How Darwin can help Post-Structuralists Maintain that Apartheid was Unconditionally Unjust

Bibliographic Data

ID21700870
AuthorsRetha Van Der Merwe (0000-0003-1038-758X, University of Johannesburg, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume29
Issue2
Pages337-357
Publication date2025-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Ethics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1382-4554 • E-ISSN: 1572-8609
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10892-024-09495-4
OpenAlexW4402683179
LanguageEN
References cited50

Generally, we want certain ethical claims to be unconditionally true. One such claim is “Apartheid was unjust”. In this paper, I discuss a group of South African post-structuralist philosophers who call their view Critical Complexity (CC). Because of post-structuralism’s radical contextualism, CCists can only claim that things are ‘as if’ Apartheid was unjust. They cannot claim that Apartheid was unconditionally unjust. Many will find this unsatisfying. I argue that a naturalised or Darwinian notion of rationality can help CCists (and perhaps post-structuralists in general) in this regard. This kind of rationality is what has come to be known as embodied rationality. We employ embodied rationality when navigating the ecological and social domains. It has, though, been co-opted for navigating the ethical domain. We can, then, claim that Apartheid was unconditionally unjust because it is embodied rational to do so. This does not involve embracing the kind of Cartesian rationality that CCists rightly reject

Economics · Epistemology · Law and economics · Political science · Positive economics · Rationality · Computer Science · Critical Realism in Sociology · Economic Theory and Institutions · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism

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