Silvia Paciaroni interviews Dr Greg Moses, exploring points from the fourth lecture of our Insurrectionist Ethics course, titled McBride's Ethics of Insurrection and King's Logic of Nonviolence.

Current position: Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Texas State University

Education: Ph.D. in Philosophy, University of Texas, Austin

Affiliations: Member of the Selection Committee for the Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion, Member of the Department Culture Committee, Affiliated with APA, Concerned Philosophers for Peace, Philosophy Born of Struggle

Selected works:

Moses, R. G. (Ed.). (2022). The Acorn: Philosophical Studies in Pacifism and Nonviolence. The Acorn: Philosophical Studies in Pacifism and Nonviolence (1st–2nd ed., Vol. 21, pp. 1–100). San Marcos, TX, US: Gandhi King Addams Chavez Society.

Moses, R. G. (2018). Groundworks for a Pedagogy of Evolutionary Love Ethics: Archetypes of Moral Imagination in the Pragmatisms of Peirce and Addams. Educational Theory, 67(6).

Moses, R. G. (2021). Decolonizing Philosophy without Further Delay: Acorn Editors Respond to the Oxford Student Collective. Oxford Public Philosophy Journal, 2. Retrieved from https://www.oxfordpublicphilosophy.com/education/decolonizing-philosophy

Moses, R. G. (2015). Cultivating Cultures of Struggle: Why Revolutionaries Should Talk About their Feelings. Radical Philosophy Review, 18(1).

Areas of specialisation: Nonviolence, Value Theory, Martin Luther King, Jr., African American Philosophy, Applied Philosophy and Ethics

find Dr Moses on…

academia.edu

opp’s insurrectionist ethics course: sitting four

Dr Moses has kindly answered our questions regarding the fourth lecture of our course on Insurrectionist Ethics, McBride's Ethics of Insurrection and King's Logic of Nonviolence. He touches upon the relationship between music and philosophy, Christianity and oppression, and the difference between abolitionism and insurrectionism. Read the full interview to know more about these points and more.

Phil People

Interview with Dr Moses

You mention a couple of songs at the beginning of your lecture. Can you explain the significance that you think music and/or art can have when doing philosophy?

Music and art suggest ideas even as they prove the limit of conceptual form. There are philosophical musicians, and there are musical philosophers. The great musical philosopher Plato worried about the power of music. Nietzsche wrestled with Wagner. Amiri Baraka and Angela Davis show how music creates tones of yearning or critique. In the example of Bob Dylan, music is conjoined to a provocative poetics, inspired by the motto on Woody Guthrie’s guitar: “This Machine Kills Fascists.” Here in Texas, of course, we have rich cultures of song that connect us within shared rhythm, feeling, insight, and attitude. When we ask who is reached by music, we move closer to who we are. Great philosophy moves the subject that is also moved by music and art.

How would Walker reconcile his Christian argument with the fact that most white oppressors are in fact Christians? How can we believe a Christian argument could persuade people to stop oppression if Christianity itself has been used as a tool of oppression?

I read Walker’s Christianity through the perspective of Dr. James Farmer, Sr., who insisted on Christianity’s connection to ancient Hebrew prophets. The prophets who cried “Hear, O Israel” spoke from within their communities. They appealed to truths that should be minded because in the end those truths will not tolerate neglect. Walker warned fellow Christians and fellow Americans: these truths shall reveal themselves. In the long run, hundreds of thousands of Christian Americans would eventually die over the question of slavery, as Walker prophesied they would. When Martin Luther King, Jr., declared that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, he was indicating a similar teaching. We can practice justice now, or we can be undone by injustice later. This teaching goes all the way back to Ptah-hotep, who, by the way, is quoted in the book of Proverbs.

When saying things like “what have Black people done to deserve this?”, aren’t we reasoning according to an oppressive mindset, when in fact nothing was done to deserve it? It seems like trying to convince oppressors to understand that oppression was undeserved amounts to misunderstanding the problem. What do you think?

I think Walker’s question is rhetorical because the answer is compelled by the facts that he presents: the motive for slavery’s cruelty lies solely with the greed of the enslaver. King also traced the motive of racism to economic exploitation. Cultural addiction to racism continues today, and it harms us all, as demonstrated in the recent work of Heather McGhee. But how do you talk an addict out of their addiction?

Can you spell out the difference between being insurrectionist and abolitionist? Are they mutually exclusive categories?

The insurrectionist John Brown, and the abolitionist Frederick Douglass were deeply allied in their ultimate objectives; and yet, one day they part ways. I think that being an insurrectionist requires the “liberty or death” declaration.

It seems like a justification of insurrectionist ethics is tightly connected to one’s conception of ethics. Would you say Walker’s justification of insurrectionist ethics based on a certain definition of personhood is in some way akin to virtue ethics?

I would say that Walker’s appeal to personhood does not depend upon first establishing any virtue of the person to be respected. His claim about personhood is deontological: one is duty-bound to respect persons as such. On the other hand, if we seek to become the kind of person or society who respects personhood as such, then we would be practicing virtue ethics in some respect.

Can you give examples of how the power of descriptions practically enforces oppression?

In my answer to a previous question, I indicated how Walker and King describe slavery and racism as arising from the motive power of greed and economic exploitation. However, one of the first requirements of oppression is that it must compel another kind of description; therefore, oppression is presented as the fault of the oppressed: their godlessness, their threatening beastiality, their incapacity for humanity. Capitalism thrives upon a certain condition of the unconscious, which requires the critical investigation of dreams. Oppression is rife with scapegoating descriptions, quite often supported by so-called science. All forms of oppression generate descriptions to invert the facts of greed or exploitation; the structure of this semiotic is what Marx called ideology. This is the insight of Frank Wilderson’s Afropessimism, that descriptions of humanity always fail to recognize Black people.

How can we destroy a description that is established in a speakers’ community?

I see that my hosts have returned to me the question that I left them at the conclusion of my short lecture on insurrectionist ethics. As Plato teaches, a respectful house guest should give an answer to any question they bring with them. The short answer will be found in “The Theses on Feuerbach”— destroying an ideology becomes a practical question that must be approached socially, that is, from application of revolutionary practice. A longer answer would explicate King’s nonviolence as revolutionary practice, because it seeks systemic displacement of exploitative description (or ideology) socially conceived.

We want to warmly thank Dr Moses for taking the time to answer our questions. What transpires from his philosophical work is a passionate interest in thinking about philosophy as a practice, and the ways it can be compared to various forms of art. At the same time, his philosophical reflections do not lack inspirations from and references to elements of religion, social issues, and history, providing a comprehensive framework to understand oppression, insurrectionist ethics, and nonviolence.