Moral Error, Power, and Insult

• Date: 01 October 2007
• Author: Burke A. Hendrix
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591707304586
• Published date: 01 October 2007
• Subject Matter: Articles

550

Political Theory

Volume 35 Number 5

October 2007 550-573

© 2007 Sage Publications

10.1177/0090591707304586

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Author’s Note: I would like to thank Jason Frank, David Tafler, Margaret Taurere,

Loganathan Krishnan, Duncan Ivison, Alison McQueen, and the editors and reviewers of

Political Theory for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this essay.

Moral Error,

Power, and Insult

Burke A. Hendrix

Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Defenders of Aboriginal rights such as James Tully have argued that

members of majority populations should allow Aboriginal peoples to argue

within their own preferred intellectual frameworks in seeking common moral

ground. But how should non-Aboriginal academics react to claims that seem

insufficiently critical or even incoherent? This essay argues that there are two

reasons to be especially wary of attacking such errors given the historical

injustices perpetrated by settler states against Aboriginal peoples. First,

attempts to root out error will often be misplaced, because they will fail to

consider the full range of possible reasons for particular kinds of social

practices. Second, such attempts will often have counterproductive social

effects in disrupting conversations and prolonging Aboriginal alienation.

This essay thus argues that non-Aboriginal academics should be willing to

exercise considerable self-restraint toward apparent intellectual errors,

because such a strategy will be most conducive to realizing justice over the

long term.

Keywords: Aboriginal peoples; cultural rights; historical injustice; moral

error; power

Power and Self-Restraint

How much intellectual self-restraint should we as political philosophers

exhibit toward moral claims that seem to us deeply mistaken, particu-

larly if they are made by vulnerable and historically mistreated minorities?

Many defenders of Aboriginal rights, including James Tully, Duncan Ivison,

Robert Williams Jr., Taiaiake Alfred, and others, argue that members of

settler societies owe Aboriginal peoples a chance to press claims using their

own philosophical frameworks, and that we who are non-Aboriginal must

Hendrix / Moral Error, Power, and Insult 551

listen carefully and respectfully to these views.1We must not simply

demand that they speak in our familiar (and hegemonic) terms and cate-

gories, but also take their claims seriously as independent carriers of value

from which we might learn, or (failing that) which we might at least see as

having equal worth to our own.

Yet what if many Aboriginal claims strike us as insufficiently critical,

morally implausible, or logically incoherent? Should we focus on correct-

ing these errors to make the terms of our agreement or disagreement

clearer, or as a way of showing the other side where they have gone wrong?

Or should we exhibit some self-restraint, and allow claims to go unchal-

lenged even if they seem strange or indefensible? In this essay, I want to

consider two types of arguments for exhibiting substantial self-restraint in

many instances. The first argument invokes the difficulties of good moral

judgment, and focuses on the value of long-term listening for improving

our own moral viewpoints: paradoxically, better thinking may sometimes

depend on deciding to be less exacting. The second argument focuses on

the process of interaction itself, and kinds of behaviors necessary to allow

for the growth of mutual respect—even if we do not always believe

Aboriginal peoples, we must at a minimum abstain from insulting them.

Waldron on Indigeneity

To give this essay a clear anchor, let me begin with an example of a

recurring kind of Aboriginal claim, and then a counterargument from a non-

Aboriginal philosopher. Consider the following from Native Canadian John

Borrows, who argues that Aboriginal peoples have both a right and an

obligation to have greater influence within Canada, apparently because of

their ancestors’ prior occupancy:

Aboriginal peoples must transmit and use their culture in matters beyond

“Aboriginal affairs.” Aboriginal citizenship must be extended to encompass

other people from around the world who have come to live on our land. After

all, it is our country. Aboriginal people have the right, and the legal obliga-

tion of prior citizenship, to participate in its changes.2

Notice the essential claim here: “After all, it is our country.” (The empha-

sis is Borrows’s own.) This is obviously a recurring kind of claim in many

Aboriginal arguments—indeed, the notions of “Aboriginal” and “indige-

nous” themselves seem to entail this kind of “firstness.”3Since Borrows is