A Companion to Public Philosophy

34Philosophical Collaborations with Activists

ANDREA J. PITTS

Philosophers have long endeavored to support politically relevant efforts, including institutional and legal reforms, insurrectionist uprisings, anticolonial independence struggles, cultural movements, and anti‐violence work. Many philosophers today, likewise, continue to participate in a number of activist projects and forms of community organizing that endeavor to shape and transform social life. While some debates have emerged regarding normative questions of whether or how philosophers should be activists,¹ this chapter focuses more directly on the manner in which philosophical authors have supported, engaged in, or examined forms of political participation that seek to end forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, colonialism, and systemic poverty. As such, this chapter’s selection of forms of political organizing and agency surveys only several strands of a much broader history of political activism among philosophical writers, and the chapters of this edited collection speak to some of the further breadth and depth of how philosophy can be considered a catalyst for social change. To narrow the scope of this chapter, I unpack its title in further detail, working through several loose categorizations regarding potential relationships between philosophy and activism since the nineteenth century. In what follows, I distinguish between philosophers who are writing about or in support of forms of political activism ...