, with interest – welfare is given altruistically. Yet still, moral judgments are made of those on benefits who do not contribute to society. How can we make sense of this? The previous argument implies, for those who wish to become recluses, nomads, or for whatever reason not engage in waged labour, that there are two choices: acquire capital or forego public welfare, yet there is no contractual debt per se forcing this decision. The government, in their benefits program, foregoes the premise that “one should return what is borrowed”, as welfare is not borrowed from the public good.

A way to explain the persistence of these negative moral judgments is through a societal debt rather than a contractual debt.

Individuals are expected, in their existence, to contribute to the public good, even if not all individuals benefit from the public good. The reasoning for this is that the public good is a sort of insurance whose beneficiaries are all citizens. To be a recluse would mean to be insured (getting benefits) while not “paying for the insurance plan” (generating surplus value by wage labour/usage of capital, collected in the public good by taxation). We will call this free-loading. It is fair to say that we do not want to “[extend] the hand of solidarity, but … not ask for any gesture of solidarity in return” (Donaldson and Kymlicka, p. 216) with public welfare. In countries with extensive welfare (or a collectivist ideology), this explains the sentiment against freeloading. In countries with less extensive welfare (there is limited reach of insurance), there is no reason to deny someone’s reclusive behaviour, as the pool of insurance they draw from is either non-existent, unlikely to cover them, and even if it does, pays out in an insignificant (morally indefensible) way.

This argument displays the following: we take societal debt to be the only moral grounding for contribution to the public good, which is

as good as a moral dogma. There is no strictly formal repayment and individuals are simply expected to contribute to the public good, justified by their mere existence. This promotes a collectivist, “citizen’s duty” approach to the public good. Is this acceptable? I suggest, this is more acceptable than the contractual debt approach to public welfare provided the welfare system provides significant enough coverage in an equitable manner (i.e., ensuring no person is more disadvantaged than another considering their needs). If the welfare system is insignificant in its coverage, the public good is insufficient as a moral dogma in terms of its contributions.

To serve this moral dogma of contribution to the public good while it has minimal instrumental value (that is, the coverage and insurance it provides are highly limited in addressing inequities in terms of advantage) may achieve one moral goal but fails another which is assumed in the construction of a welfare system, namely, addressing inequitable distribution of resources and advantage.

Debt is a tricky notion. Individuals need to take so much from society through the course of their lives. To burden individuals with debt by taking or borrowing from the public good would lead to worse moral outcomes overall, and as such, I suggest such a notion should be abandoned. Even if it is a duty for individuals to contribute to the public good to support future borrowers, we must ensure that this system of public welfare provides some level of real, actual support. If we fail to provide said support, we may be morally prioritizing the public good, all while squandering it by having poor-quality redistributive institutions.

As such, I suggest we abandon the notion of debt in deciding how we allocate the public good altogether, and consequently, support individuals regardless of whether they contribute to the public good. Individuals do 16 | P a g e

not owe it to anyone to participate in generating value for the public good unless it is maintained as dogma, which can be challenged instrumentally. It is exactly the point of welfare to provide support and freedom for individuals, not to burden individuals with a duty to repay.

References Donaldson, Sue, and Kymlicka, Will. (2019.)

Animal Labour in a Post-Work Society. In C. E. Blattner (Ed.), Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? (pp. 207-228). Oxford University Press.

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Various political philosophers have posited theories that seek to explain the origin of the state. Barnes argues that this line of thought was begun by Socrates, who introduced the concept of the law of nature as constructed to human law (Barnes, 1924, p. 19). Socrates viewed the state as a majestic horse that needed constant guidance to fulfil its rightful responsibilities. He believed that achieving this involved consistently prompting the state’s understanding of its duties across different settings throughout the day (Barnes, 1924).

This article traces philosophical thought of the origin of the state that followed Socrates’ thesis.

Plato Socrates’ disciple, Plato, presents a more sophisticated definition of the state in his most famous work - Republic. For Plato, the multiplicity of the wants of mankind, and the resulting division of labour to achieve them, was the foundation of the origin of the state.

(Barnes, 1924). “A state, according to Plato, is an integration of the needy and their helpers, every person belonging to both of these classes” (Barnes, 1924). The state emerges through the gradual aggregation of basic familial units into tribes, which subsequently consolidate to form a city (Barnes, 1924).

Niccolo Machiavelli Despite the highly influential ideas of Socrates and Plato, their explanations of origin are not

widely used in political science today.

"Nowadays, when a person or party comes to power, it is said to take over the state or the government" (Mansfield, 1983). The state plays a crucial role in protecting individuals, as it is responsible for caring for its citizens.

Machiavelli challenges the current classical expression of the state (Mansfield, 1983). For Machiavelli, "the state is the highest form of social organization and the most necessary of all institutions" (Mansfield, 1983). Machiavelli saw the state as responsible for the welfare of its citizens. He argued that the state originated to satisfy citizens' material needs (Mansfield, 1983).

Influenced by life in Florence, in Renaissance Italy, where Machiavelli served as the second chancellor, his most famous works the Discourses and the Prince analyse political categories - monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy - tracing back to Aristotle (Harding, 1994). Machiavelli sees the state as the highest authority in human society, emphasising its need for sovereignty, autonomy, and protection from religious 18 | P a g e

influences (Harding, 1994). Throughout his work, he does not discuss state origin theories in-depth but instead focuses on providing political advice on how a prince should rule the state.

Thomas Hobbes Hobbes gave a more detailed analysis of the origin of the state, trying to analyse the roots of its creation. Hobbes argues that people entered into a social contract, consenting to a central sovereign authority, endowed with absolute power to uphold peace and prevent chaos (Read, 1991). “The nature of the transition from the state of nature to civil society [involved] the interplay of force, selfinterest, and sense of obligation in creating motives for obedience to sovereign authority” (Read, 1991). For Hobbes, state creation stemmed from the people’s willingness and agreement to avoid chaos rather than being a natural entity that had existed for a long time.

Unlike Aristotle, Hobbes rejects the idea of the state as a natural entity existing in the world. Hobbes was one of the first social contract theorists to discuss the active role of individuals in forming the social contract. His work, “Leviathan”, an example of social contract theory, derives its name from the Hebrew word meaning “sea monster,” a name appearing several times in the Bible (Skinner, 1964).

Hobbes discusses the concept of “the state of nature,” a period predating the creation of the state, where all humans lived in chaos. In this existence, all men live for themselves.

Extreme competition is central to this life because people have unlimited freedom, leading to chaos and war (Read, 1991). In such a scenario, individuals perpetually harbour a fear of one another due to the constant possibility of being attacked. Consequently, those possessing greater strength are more likely to endure, while others have diminished

prospects of survival (Read, 1991). The constant dread of chaos prompted people to believe that establishing a state would enhance their safety.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Rousseau is another social contract theorist whose ideas are crucial in political philosophy.

Interestingly, Rousseau rejects Hobbes's ideas about the state of nature. Rousseau perceives the "history of man prior to the establishment of government” described in his Second Discourse, not as a factual account but also as “an analytic device that signals a special condition, that amoral condition where the only rule, is the rule of superior force" (Noone, 1970). He argues that "each of us puts in common his person and all his power under the supreme direction of the general will, and in our corporate capacity we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole" (Noone, 1970). Rousseau asserts that "the first state was created by the free and rational will of men" (Noone, 1970).

Moreover, he emphasises that the social contract was the primary agreement between the people and their government, with the government serving as an expression of the people's will. The citizens’ involvement in creating the laws ensures that they would follow and abide by them.

The most significant aspect of Rousseau’s theory is the metaphor of an organic contract.

"The Contract social uses this organic formulation as a starting point and then proceeds to a much more subtle and mature handling of this basic intuition that the state is a living organism much like a human body" (Conroy, 1979). This was a revolutionary idea criticized by philosophers and political scientists ever since; however, it stands as one of Rousseau’s central political ideas.

Karl Marx

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Marx views the state as a "tool manipulated by the exploiters to oppress the exploited" (Dyer, 1972). Describing it as the "creature of economic forces in society" (Dyer, 1972), Marx primarily views the state as a manifestation of self-interest, which powerful elites exploit to impose their force and dominance on others. Further, Marx argues that state creation is significantly connected to class struggle within society because the emergence of the state is closely correlated with the development of private property and the division of society into distinct social classes (Dyer, 1972). According to Marx, societies evolved from primitive communal arrangements to more complex, class-based structures, serving as a means for the ruling class to maintain control and protect its interests. The state was essential in maintaining the ruling class's dominance in different historical periods.

Conclusions In conclusion, philosophers throughout the years have discussed diverse theories about the origin of the state. These theories, discussed in this article, built on the ideas of Socrates, changing and converging in some key ways. These theories continue to hold a powerful influence on 21st-century politics and philosophy.

Harding, A. (1994). THE ORIGINS OF THE CONCEPT OF THE STATE. History of Political Thought, 15(1), 57–72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26214385 Mansfield, H. C. (1983). On the Impersonality of the Modern State: A Comment on Machiavelli’s Use of Stato. The American Political Science Review, 77(4), 849–857. doi:10.2307/1957561 Noone, J. B. (1970). The Social Contract and the Idea of Sovereignty in Rousseau. The Journal of Politics, 32(3), 696–708. doi:10.2307/2128837 Read, J. H. (1991). Thomas Hobbes: Power in the State of Nature, Power in Civil Society.

Polity, 23(4), 505–525. doi:10.2307/3235060 Skinner, Q. (1964). Review: Hobbes’s ‘Leviathan’ [Review of The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes: An Interpretation of “Leviathan”; The Hunting of Leviathan, by F. C. Hood & S. I. Mintz]. The Historical Journal, 7(2), 321–333. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3020357

References Barnes, H. E. (1924). THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE IN CLASSICAL POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. The Monist, 34(1), 15–62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27900975 Conroy, P. V. (1979). Rousseau’s Organic State. South Atlantic Bulletin, 44(2), 1–13. doi:10.2307/3198929 Dyer, P. W. (1972). THE CONCEPTION OF THE STATE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF MARX AND ENGELS. Journal of Thought, 7(3), 147–158. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42590054 20 | P a g e

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One argument in favour of algorithmic decision-making is that humans carry implicit biases. The term ‘implicit bias’ describes the unconscious associations we make with members of certain groups by virtue of their perceived or actual membership in that group. Implicit biases differ from other biases because they are held unconsciously, and often stand in direct contrast to explicitly nonprejudiced beliefs held by the same person.

Due to this unconscious nature, questions of responsibility and accountability arise. In this article, I consider the question: Are we morally responsible for our implicit biases? I propose that, while we may not be morally responsible for initially harbouring these biases, our accountability lies in the recognition and active counteraction of their influence.

The Morally-Responsible-Implies-Can Principle Before we can assess whether we are morally responsible for our implicit biases, we need to determine a criterion for assigning moral responsibility. One such criterion is given by the so-called principle of ‘MorallyResponsible-Implies-Can’ (MRIC), originally introduced by philosophers exploring free will. MRIC posits that an individual can only be morally responsible for a certain action if they had had the capacity to choose to perform or refrain from that action. For example, if I held you at gunpoint and forced you to eat your flatmate’s birthday cake, then you would not be morally responsible for eating the cake because you did not have the capacity to choose not to eat the cake. In essence, MRIC establishes a crucial link between moral

responsibility and the freedom to make choices. This principle will serve as a cornerstone in our examination of implicit biases.

Bounded Rationality & Doxastic Involuntarism Our cognitive abilities, while remarkable, are not limitless. Therefore, processing the world around us can be overwhelming. In an attempt to rationally assess our surroundings, our brain uses categorisation as a tool for effective navigation. Gendler (2011) argues that implicit biases, thus, emerge as a byproduct of our finite minds. This phenomenon is called ‘bounded rationality’. It is crucial for our investigation because it implies that we cannot avoid implicit biases because our brain requires them to operate effectively. From the premises of the MRIC principle and the premise of bounded rationality, it, therefore, follows that we are not morally responsible for our implicit biases 22 | P a g e

because we cannot choose not to carry implicit biases.

Another common epistemological stance is called ‘doxastic involuntarism’. This concept claims that humans lack control over their beliefs and, therefore, cannot choose which beliefs - including implicit biases - they form. If we do not have any decision power over our beliefs and if moral responsibility implies the ability to choose, then we are not morally responsible for our implicit biases.

The Moral Obligation to Counteract Implicit Biases Now we have established (at least under the premises of bounded rationality/ doxastic involuntarism, and MRIC), that we are not morally responsible for our implicit biases. But we should not stop here! While moral responsibility should not be assigned for the mere existence of implicit biases, our accountability comes into play when we fail to acknowledge and address them. With the cognitive ability to reflect on our actions, we possess the means to comprehend the concept of implicit biases and recognise them through careful analysis of our own behaviour. While it might not be a simple task to eliminate biases once identified, we have the capacity and, more importantly, the moral obligation to actively employ critical thinking to counteract these prejudiced beliefs. To illustrate, imagine the following situation: Maria is a white racial equality activist. She cares especially deeply about racial equality and fights racism on a daily basis by organising protests. One night, Maria walks home alone and gets robbed by a man who happens to be Latino. Maria is able to escape the situation safely and forgets about it soon. However, she now carries a negative implicit bias towards Latino men which stands in direct contrast to her consciously held beliefs. Whenever she now sees a Latino man, she switches the side

of the road. She does not do this when she sees white men. Maria is a reflective person and soon realises that her behaviour is implicitly biased. Even though she is not able to immediately stop being biased, she is able to counteract her bias by critically asking herself: “Is it my rational self or my implicit bias making this decision?“.

In this situation, Maria is aware of her bias and she is actively counteracting it, thereby preventing it from influencing her actions in the future. But why is it so important to counteract implicit biases?

Imagine now, that Maria works for a security company. Maria’s HR job consists of employing security staff for events. In this scenario, Maria does not critically question her actions and she fails to recognise or counteract her implicit racial bias. Unaware of her unconscious association of danger with Latino men, she unknowingly perpetuates discrimination by refraining from hiring them.

This example illustrates the profound impact of implicit biases: When left unexamined, they may infiltrate decision-making processes with detrimental consequences. Engaging in critical thinking enables one to recognise implicit biases and counteract them, preventing harm.

If we fail to do so, then we are morally responsible for failing to fulfil our epistemic duty to question ourselves. So, even if bounded rationality or doxastic involuntarism frees us of any moral responsibility for holding implicit biases, the moral obligation to recognise and counteract these remains. Basu (2019, p. 930) wrote: “[...] there is something that is epistemically owed. The question remaining is just what that thing is. “. Maybe engaging in critical reflection is a part of it.

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References Gendler, T. (2011), On the Epistemic Cost of Implicit Bias. Philosophical Studies, 156 (1), 33-63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3020357 Basu, R. (2019). What we epistemically owe to each other. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 176(4), 915–931. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45147351

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All too often, when we pursue philosophy, we are told to leave our emotions at the door.

The reasoning behind this common position is that emotions – especially motivationally strong ones such as anger or grief – are said to be fundamentally irrational, and hence they (and by proxy the emotional speakers themselves) have no place in rational debate (the cornerstone of modern philosophy).

Using the complex and highly emotional topic of grief as an example, I aim to demonstrate that there are instances in which ‘leaving our emotions at the door’ would in fact prove irrational, and we should instead recognise that emotion and logic, far from being inherently incompatible, are in some cases practically inseparable.

The fact that modern philosophy often shuns emotion doesn’t mean that philosophers have ignored emotions entirely: in Symposium, for example, Plato (360 B.C.E.) outlines detailed accounts of what it might mean to be in love.

Meanwhile, Aristotle’s (350 B.C.E./2009) concept of eudaimonia (well-being/happiness) still appears in any discussion of what it means to live a happy life (although our modern understanding of happiness is quite different from Aristotle’s). The ancient Stoic philosophers were perhaps even more influential in the formation of Western thought about emotion, with their teachings

often interpreted as stating that one must escape the influence of one’s emotions entirely if one hopes to fully embrace rationality and live a good life (Graver 2007).

This thought has been a particularly major driving force behind Western philosophy ever since, resulting in pendulum-like swings in thinking between periods of pure rationality and eras of decadent emotion.

The pendulum of history was certainly to be found in this latter category during the Romantic period, when artists, poets and scholars popularised the nobility and desirability of strong emotions, above all love and grief (Stroebe et al. 1996). But Romanticism was promptly succeeded by a strong return to the Stoic ideal of emotional detachment, thanks in large part to Sigmund Freud and his successors. In his 1917 article Mourning and Melancholia, Freud presented his theory that grief is a process of gradual detachment, in which the grieving person brings up memories of their departed loved one and withdraws all their ‘psychic energy’ from the former relationship. Once this process is done, Freud hypothesised, the psychic energy of the bereaved is no longer tangled up in residual attachment to the deceased, and so the bereaved is now ready to “reinvest” their energy into new 25 | P a g e

relationships. Since, according to Freud, this is the function of grieving, any failure to completely withdraw one’s psychic energy from the deceased would count as failing to grieve correctly, and would require that the bereaved seek professional help in cutting away their lingering sense of connection.

According to Stroebe et al. (1996), the problem was that Freud based his theory on ideology, not evidence: he saw emotional detachment as desirable, and so reverseengineered a theory of grief that led to that endpoint. In doing so, he disregarded the evidence that comes from the actual lived experience of grieving individuals, which suggested that this was not an emotionally healthy way of coping with loss. Despite demonstrating little-to-no sensitivity towards the actual feelings of the grieving individual – and labelling any continuing emotional attachment as pathological – Freud’s ‘detachment theory’ of grief held sway over the psychiatric profession well into the 20th Century, only finding significant challenge in the aftermath of the Second World War (interestingly, this apparently came despite Freud himself refuting his own theory upon the death of his nephew – see Stroebe et al.

1996). John Bowlby, who has since become well-known thanks to his psychological theory of attachment types in relationships, began to recognise the enormous harm that came from giving Freud’s advice to children who had lost their parents during the war (see Field et al.

2006). He understood that if these children were told to withdraw the energy they had invested in their parents (enabling them to form new meaningful relationships), they were likely to develop deeply unhealthy coping mechanisms for their losses.

This slow shift away from Freud’s theory was finally cemented as inevitable in 1996, when Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman and Steven Nickman published their collected

philosophical and psychological works on ‘continuing bonds’ – their term for the continuing connections that we often maintain with our loved ones, even after their deaths. Contrary to Freud, their research shows that it can actually be healthy for a person to maintain a sort of ‘relationship’ with their deceased loved one, albeit a very different relationship than the one that existed before their death. Maintaining a sort of ‘inner representation’ of the deceased can be a source of comfort and guidance, as well as a way of recovering from the loss. This can also unfold on the communal level, with members of the affected group (a family, for example) coming together in remembrance to preserve the sense that the deceased remains present in their lives – which can be especially important for children who have lost a parent, and who will go on to grow up without them.

Today, we are coming to understand grief as a complicated process of responding to the monumental disruption to one’s life that is caused by the death of a loved one. According to Matthew Ratcliffe, Louise Richardson and Becky Millar (2022), we experience the death of a loved one as the irretrievable loss of not only them as a person, but also the life possibilities that they represent: for example, we lose the possibility of growing old with them. We now know that the grieving process often never truly comes to an end, and instead that we are entirely capable of forming new relationships whilst still holding those who came before in our hearts, in direct contradiction to what Freud outlined.

The major insight of this research, I would contend, is that we must be sensitive to the subjective emotional needs of grieving individuals not only in our treatment of those individuals but more fundamentally in how we theorise about grief. The failure of Freud’s theory is not simply that it does not account for all of the empirical evidence (although this 26 | P a g e

is a glaring issue), but rather that it does not attend to a key facet of grief, the emotional experience. It is precisely because Freud’s theory employs sound logical arguments to reach its conclusion that it fails because he attempts to logically explain an emotional process without any reference to how it feels.

There are two forms of denying the validity of talking about emotions in logical debates.

Freud is an example of the first, which is to disregard emotional evidence and attempt to explain everything with cold logic. The second form of denial is to accept that certain topics cannot be handled in a purely logical way but to conclude as a result that such topics do not belong in philosophy and are not appropriate topics for logical debate. I would respond to this briefly by pointing out that, just because grief is emotional, does not mean it is therefore irrational: grief makes sense, and it follows rules. We are more than capable of constructing theories of grief and debating the relative upsides and downsides of competing claims. When philosophers write off topics such as grief as being ‘outside of the realm of philosophy’, they are as a result committing the worst error possible for a philosopher: they are employing faulty reasoning. Grief, and emotions more generally, should not be viewed as somehow separate from our rational capacities as philosophers just because they concern topics which cannot be approached unemotionally.

Instead, we must become far more comfortable with the notion that some topics in philosophy simply cannot be approached without considering the important role that emotions play in how we engage with the world around us.

Field, N., B. Gao & L. Paderna (2006).

Continuing Bonds in Bereavement: an Attachment Theory Based Perspective. Death Studies, 29(4), 277-299. doi: 10.1080/07481180590923689 Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia.

In J. Strachey (Ed. & Tr.), On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works (pp. 243258). Hogarth Press.

Graver, M. (2007). Stoicism and Emotion.

University of Chicago Press.

Klass, D., P. R. Silverman, & S. L. Nickman (1996). Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. Routledge.

Plato (360 B.C.E.). Symposium. B. Jowett. (Tr.).

The Internet Classics Archive. Retrieved December 2023, from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html Ratcliffe, M., L. Richardson & B. Millar (2022).

On the Appropriateness of Grief to Its Object.

Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 8(1), 1-17. doi: 10.1017/apa.2021.55 Stroebe, M., Gergen M., Gergen K., & Stroebe W. (1996). Broken Hearts or Broken Bonds? In Klass, D., Silverman, P.R., & Nickman, S. (Eds.).

Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief (pp. 31-44). Taylor & Francis.

References Aristotle (2009). The Nicomachean Ethics. In D. Ross.(Tr.), Oxford World Classics. Oxford University Press.

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Humans incontrovertibly suffer a great deal over the course of their lives, throughout the world, and over a lengthy historical timespan.

Humans, however, are not the only species to suffer the agonising experiences the world has to offer. Nonhuman animals— and thereby deaths—outnumber that of humans by trillions, and their lives are defined by the experience and avoidance of suffering.

When a human endures the breaking of a bone, the opening of their flesh, or the degradation of their organs, they evidentially feel pain – or at least claim and appear to.

Does this experience similarly apply to nonhuman animals? Pain is the phenomenal experience of discomfort, irritation, agony, and other associated unpleasant sensations or negative states. Nonhuman animals have behavioural and physiological responses to nociception, but it is fundamentally—or at least presently—impossible to determine whether there is an associated phenomenal pain accompanying the activation of these nociceptors. It is possible that nonhuman animals lack consciousness. It is possible that all humans other than you lack consciousness, and merely appear to have phenomenological responses to external stimuli, falsely communicating their subjective experience despite the ‘lights being off’ inside. Obviously,

nonhuman animals are unable to use language to communicate the nature of their subjective experience of pain to us, similar to a human baby, a mute human, or other humans unable to use language; we do not assume that this inability negates the possibility of their experience of pain. With advances in genetics, neuroscience, and other related fields, it is increasingly difficult to defend the idea that nonhuman animals do not experience the phenomena of pain and that most, if not all, are not at least primitively sentient. A precautionary principle should be applied to the question of if nonhuman animals can in fact suffer, given the current body of evidence and the naive interpretation of their seemingly phenomenal responses to pain.

Considering, then, that nonhuman animals likely experience pain, negative states that they attempt and desire to avoid, and sensations that are not in their interest (e.g. suffering), the abundance of such experiences poses a deep problem for the Christian conception of a loving God. God seemingly desired the outcome of a particular species—homo sapiens—to be selfconscious beings that desire a conscious, reciprocal relationship with God. On these 29 | P a g e

anthropocentric teleological views, all the creatures that have come before us and have suffered unimaginably over an intense timescale are merely evolutionary expedients for the divine end of human existence and redemption.

Nonhuman animals will sometimes suffer very little, spending their long and peaceful lives basking in the sun, forming fulfilling social bonds, free from the threat of predation and untouched by disease, eventually dying a quick, painless death. The potential life just described does not negate the fact or propensity of predation, disease, parasitism, starvation, natural disasters, and high rates of infant mortality that predominantly define nonhuman animal existence. The victims of predation suffer intense distress, fear, and pain during the ordeal. A zebra caught in the jaws of a crocodile will experience excruciating pain for several minutes as its flesh is torn whilst it drowns. Parasitic wasps lay their eggs inside caterpillars; the larvae consume the caterpillars’ internal organs, slowly eating them from the inside out while they remain alive. The slow, weakening sensation of emaciation, exhaustion, dehydration, stress, and organ failure experienced as an elephant struggles to roam vast distances during a drought in search of water is, presumably, an undesirable experience. There is no agent responsible for suffering in the case of disease, starvation, or natural disasters, but nevertheless, this suffering is real. It is not an understatement to claim that almost all the suffering on Earth is experienced by nonhuman animals in nature and that this applies throughout the evolutionary genealogy of every species.

Suffering is no less bad just because it is temporally separated from us. Likewise, it is no less bad just because it is experientially separated from us—phenomenologically or through taxonomical diversity.

Why this suffering exists is termed ‘the problem of evil’. The problem of evil can be divided into two main categories: logical and

evidential. Its evidential form, contending that the existence of evil and suffering—though perhaps not logically incompatible with God's existence—constitutes strong evidence against the traditional Christian conception of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, good God. Given that nonhuman animals are traditionally not seen to have free will, are not considered moral agents, and are not assumed to go to heaven, the problem of evil when applied to nonhuman suffering raises many questions.

Assuming that the Christian God is part of the moral order, then the propensity, quantity, and quality of nonhuman animal suffering in nature are not what one would naively expect from an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient God. It is, however, what one would naively expect from a naturalistic universe without intentional occurrences.

Naturalism being a more adequate explanation for this reality of suffering poses a problem for the Christian theist, as there seems to be an enormous amount of unnecessary suffering in nature. By this, I mean that it serves no obvious function, globally or locally, and cannot be easily interpreted to bring about some greater good.

A baby deer being crushed under a fallen tree and slowly starving to death does not obviously seem to serve some purpose. A koala dying of agonising burn injuries after a forest fire follows similarly.

Many respond with the claim that evolution was the only, or at least the best way for God to realise certain values, one being the intrinsic value of creaturely selves: all sentient life. They posit that the existence and flourishing of these creaturely selves— humans included—is one of the main goals of creation and that the realisation of this goal involves intrinsic evolutionary suffering.

Further, many provide a compound theory combining the presuppositions of eschatological fulfilment and divine cosuffering with the victims of evolution. They presuppose that if God is good and loving, 30 | P a g e

then he would have created the best of all possible worlds in terms of the balance between its potential for realising creaturely values and the concomitant pain. These involve three main aspects of the evolutionary theodicy: ontology, teleology, and soteriology.

Posed as questions, these can be asked as ‘Why did God make this world of suffering?’ for the ontological aspect; ‘For what purpose was this suffering necessary?’ for the teleological aspect; ‘Are the victims of suffering—nonhuman animals—to be eternally saved?’ for the soteriological aspect.

Respectively and succinctly, the Christian theist can answer these questions ‘To bring about the conditions to give rise to creaturely selves’, ‘To fulfil the values inherent within creaturely selves’, and ‘Yes, in the sense that God suffers with, and will not abandon, the victims of evolution, and that humans have a calling, analogous to Christ, to participate in the healing of the world’. Without the final soteriological postulates, the evolutionary theodicy is guilty of requiring God to use nonhuman animals as means to an end, allowing their inherent value to be neglected and forgotten by the processes He created.

The final part of the Christian theist’s potential response to the soteriological problem includes a postulate that humanity can and will seed nature’s transformation and redemption. However, an ongoing process of redemption does not have any casually backwards effects on the past victims of Earth’s evolutionary history. Many organisms cannot reach their full potential in experiencing the goodness inherent to being of a given species, particularly those that came before us. Therefore, these left-behind beings require reparation of fulfilment in terms of their species’ potential that was denied to them in their tellurian existence.

This reparation should be in relation to other species as a form of recreated, fulfilling life in divine company and free from competition or frustration for both predator and prey. One can raise a seemingly obvious objection to this

proposal; why did God not only create this heaven, rather than heaven in addition to a world of gratuitous suffering?

Even if this evolutionary scheme was fundamentally required for creaturely selves to flourish, it is surely imaginable that the quantity and quality of the suffering could be toned down. Increased resources, reduced prevalence of disease, parasites, natural disasters, and exclusively herbivorous animals could still give rise to valuable capacities through evolutionary pressures, albeit maybe more slowly. Any scheme that postulates heaven—an eschatological creation free of suffering—cannot consistently claim that any environment suitable for flourishing must be characterised by evolution by natural selection. The very claim of eschatological fulfilment entails that it is possible for God to create a benign world without the suffering of evolutionary evils.

References Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018).

The biomass distribution on Earth.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(25), 6506–6511. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1711842115 Boyle, E. (2009). Neuroscience and Animal Sentience. www.animalsentience.com Crossway Bibles (2001). English Standard Version Bible. Crossway.

Hursthouse, R., & Pettigrove, G. (2022, December). Virtue Ethics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved December 2023, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethicsvirtue/.

Mogil, J. S. (2009). Animal models of pain: progress and challenges. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(4), 283–294. doi: 10.1038/nrn2606

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Mogil, J. S. (2012). Pain genetics: past, present and future. Trends in Genetics, 28(6), 258– 266. doi:10.1016/j.tig.2012.02.004 Sneddon, L. U., Elwood, R. W., Adamo, S. A., & Leach, M. C. (2014). Defining and assessing animal pain. Animal Behaviour, 97(1), 201– 212. doi: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.09.007 Southgate, C. (2002). God and Evolutionary Evil: Theodicy in the Light of Darwinism.

Zygon® Journal of Religion and Science, 37(4), 803–824. doi: 10.1111/1467-9744.00459 Southgate, C. (2008). The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil. Westminster/John Knox Press.

Southgate, C. (2017). Cosmic Evolution and Evil. In C. Meister & P. Moser (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil (pp. 147-164). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781107295278.009 Tomasik, B. (2009). How Many Wild Animals Are There? Reducing-Suffering.org. Retrieved December 2023, from https://reducingsuffering.org/how-many-wild-animals-arethere/.

Wahlberg, M. (2014). Was evolution the only possible way for God to make autonomous creatures? Examination of an argument in evolutionary theodicy. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 77(1), 37–51. doi: 10.1007/s11153-014-9486-x

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While definitions of sovereignty have varied throughout history, it has most commonly been understood as supreme authority within a territory. In Islam, Allah is considered the supreme authority on Earth.

Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) was an Egyptian author, Islamic scholar and a prominent member of the Muslim brotherhood during the 1950s and 1960s. The sovereignty of Allah, Haakimiyyah, was the foundation of Qubt's ideology, which is salient to political and social issues.

Before delving into Qutb ideology, it is important to understand that religion must be interpreted moderately; in Surah An-Nisa (4:171), Allah says, “Do not exaggerate in your religion.” Thus, Qutb’s interpretation of Islam, and his application of it to politics, is rather controversial and extreme within Islamic thought.

Qutb’s manifesto, Milestones, sought to revive Islam at its purest state, free society from man-made systems, and to return to Allah’s Sovereignty, building one harmonious and equal society. In it, Qutb argues that such a society once existed as the first Islamic generation. This modelling highlights Qutb’s background in the Salafist sect, belonging to the Sunni tradition. Qutb’s interpretation on the concept of sovereignty, differing from common Western understandings, is a subject of fascination. This article traces the

relationship between Islamic theology, the state and society.

First, it is worth defining that the state greatly influences society in Qutb’s ideology as the foundation of values and principles, since society is constrained by its laws and institutions. In Milestones, Qutb advocates for the necessity of political change, arguing that society has been failed by communism, capitalism, imperialism, and secularism alike.

Those societies are named Jahilliyah and are characterised as rebellious against Allah’s Sovereignty. The failure of man-made systems, owing to their rejection of Allah's sovereignty and promoting materialism, indicates the consequences of straying away from our true human nature. This path leads to an unhealthy desire for superficial goods and services, producing a misalignment between our values and our actions. Instead, Qutb argues that humanity must recognise the importance of staying true to our innate nature through the centrality of Allah in our lives. Such systems are, therefore, contrary to the laws of nature, with inevitable pernicious consequences of inequality and superficiality.

Qutb emphasises the dynamism of Islam as a lifestyle, conducive to a virtuous and harmonious society capable of pursuing material progress while maintaining the importance of human nature. The importance of Islam in day-to-day affairs instils in a society the invaluable worth of human rights and morals that are vital in producing human 33 | P a g e

psychological elevation and social harmony.

Moreover, Qutb’s transformed Islamic community would be wholly capable of technological progress. However, Qutb acknowledges the difficulty of implementing this system in practice. He hence models his vision on the first Islamic generation and the Prophet’s companions, representing the purest societal framework rooted in Islamic principles. This first generation learned and acted on the teachings of the Qur’an and thrived in Jahili society (Roman, Persian, Chinese and Indian civilisations). Their lives were centred around Tawhid (Oneness of God), Haakimiyyah (Sovereignty of Allah), and Shari’a (institutions, laws and rules derived from the Islamic faith). This Islamic civilisation was both unified under Allah’s rules and morally elevated. They were free from the chains of oppression. In contrast, man-made laws fostered greed, envy, fear, desolation, broken spirits, corruption, alienation, and slavery. Qutb believed that to promote technological progress, it was crucial to achieve a harmonious relationship with human nature and promote equality.

However, he emphasised the importance of first elevating individuals psychologically to prevent feelings of alienation. Qutb suggested that humanity could maintain their psychological well-being by controlling material desires. While he accepted technological innovation, Qutb maintained that human nature should take precedence and could only be achieved by Allah’s rules firmly grounded in the Shari’a.

Social implications Qutb argued that once all barriers to the sovereignty of Allah were removed, political entities would be free to understand Islam and act upon it. With this logic, society must be established upon Allah’s law. Qutb invokes the design argument; the perfection of the universe gives us reason to strive to establish an ideal society based on the Shari’a. From this perspective, Allah, as the Sovereign of the Universe, formulated a universal law, governing nature, and humanity alike. The Shari’a, as the divine order, highlights the importance of equality between humans, in

which no man should have sovereignty over another.

From placing Haakimiyyah at the centre of the Muslim lifestyle, all affairs are based on the worship of Allah alone. This, in turn, dictates the individual’s character, beliefs and actions.

Such a lifestyle psychologically elevates individuals, connecting them to their human nature and liberating them from corruption.

Communities are organised favorably towards wealth and material progress with the advocated reforms fostering social harmony and reducing inequality. To support this idea, Qutb points out that the first Islamic society generation was a patchwork of Arabs, Persians, Syrians and Egyptians. This community, with their ‘their various characteristics’, were ‘united and ‘with cooperation, harmony, and unity, they took part in constructing the Islamic community and culture’. It was never a ‘nationality’ but rather, a community of belief’ (Qutb, 1993).

Qutb argues if everyone had a pure and strong Islamic faith and recognised Allah’s Sovereignty, they would inherently act in accordance with the Shari’a and punishment would be reserved for exceptional and extreme cases. In this model, faith characterises the relationship between individuals in society.

This ideology is challenged by numerous factors, for example, the marginalisation of non-Muslims. The plurality within the Islamic community additionally counters Qutb’s argument as it means that interpretations of religious texts vary profoundly. The religion is divided into two main currents: Shi’a and Sunni. The latter group recognises the Qur’an, Sunnah and Hadith as their primary religious scriptures. Within the Sunni community are four dominant schools of thought: the Hanafi, Malikii, Shafi'i, and Hanbalii. Furthermore, various Sunni movements, including Sufi and Salafism, have added to the nuanced interpretations. Qutb is a Salafist reformer advocating a return to early Islam's original practices and beliefs whilst also seeking to adapt these principles into the contemporary context (March, 1993). Milestones became one of the most influential texts forwarding 34 | P a g e

this line of thought, leading to the influence of the controversial Muslim Brotherhood.

On the other hand, Shari’a is dependent on the interpretation and implementation of men, never to be as perfect as Allah, thus we must read it with moderation and good sense.

Qubt's ideology is further weakened by the fact that this model of a harmonious society requires authoritarian means to implement, in a manner not dissimilar to that suggested in Plato's 'Republic', where philosopher-kings must steer society to their optimal state.

References Qtub, S. (2006). Milestones. Maktabah Publications.

March, A. F. (2010). Taking People As They Are: Islam As a “Realistic Utopia” in the Political Theory of Sayyid Qutb. The American Political Science Review, 104(1), 189–207. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27798546 Philpott, D. (2020, September 21).

Sovereignty. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved December 2023, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sovereignt y/.

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The importance of art in society, both historically and in modern times, cannot be understated. From paintings to novels to film, artworks have been exceptionally influential in raising the collective consciousness of the public by bringing awareness to critical issues, critiquing contemporary values, and creating community. Art itself has extraordinary power. Its versatility in its countless forms, the ability for anyone to participate in its production, and the timelessness of certain mediums have made art an invaluable resource for the powerful and powerless alike. The messages that can be transmitted through emotions that can be evoked by a single image, page, or scene exemplify its utility. Its adaption to a constantly changing technological reality has also birthed new forms and means of its dissemination. As debates arise globally on what constitutes art, with Western traditions given primary attention, it is increasingly important to note how the logic of the current social hierarchy is ever-present in the world of art. This work seeks to paint a picture of white supremacy’s stranglehold on artistic production by first elaborating on the nature of whiteness, then presenting a theory ascribing a suffocating characteristic to whiteness and its implication on art, before finally discussing certain actions

individuals and society at large can take to mitigate this suffocating effect.

Part I: The Homogeneity of Whiteness It should come as no surprise that race, alongside its siblings' gender and class, is socially constructed and structurally reinforced. Racial categorisation followed from the West’s colonisation of the Americas and Africa, as a way of justifying the establishment of a system of mass enslavement of Black and Brown people. The creation of a dichotomy between the moral, rational white and the subhuman, savage nonwhite provided a moral pretext for the centuries of atrocities committed at the hands of Western powers. Beyond simple justifications, the invention of whiteness helped establish a distinct ‘European’ identity defined by negation, specifically by negating certain barbaric qualities that only the subjugated could possess.

It is important to note that whiteness is not a static concept. Rather whiteness is a ‘constellation of processes and practices [that is] dynamic, relational, and operating at all times and on myriad levels,’ (DiAngelo, 2011).

It constantly adapts to meet the changing realities of society and politics. In fact, it is this very dynamism that has maintained the 37 | P a g e

asymmetric power relations between white and nonwhite people globally. Particularly since over the last century people of colour have gained nominal political rights across the West, whiteness has needed to become more subversive in order to effectively disenfranchise a population whose access to the ballot box could no longer be explicitly denied. White power structures have had to consolidate strategies from dividing populations to unifying the oppressor class, revitalising its role as a versatile instrument in the bourgeoise’s toolbox.

Consequently, whiteness is in itself necessarily homogenising. A false identity must be constructed and aggressively sold to a populace in order to put as many degrees of separation between the most suffering of the in-group and the entirety of the out-group.

This forced homogeny can be seen from the establishment of the proto-white supremacist Casta system in the Spanish and Portuguese settler colonies of 18th-century Latin America to modern-day Neocolonial institutions of governance. Whether it is the arbitrary division of a native population or the onesided application of international law, the asymmetry between the Global North and South requires that the former operates uniformly. The glue keeping the pieces of the metaphorical genocidal colonising machine together is Whiteness. A white Briton and a white Hungarian do not possess many commonalities, but both have been inundated by the notion that their struggles are one and the same because they share the same colour skin. This thinking is tacit of course: no one expects people to openly praise the sanctity of the ‘white brotherhood,’ but this thinking manifests itself in many ways. Discussions around respectability politics and the fetishisation of bipartisanship are simple political manifestations of whiteness’ homogeneity. However, the most prominent (and increasingly relevant) manifestation is Western societies’ consciousness of international issues and their selective notion of solidarity. There is near universal support for the people of Ukraine in the West, but silence when it comes to the Yemenis, the Tigrayans, the Palestinians, the Congolese, the

Rohingya, and many other peoples in the Global South experiencing near-identical forms of unjust suffering. The nearunanimous consensus from white society to only recognise the pain of other white people is one of the many ways that Black and Brown people globally are stripped of their humanity.

To use the words of Foucault, ‘There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all’ (1985: 8). White supremacist power structures strive to make white people incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of others. Although Foucault’s analysis throughout the four volumes of The History of Sexuality is focused on the role of institutional power in influencing Western attitudes toward sexuality, it is still largely applicable to the conversation at hand.

Institutions of white supremacy amplify messages of white solidarity and over time alter habits, language, and norms to curate a selective notion of humanity.

The homogeneity of whiteness is supplemented by the media, particularly art, consumed by white societies about the Global South. In his seminal work Orientalism, the post-colonial philosopher Edward Said (1979) lays out clearly the history and means by which the Western world is deluged with propaganda that fetishizes the ‘Orient’ (mainly used to describe the Arab world at the time of writing but the definition has been expanded by contemporary theorists to encompass the rest of the Global South) as this beautifully tortured land filled with savages that needed to be ‘saved’ and ‘educated’ about Western values. Orientalist messaging is embedded in all aspects of the media. Historically, extensive bodies of literature so confidently writing about the Arab world by men who had never even set foot there were the main vesicle for the dissemination of Orientalist media. Artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Léon Gérôme Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, William Holman Hunt, and John Frederick Lewis painted everything from portraits eroticising Arab women to picturesque landscapes that 38 | P a g e

satiated the Western colonial appetites.

Modern-day Orientalist art is significantly more subliminal. The subject of work may not explicitly cover the ‘Orient’ such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or Lawrence of Arabia but uses themes that draw parallels with the white world’s view of the Global South. This is exemplified by works such as the Avatar films or Aladdin, which focus on emphasising antiquated gender roles and stereotypes that juxtapose the barbarian foreign environment the viewer finds themselves in and the ‘civilised’ society they are observing these works from.

This media of course solidifies the superiority complex innate in whiteness. This is fairly intuitive at some levels. If someone is a white supremacist of course they are going to believe in the superiority of white people.

However, the constant passive consumption of this media indoctrinates consumers to buy into white supremacist power structures.

Jasbir Puar discusses this in detail in her book Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007), in which she draws from Foucault, Deleuze, and Said to argue that the liberal state has appropriated sexual, gender, and racial identities to consolidate support for its actions abroad, relying on the construction of the ‘terrorist’ as the enemy that unites the citizenry. Puar uses the example of the US invasion of Iraq, in which justifications for the occupation expanded beyond the tried and tested rhetoric of democracy promotion to include the necessity of liberating queer and women Arabs. Her scholarship once again shows the dynamism of whiteness: when presented with challenges against the state’s imperialist actions, queerness is rebranded in order to exclude everyone that is not white, incorporating white queers into the ‘in-group’ as a sign of society’s supposed progress. In this way, structures of hetero-patriarchy and white supremacy can persist in a purportedly free society while white queers, blinded to their marginalisation, replicate ‘colonial and multiculturalist fetishisms,’ (Puar, 2005: 123) that promote narratives of US exceptionalism.

Western values ostensibly imply equality and freedom for all, so naturally, they must be imposed violently on the backwards.

The consequences of this are inherently violent. From its imposition to its metastasis, Black and Brown's bodies are collateral damage in the protracted war it wages for complete control. As the battleground changes from slavery to decolonisation to civil rights, white supremacist power structures are unrelenting in their commitment to maintain asymmetry. The expansion of the state’s police power, over-policing of communities of colour, and shift to militaristic approaches to statecraft are all clear outlets of whiteness violence. Language and the homogenisation of the ‘white identity’ are, however, just as violent. The psychological effects of otherization on the ‘other’ are well documented. Separating a group of people from their collective humanity allows the most unspeakable atrocities to be committed against them, this fact is historically selfevident.

Whiteness permeation into the world of art has observable structural manifestations.

Looking into the world of motion pictures, we see that 87% of TV and 92% of film executives are white (Dunn et. al 2021). Studios overwhelmingly choose white male directors for their largest studio productions, relegating their directors of colour to minor projects, of which 76% of them had budgets less than $20 million. With 75% of movie writers white, representation is of course negatively affected, in 16 years the share of Black and Latino characters with onscreen speaking roles increased by 0.4% and 1.9% respectively.

Turning to the world of fine art, 76.3% of museum curators, 93% of museum directors, 92.6% of board chairs, and 89.3% of board members in the US are white (Tenuta & Walker, 2018). Putting all these numbers aside, the way that artistic mediums are developed and presented to the public is a reflection of the architecture of white supremacy.

Part II: Suffocation and White Supremacy Now what exactly do I mean when I say, ‘whiteness has a suffocating effect? I would like to pose a definition of suffocation that is better suited to confront the metaphysical realities of art. Suffocation, in this sense, is 39 | P a g e

the imposition of an authority’s will (institutional standards, societal norms, etc.) onto the artist, ultimately stripping them of their agency to choose the subject of their art.

There are two kinds of suffocation: diffused suffocation and targeted suffocation. The former refers to the suffocation an artist feels by virtue of participating in society and having to interact with dominant cultural values.

Targeted suffocation, on the other hand, is a much more direct form of suffocation that an artist feels at the intention of another.

Targeted suffocation has a specific end goal in mind, and the imposition of the authority’s will be hierarchically imposed, typically forcefully with resistance violently responded to. Political actors are usually responsible for targeted suffocation while social structures and institutions are the main agents of diffused suffocation.

All artists to a certain extent are suffocating.

Diffused suffocation is an inescapable aspect of the artist’s journey. Dominant values are amplified by institutions of social, political, and economic governance, and if an artist chooses to produce work within the confines of these values, can we say for certain they chose the topic of their own volition or were conditioned by decades of intense programming to promote contemporary ideals? The existence of art as a resistance to the artist’s status quo may seem to disprove the notion of suffocation, however, I’d argue that it is simply further proof of its existence as the values of the time impose barriers on the artist who then produces their piece as a means to break through them. The fact that resistance art does not exist in and of itself and can only exist in relation to other structures indicates that the suffocation an artist feels drives the exigency and mode of their work. I seek to imagine a world without suffocation, in which an artist has a choice over the direction and content of their work, producing not as a reaction to the imposition of certain values upon a society.

Historically, targeted suffocation takes many forms. One notable (and very literal) example is the Saxon King Augustus’ imprisonment of the alchemist Boetger, who was forced to

make porcelain for the rest of his life.

Suffocation has also materialised in the form of state repression and propaganda art. From Nazi Germany’s violent suppression and attempted erasure of ‘degenerate art’ to Oliveira Salazar’s infamous use of architects and sculptors to inaugurate his fascistic view of a ‘pluricontinental’ Portugal at the Portuguese World Exhibit, governments will unashamedly use art to cement their legitimacy. In the United States, the militaryentertainment complex is famously propped up by the Department of Defence and the Central Intelligence Agency, influencing the content of movies and music videos, even shaping the trajectory of Abstract Expressionism in the 1960s. From Ironman to Katy Perry’s Part of Me, military narratives are injected into the nature of these pieces in an attempt to sterilise the image of the armed forces and get the public’s sympathy for its imperialist actions abroad. Suffocation transcends borders and is reproduced in the logic of colonial relationships between former colonies and their colonisers. The French government’s co-production agreement with countries such as Lebanon has allowed it near complete control of the Lebanese film industry, giving it the final say in what films are produced and the narratives they purport.

Targeted suffocation seeks to mimic the pattern and implicitness of diffused suffocation before eventually transforming into it. Targeted suffocation is significantly less stable than its counterpart due to its hierarchical nature. It involves actors that the populace can point its finger at if they are made aware of their indoctrination. The military establishment, capitalist class, and political elite can always be deposed from power. Although suffocation affects the artist, external material circumstances determine whether the suffocation persists. Targeted suffocation begins to effectively imitate diffused suffocation after prolonged periods of time: eventually, actors are able to establish institutions that operate in themselves to amplify values throughout a population without needing a group to actively watch over and intervene in the everyday operation of suffocation, at which 40 | P a g e

point the transformation to diffused suffocation is complete.

The process of suffocation’s consolidation into the internal workings of institutions of governance follows the relationship between ideology and institutions in Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony. Gramsci contends the dominant class seeks to use its control of the state apparatus and its appendages such as education (the school), religion (the church), and media to impose bourgeois values within the subjugated individual. Civil society objectifies hegemony and connects all notions of civility and respectability to these values, making resistance intolerable and an affront to culture. Ideology becomes normalised to the point that reflection and criticism are impossible. Dominant values’ incorporation into the ‘common sense,’ a largely uncritical state of collective consciousness, silence the ‘subaltern’ groups who can never properly communicate their opposition to the status quo (Gramsci, 1971). The parallel trajectory of the suffocation effect when fully realised to ideology’s cultural hegemonisation is not coincidental as the exact same institutions that objectify values perpetuate suffocation.

The end goal is to make oppression so intrinsic to the regular functioning of society that no fingers can be pointed towards a singular ‘culprit.’

Suffocation is not necessarily immoral. People do not live in a vacuum, and we are bound to be influenced by others. We live in society; therefore we suffocate. What is immoral, and consequently the main focus of this article, is the suffocation that is produced by unjust structures of power. A question I will pose here but will answer in the next section is what do we do when suffocation arises from popular values that are racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc.? In regard to my first concern, whiteness provides a unique threat to BIPOC people in the art world by reducing artists to their marginalised identities, constricting them to produce artwork that is palatable for white audiences, mainly the gratuitous exhibition of trauma.

The normality of white supremacist values in pop culture is the paramount example of a vehicle of targeted suffocation transitioning into a permanent institution of diffused suffocation. Whiteness once required violent imposition and constant exercise of state violence to survive, but now its logic is reproduced in the daily operation of society.

Art and media have become some of these institutions that whiteness has permeated into, and Black and Brown artists' ability to operate within these circles is significantly restricted. The possibility of success is dangled just above artists of colour like a carrot on a stick, only within reach if they act, speak, and produce in a way deemed respectable by white society. Art’s commodification is by no means a new phenomenon and is a natural product of society’s organisation around a capitalist mode of production. Capitalism provides its own unique form of both targeted and diffused suffocation, restricting artists within the confines of profitability. However, for artists of colour, the intersectional restrictions created by capitalism and white supremacy create a unique suffocating experience. The bourgeois seek to trivialise Black identity yet wield it to create profitable art that can be sold as ‘uniquely Black’ or Brown. Structures of white supremacy have seen the appropriation of many aspects of Black and Brown culture, from hairstyles to lexicon, and their incorporation into pop culture, however, given that Blackness’ ontological position has been defined as a result of negation, the only unique thing artists of colour are allowed to reflect on is their trauma. White society can replicate any aspect of the cultures of oppressed people except the pain and suffering they have created. The incapability to understand the trauma caused by centuries of colonisation and slavery is what has led to the rise of a ‘woke’ culture within white spaces that treats surface-level acknowledgement of the horrors of racism as a status symbol. The demand to showcase Black and Brown pain has increased in order to satisfy the desire to proudly carry the badge of ‘ally.’

This suffocation’s impact is two-fold. Firstly, people of colour have become instruments of 41 | P a g e

entertainment production for white society.

Moreover, an individual’s ‘Blackness’ or ‘Brownness’ becomes the central tenet of their external identity. We typically see identities as multifaceted and dynamic aspects of ourselves that we present through our actions and being. However, people of colour are not afforded that basic respect. All other aspects of their identity become tangential to their racial identity. This is even seen in the language we use to refer to artists.

‘Black director,’ ‘Latino painter,’ and ‘Arab sculptor’ may be accurate descriptions of an artist’s racial and ethnic background, however, these labels are used to differentiate them from the director, painter, and sculptor who we have been programmed to automatically assume are white. The implication is that an artist’s Brownness is what directs their art and that their passion for art is secondary to this racial aspect. While it may be the case that their experiences as members of a marginalised group shape the subject of an artist’s work, white institutions make this assumption and run with it in the hope of making a profit. Secondly, when the trauma of the colonised falls victim to the commodity fetish, it loses its meaning.

Artworks coercively produced to profit off of depictions of suffering do not force white consumers to reflect on how they perpetuate the violence of white supremacy and imperialism but become a symbol of how supposedly capable they are of empathising and making up for the ‘sins of their ancestors.’

When artists of colour lack the agency to produce the pieces they desire and are coerced into incorporating the same themes, a false narrative is produced about their communities. The depictions of Black and Brown pain become the only window into communities of colour that white society gets to see through, (ostensibly) framed by said members. Consequently, expressions of Black joy are erased, and another aspect of humanity the marginalised is stripped from them. This erasure has many impacts that extend beyond the world of art, such as in the world of medicine in which doctors have systematically under-treated Black patients for pain. The same freedoms white artists

have been given and privileges white communities get in their depictions ought to be extended to all.

Part III: Moving Forward?

Suffocation alters the way in which we experience art. While the modern individual has already been forced to adopt a perverse consumption of artistic pieces, the artwork of artists of colour is subjected to an even worse form of consumption. Agency is wrested from artists of colour and their artwork tokenised, making it incapable of being experienced and enjoyed. A degree of separation must necessarily exist between the work and the public if one exists between the artist and their work.

Therefore, we must reformulate a new holistic identity of the ‘artist,’ one that cannot be racialized and weaponised against Black and Brown people. This does not necessarily mean a complete change to our lexicon, but at the very least an acknowledgement that people of colour are capable of being artists in themselves. Divorcing assumptions about the artist’s racial identity is a key step. As a result, we give artists the autonomy to define themselves and explain to their audience the nature of the production of their work or the way the work is meant to be consumed.

Once again Said’s scholarship becomes invaluable, when seeking to equip ourselves with the skills necessary to comprehend whether or not the artwork one consumes is racist. He provides two methodological devices one ought to use: strategic location and strategic formation. Strategic location describes, ‘the author's position in a text with regard to the…material [they] write,’ and is critical to uncovering the biases an artist carries into their work. Art is never produced in the abstract and the creative process is never done in a vacuum. Whiteness permeates into even the most sacred of artistic spaces— we must be conscious of this fact. On the other hand, strategic formation is an analytical tool necessary to explain how works ‘acquire mass, density, and referential power among themselves and thereafter in the culture at large,’ (Said, 1979: 20). This 42 | P a g e

device is crucial to critically understand why certain works are propelled into the limelight and the implicitness of the harmful messages they purport. The use of strategic location and formation in tandem provides art consumers with the ability to consume a wide variety of art styles while having a comprehensive understanding of the way narratives are communicated. Once the public begins adopting these devices en masse, the terminal impact of widespread awareness is that subliminal racist messaging which has always flown under the radar of ‘post-racial’ Western society can no longer be replicated nor tacitly internalised by consumers.

The material actions we can take as consumers are fairly diverse. First and foremost, we must boycott exhibitions in museums organised by white curators who seek to exemplify and position gratuitous expressions of BIPOC trauma in just the right way to trigger a reaction from the public.

Expressions of Black trauma organised by Black curators who collaborate with artists who willingly choose the subject of their work are fundamentally different from the status quo of profitability and trauma exploitation.

The economic and social power held by the masses cannot be understated. The public’s ability to strip notoriety, prestige, and importantly funds from these institutions is key in seeing change materialise from pressure. Already, museums have lost their title of the ‘managers of consciousness’ and do and have already reacted to efforts “from Istanbul, Brooklyn and São Paulo, to Sydney, Abu Dhabi and St. Petersburg,” to boycott and resist art’s commodification by neoliberal institutions (Sholette, 2018). Collective action against institutions that illegitimately govern the art world must not end until white society no longer holds a monopoly on positions of leadership within museums, art galleries, and production studios.

Art is one of the most important facets of human existence. It is a testament to the creative capacity that we each possess as individuals. With the suffocating effect of white supremacy and capitalism becoming increasingly restricted, an existential threat to

the world of art arises. We must strive for genuine consumption and experiences with art that appreciates the artist as well as the work in and of itself.

References DiAngelo, R. (2011). White Fragility.

International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3), 54–70. https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFi le/249/116 Dunn, J., Lyn, S., Onyeador, N., & Zegeye, A. (2021, March 11). Black representation in film and TV: The challenges and impact of increasing diversity. McKinsey & Company.

Retrieved December 2023, from https://www.mckinsey.com/featuredinsights/diversity-and-inclusion/blackrepresentation-in-film-and-tv-the-challengesand-impact-of-increasing-diversity.

Foucault, M. (1992). The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure. Penguin Books.

Puar, J.K. (2005). Queer Times, Queer Assemblages. Social Text, 23(3-4), 121–139. doi: 10.1215/01642472-23-3-4_84-85-121 Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. Vintage Sholette, G. (2018, July 9). Does Our Age of Art World Boycotts and Museum Protests Prove That Resistance Is Not Futile?. Frieze.

Retrieved December 2023, from https://www.frieze.com/article/does-our-ageart-world-boycotts-and-museum-protestsprove-resistance-not-futile.

Tenuta, R., & Walker, V. (2018, January 19).

Museum Board Leadership 2017: A National Report. American Alliance of Museums. https://www.aam-us.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/01/eyizzp-downloadthe-report.pdf

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