Something More Than Words: A Review of (Re-)Defining Racism: A Philosophical Analysis, Alberto G. Urquidez

AbstractDrawing on the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alberto G. Urquidez works to free the fly (i.e. race/racism) from the metaphorical bottle by shifting the terms of the debate away from attempts at describing a thing that is not real and toward a normative or prescriptive approach to racism, rather than race, that emphasizes how the concept ought to be defined, as well as deployed, for anti-racist ends. Urquidez refers to this normative pragmatic approach as ‘conventionalism’ and the overarching structure of(Re-)Defining Racism: A Philosophical Analysis thus describes this position and then emphasizes its normative force. Here, I unpack Urquidez ’s dual critique while also emphasizing my anxieties about a linguistic approach to race or racism, which might be framed as a variation of the is/ought problem insofar as it remains unclear to me how Alberto’s framework accounts for the transition from descriptive critique to normative anti-rac ist action.

Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - April 5, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research