Moral Opposition and Political Agency under Oppression

• Applicant: Caleb Ward, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Practical Philosophy
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 537496773

In this project, I investigate the relationship between political agency and moral perceptions under conditions of structural injustice. Specifically, I examine how people targeted by oppression—members of racialized groups, disabled people, gender or sexuality minorities, and others—gain the ability to change the conditions that govern their lives, and particularly how that process requires that they resist distortions in the most prevalent moral values and justifications in their societies. The project addresses this topic through two lines of inquiry: (1) articulating a non-ideal theory of political agency apt for describing action under oppression; and (2) defining and demarcating the concept of oppositional moral intuitions and examining the role oppositional moral intuitions play in political agency under oppression. The project has two theoretical and two methodological objectives. The first theoretical objective is to articulate a conception of political agency apt for describing resistance under conditions of oppression. A more capacious conception of political agency will make a key contribution to ongoing work on social movements and resistance in both critical theory and liberal political philosophy. This is particularly urgent as philosophers seek to lend our theoretical resources to help the public better understand contemporary movements for social transformation. The second theoretical objective is to examines whether and how practices of political agency against oppression have an inherently moral character—that is, how such agency contests moral values and discourses. In doing so, the project bridges the divide between political and moral philosophy, enabling philosophers to better theorize the field on which political contestation of the moral takes place. To this end, I will develop a theory of what I call "oppositional moral intuitions": feelings or beliefs about right and wrong developed by those whose interests and agency are devalued by a society's prevalent moral values and justifications. The first methodological objective is to identify and systematize methodological desiderata necessary for theorizing agency under structural injustice. This will enhance theoretical discussions of political agency, which have so far failed to account for political action under oppressive social conditions. As the primary theoretical resources for this project come from black feminist philosophy and cross-disciplinary accounts of agency from ethnography, history, and political theory, the second methodological objective is to demonstrate how expanding the canon can help philosophers produce more adequate theories of political agency.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position