Ethics and Insurrection articulates an ethical position that takes critical pragmatism and Harrisian insurrectionist philosophy seriously. It suggests that there are values and norms that create boundaries that confine, reduce and circumscribe the actions we allow ourselves to consider. McBride argues that an insurrectionist ethos is integral in the disavowing of norms and traditions that justify or perpetuate oppression and that we must throw our faith behind something, some set of values, if we want a chance at shaping a future. This book encourages us to (re)imagine and shape futures with less subjection, less degradation. It urges us to interrogate and deconstruct those intervening background assumptions that authorize and reinforce the subordination of stigmatized groups. It implores us to pursue new conceptions of personhood and humanity, conceptions that forefront reciprocity and solidarity-conceptions that do not cast groups of human beings as inherently subhuman or naturally bereft of honor. And finally Ethics and Insurrection beseeches us to form new coalitions and bonds of trust, to engage in those forms of collective action likely to shape a better future.

Lee A. McBride III is Professor of Philosophy at the College of Wooster, USA. He is the editor of A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Ethics and Insurrection articulates an ethical position that takes critical pragmatism and Harrisian insurrectionist philosophy seriously. It suggests that there are values and norms that create boundaries that confine, reduce and circumscribe the actions we allow ourselves to consider. McBride argues that an insurrectionist ethos is integral in the disavowing of norms and traditions that justify or perpetuate oppression and that we must throw our faith behind something, some set of values, if we want a chance at shaping a future.

This book encourages us to (re)imagine and shape futures with less subjection, less degradation. It urges us to interrogate and deconstruct those intervening background assumptions that authorize and reinforce the subordination of stigmatized groups. It implores us to pursue new conceptions of personhood and humanity, conceptions that forefront reciprocity and solidarity-conceptions that do not cast groups of human beings as inherently subhuman or naturally bereft of honor. And finally Ethics and Insurrection beseeches us to form new coalitions and bonds of trust, to engage in those forms of collective action likely to shape a better future.

Acknowledgements
Source Acknowledgements and Abbreviations

Introduction

1. (Moral) Philosophy in a Thoroughly Disenchanted Universe

2. An Insurrectionist Ethics:
Critical Pragmatism and Philosophia Nata Ex Conatu

3. New Descriptions, New Possibilities

4. Empathy or Insurrection:
Wielding Positive and Negative Affect

5. Evoking Race (to Confront Race-Based Oppression); Or,
Adversarial Groups as Anabsolute

6. Building Traditions, Shaping Futures:
Values, Norms, and Transvaluation

Epilogue
Index