Please join us as Prof. Lee McBride (Philosophy, College of Wooster) shares his argument that insurrectionist ethics and its audacious posture of resistance is crucial to social amelioration in the face of oppression.
In the United States, many are inculcated with a faith in democracy. Many believe that social amelioration is only achieved through civil discourse and legal procedures--for the alternatives are destructive and irrational. While McBride may concede that "the cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy," he worries that platitudinous appeals to Pollyannaish notions of democracy and civility often confine oppressed people to collegial, moral suasionist approaches to social amelioration.
In this talk, McBride will briefly discuss oppression and the various ways it manifests in the world (sex-based, class-based, race-based, sexuality-based, etc.) before articulating the types of moral intuitions, reasoning strategies, and character traits one finds in an insurrectionist ethics. McBride argues that insurrectionist ethics and its audacious posture of resistance is crucial to social amelioration in the face of oppression.
