Thread by @lastpositivist

Ok I'm going to try a similar thing but with my understanding of Charles Mills' overall schtick, which I think he has been developing since the 90s (his early career was more Marxist so had some differences to the liberal project he is now engaged in) The Mills project, a thread!

https://twitter.com/lastpositivist/status/1350247302863196160

I think one can break Mills' project into three core elements, which much like Stanley's intertwine to form an interesting coherent whole. Mills has (1) a metaphilosophical project, (2) a descriptive project, and (3) a prescriptive project. That's a good order to cover them in!

The metaphilosophical project has probably been the most influential aspect of his work, independent of the particulars of his first order views in (2) and (3). This relates to what it is Mills thinks political philosophy should be in the business of doing and how it may do so

Mills thinks it is the task of political philosophy to generate theories and conceptual apparatus which help us identify the actual injustices of both our present society and the history leading up to now, and then having done so point us in the direction of doing better.

Stated as such it can sound obvious but from this conception of political philosophy's purpose he draws a number of conclusions that set him at odds with much of the rest of the field. Two of particular interest are hostility to ideal theory, and a sort of epistemological realism

Mills famously argues spending one's time developing models of the ideal state actively hinders this project, because identifying and rectifying past injustices may crucially depend on factors and details that would not appear in an ideal world - they simply won't appear to you

This set him very much at odds with many political philosophers in the 80s and 90s (things have been changing as late, partly in response to his arguments). He also argues, against more Theory or postmodern trends, that a sort of realist veritism is needed in epistemology

That for the fairly simple reason that what we need to carry out his project are accurate depictions of the social order, and knowledge of what interventions may lead us to better states. Discourse analysis is all very well and good, but we're trying to change the world here.

Turning to his descriptive theory, his most famous ideas turn upon the racial contract and theories of ignorance. We can understand the development of the post 1492 world as something like the gradual development and adoption of various compacts among European colonial powers to

arrange hierarchical social orders both within various colonies and on the world stage taken as a whole that would tend to give advantage to white people qua white people and exploit the labour and resources of everyone else purely to the benefits of white people.

He was developing this idea from Carole Pateman who first developed a theory of this form concerning gender relations, and they have worked together thinking about how to combine these various contracts into a unified theory of the social order.

A key part of this racial contract, for Mills, involves forming norms and policies which tend to render people ignorant of the contract itself. This (partly) because it is psychologically difficult to admit to oneself that one lives by the unmerited suffering of others

As such, Mills has been very interested in cognitive biases, constructing ideas of race itself, educational policies, and elements of historiography, which suggest there has been whitewashing or, as he puts it, motivated irrationality in dealing with the facts.

So now in line with the metaphilosophy we have a description of the world that *if he's right!) accurately depicts and renders salient injustices in our present and past social order, while also having a handle on at least some intervenable factors that help sustain the bad order

What do we do? This is where his prescriptive project comes in. In a series of essays Mills has argued that a revived and improved liberalism should be adopted and promoted, with special attention to principles of compensatory justice. He calls this "black radical Kantianism".

In short this involves trying to identify what it is in key liberal ideals that rendered them so easily compatible with injustice, rectifying them so as to no longer uphold the racial contract, then theorising about how to realise the emancipatory goals of this refined liberalism

For Mills this has largely been focussed on ideas about what it is to count as a "person" or "rational agent" that have been so influential in deciding who can be an autonomous rights bearer and enjoy the privileges and protections of a liberal state.

The idea is that once we have a proper theory of autonomous personhood we could formulate theories about how to realise this for everyone so far as possible. In such a way we might smash the inequitable social contract, and do away with the ignorance and injustice we now suffer.

As you read this I am guessing much sounds familiar? That's because Mills has been very influential! He's certainly not the only one developing these ideas and not all of this has taken off, but I think he has subtly shaped more of our public discussion than is often appreciated.