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The Ethics of Uncle Tom's Children

1. Living with Injustice How should one live? This central philosophical question can be separated into at least two parts. The first concerns the conduct and attitudes morality requires of each of us. The second is about the essential elements of a worthwhile life; it’s about what it means to flourish, which includes meeting certain moral demands but is not exhausted by this. Answering this two-pronged question traditionally falls within the subdiscipline of ethics, broadly construed. Philosophers have also sought to explain what makes a society just or good, to specify the values and principles by which we are to evaluate institutional arrangements and political regimes. This is the traditional domain of political philosophy. This essay addresses a question that arises where ethics and political philosophy meet. Philosophers who attempt to answer the question of how should one live typically abstract away from the concrete sociopolitical circumstances within which individuals make their lives, circumstances that, as it turns out, may be shaped by serious injustices. This kind of idealization has its place. It is often productive to start with ideal theory, where we assume individuals are acting under reasonably just background conditions, using what we learn to better understand what choices we ought to make in our less than ideal, real lives. But there are vexing ethical questions that can be answered only if we theorize them against the background of societal injustice. The question within nonideal theory that I want to take up is how one should live under conditions of serious societal injustice. I am particularly concerned to understand how members of oppressed groups ought to live when the prospects for overcoming their oppression are uncertain or dim. As with ideal theory, answering the question of how the oppressed ought to live is not limited to specifying their moral obligations. It also entails explaining what a life well lived in the face of oppression would involve. Obviously, to fully flourish (on almost any account of what this