Tanner-McMurrin Lectures

In his forthcoming book, The Afterlife of Race: An Informed Philosophical Search (OUP, fall 2023), Lionel McPherson argues that the perpetual stigmatized, wealthless condition of Black America is best understood as a caste phenomenon. Caste calls attention to intergenerational nature and national specificity of the Black American situation, rooted in inherited slavery and enforced segregation; “race,” by contrast, traffics in flat blackness. As McPherson explains it, race intrigue functions as a distraction—from the subjugation, exploitation, and non-repair of the historical American “Slaves” caste—by (mis)directing focus to some global antiblack racism phenomenon of lesser importance.

Drawing on her work on the American criminal punishment system (The Limits of Blame: Rethinking Punishment and Responsibility (Harvard, 2018)), Erin Kelly explains that the politics of blame tracks American caste. That is, it adheres to the subordination of Black Americans as descendants of American slavery. The stigma conferred on Black Americans works by merging distinctions between act, person, and group, which practices of harsh punishment encourage. The result is normalization of mass criminalization and incarceration, as well as denial of equal democratic citizenship to Black Americans as a group.

Joel H. Rosenthal is president of Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. He is also adjunct professor at New York University and chairman of the Bard College Globalization and International Affairs (BGIA) program in New York City. He received his PhD from Yale University and B.A. from Harvard University. As a scholar and teacher, Rosenthal has focused on ethics in US foreign policy, with special emphasis on issues of war and peace, human rights, and pluralism.

His first book Righteous Realists (1991) is a study of Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, and Reinhold Niebuhr, among other American realists. His edited volume Ethics and International Affairs: A Reader (Georgetown University Press; 3rd edition, co-edited by Christian Barry) is a compilation of essays from major figures in the field and is widely used in college and university courses. In 2016, he was appointed Dorsett Fellow at Dartmouth College.

His numerous national and international awards include the Distinguished Scholar Award from the International Studies Association in 2019 for his life-time achievement in International Studies and an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Social Science from the University of Edinburgh. He is the editor-in-chief of the Carnegie Council’s flagship journal, Ethics and International Affairs, published by Cambridge University Press. Its articles have appeared over 1,100 times in hundreds of university syllabi in 28 countries.

This lecture investigates the climate of simmering anger that disfigures most modern democracies, expressing itself in blaming and targeting of unpopular groups. Nussbaum argues that a philosophical analysis of anger and its roots in the experience of powerlessness can help us as we move forward. Beginning with an example from Greek tragedy in which retributive anger is refashioned into constructive work and hope, she will focus on the role of retributive desires in most instances of everyday anger. She argues that the desire for payback is counter-productive since replicating the offense does not correct it. She then looks at the roots of retributive desires in experiences of helplessness. She argues that there are just one species of anger that can help us as we move forward. Called “Transition-Anger” because it faces toward the future, it has the following content: “How outrageous that is! It must not happen again.” This type of anger eschews retributive thinking in favor of constructive work and hope. She shows its relevance by studying the U. S. Civil Rights movement and the thought of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martha C. Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, appointed in the Law School and Philosophy Department at the University of Chicago. She is an Associate in the Classics Department, the Divinity School, and the Political Science Department, a Member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a Board Member of the Human Rights Program. She received her BA from NYU and her MA and PhD from Harvard. She has taught at Harvard University, Brown University, and Oxford University.

Professor Nussbaum is an Academician in the Academy of Finland, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. In addition to her numerous national and international awards, she has received over 60 honorary degrees from colleges and universities in the US, Canada, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. Her books in philosophy, law, education, gender studies, and other related areas are among the most important and influential publications in these fields.