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It Is Often Said That We Live Under Systems Of Injustice. But If So, Who Ought To Combat Them, And Why? Many In The World's Liberal Elite Hold That Only The Perpetrators Or The Victims Have Such Duties, Because Of Their Special Connections To The Injustice. Others Hold That All Of The Privileged Have Them, Because They Have Duties To Relieve Suffering Or To Redress Their Complicity In The Injustice. This Book Challenges Those Answers. It Argues That Everyone Living Under Such Injustices Ought To Combat Them: Victim, Perpetrator, And Bystander Alike. Moreover, They All Have The Same Reason For Doing So: Such Injustices Suppress Everyone's Resistance To Their Workings. But There Is A Name For Such Suppression: Authoritarianism. Hence Such Injustices Make Everyone Unfree, Because They Subject Everyone To Authoritarian Tactics. The Book Thus Reinterprets And Defends A Core Doctrine Of The Global Left, No One Is Free While Others Are Oppressed! For It Shows How Oppression Subjects Everyone--including You--to Arbitrary Power. The Book Argues That Systematic Injustice Occurs When One Group Finds That Its Political Voice Is Unjustly Marginalized, Its Members Exploited And Subject To Systematic Violence, And That Society's Dominant Norms Unjustly Favor A Privileged Group. It Diagnoses Three Global Injustices Of This Kind: Gender, Race, And Poverty. It Then Shows How Such Injustices Always Suppress Everyone's Resistance To Them, Making Everyone Unfree. But If So, It Argues, Then This Shared Unfreedom Should Be The Ground On Which Victims, Bystanders, And Perpetrators Unite In Solidarity Against Injustice.
This book investigates the core question of who holds the moral duty to combat systemic injustice and why such resistance is a universal obligation. Thomas J. Donahue-Ochoa, a scholar of political theory, challenges traditional liberal frameworks that limit the responsibility of resistance to victims or perpetrators. He argues that systemic injustices function through authoritarian tactics that suppress the agency of all members of society, thereby rendering everyone unfree regardless of their social position. By reinterpreting the doctrine that no one is free while others are oppressed, the author posits that shared unfreedom serves as the necessary foundation for cross-societal solidarity against systemic oppression.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars and readers frequently note the dense, rigorous philosophical argumentation present throughout the text. Experts highlight this work as a significant contribution to contemporary political theory regarding the nature of solidarity and the definition of freedom.
Page Count:
304
Publication Date:
2019-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190051698
ISBN-13:
9780190051693
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