Notions of supremacy

Thomas McCarthy, the William H. Orrick Visiting Professor at Yale University and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Northwestern University, has written an extraordinary book that is both accessible and insightful.

Accessible because unlike most philosophers, who prefer to talk to each other and rely on convoluted verbiage and advanced theorising to distinguish themselves, McCarthy uses clear language. Insightful because, in Jürgen Habermas's own inimitable words, this is an "account of racisms and penetrating criticisms of developmental schemes, … [which] provides at the same time a path-breaking analysis of what should be saved, ‘after progress', from developmental thought".

The book is divided into two parts — the first examining political philosophy and racial injustice, with valuable discussions of Immanuel Kant's perspectives on race and development, and a highly critical analysis of social Darwinism that supported white supremacy.

It closes with a wrenching outlook on how one can come to terms with the memory of slavery (the white, yellow, and black versions), which catapulted the West to its present heights.

Part two is far more reflective, dwelling on how to hope for a universal history, the impetus for liberal imperialism, and how to handle contemporary messianism that justifies a great deal in the name of progress.

Needless to say, the reader who has the patience to plough through McCarthy's prose will discover how Western societies established and practised hierarchical conceptions of human encroachment. In other words, he elaborates on Western hegemony, which drew succour from its enlightened souls.

Aristotle, for example, justified enslaving those who were "inferior by nature" (page 42), whereas Kant presented a "pragmatic" anthropology, often interchanged with a "moral anthropology", which "identify cultural and historical factors that help or hinder the establishment and efficacy of morality in human life" (page 45). One can justify neo-racism and neo-imperialism with greater ease when one absconds morality and places it to his service.

Justification for imperialism

McCarthy shows how Kant's universalistic humanism was "placed at the service of European expansionism" (page 68), and courageously tackles the paragon of developmental scholars, Charles Darwin, whose 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, permitted the expansion of imperialism.

Needless to say that McCarthy rejects such theories, and affirms that the natural-scientific practices "that serves to rationalise continuing racial injustice" (page 95), facilitated slavery. It is rare, even in hallowed academic spheres, to have such clear-headedness that one is tickled pink to read them in a serious book accessible to all.

McCarthy rises above shallow theorising that justified superiority under moral or genetic fragments. He shows that racism and colonialism were rationalised though they remained utterly wrong. McCarthy goes even further by insisting that contemporary variations of these ills were also devoid of ethical claims.

True to the Frankfurt tradition — the German philosophy school where dissenters from Marxism remained critical of capitalism too — McCarthy perceives the need, not "unreasonable" he hopes, to establish a "world order in which all human beings receive equal respect and consideration" (page 165). The author naturally understands that this is not going to simply happen but will, in the Kantian terminology, require that human beings pursue a "moral-political goal". If this appears to be the outline of a critical theory of global development which is both universalist and multiculturalist, then that is exactly what McCarthy wishes.

The days of a Eurocentric — read White Supremacist — order are long overdue, which will require political courage in the West, and hard work and determination in the rest of the world.

What is at stake is global peace, which can only be guaranteed, asserts McCarthy, if we promote global justice. To achieve the latter, societies must encourage free and fair trade, rather that the legacy of ties that systematically favoured industrialised countries. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out, as any visit to London versus Mumbai, or Rome versus Bamako, will confirm.

Beyond the dependency theory that is now passé, McCarthy asks his reader to "dismantle developmental thinking" (page 207), if only to avoid Kant's "war of all against all" (page 229). Instead, he hopes that mankind will "reign in the systemic force of money and power, which will require a global rule of law, democratic forms of global governance and a global politics of distributive justice" (page 228).

Although this book is meant for scholars and advanced students of philosophy and political theory, the lay reader will find it rewarding as an excellent introduction to the history of ideas and racial affairs, which shape multi-ethnic societies.

Few will close the book without a profound appreciation for the many changes that the 20th century ushered, which witnessed the rise and fall of a race that pretended to be above all others.

Dr Joseph A. Kéchichian is an author, most recently of Faysal: Saudi Arabia's King for All Seasons (2008).

Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human DevelopmentBy Thomas McCarthy, Cambridge University Press, $27.99, 254 pages