Special Issue: The Journal of Modern Philosophy
The Center is pleased to announce the publication of a special issue of The Journal of Modern Philosophy: Imperialism, Racism, and Slavery in the Modern Period, Vol. 6, Issue 2. The Center was delighted to provide support for this publication as well as the 2023 conference “Slavery and Early Modern Philosophy,” which resulted in this special edition. Professor of Philosophy Aaron Garret serves as the Journal’s co-editor and organized the associated 2023 conference. Below is a brief description of this special edition. Please visit https://jmphil.org/issue/318/info/ to view this publication.
“The topic of this special issue is the manner in which Early Modern philosophers engaged with the most pressing moral issue of their era: the Transatlantic slave trade.
Despite the volume of literature produced by Early Modern philosophers about this issue, both in defense of it and in opposition to it, many historians of philosophy have not reckoned with how the motives, ideology, violence, and commerce of the Transatlantic slave trade influenced every aspect of the philosophy that was written in that era. As editors of this special issue, we aim to illustrate how Early Modern conversations at large—about politics, money, human nature, and justice—are informed by the ongoing business of enslavement. We aim to give our readers a firm foothold in these conversations and allow them to reach even more informed assessments and evaluations of these arguments within their sociohistorical context.
The papers in this special issue were presented and workshopped at Boston University in October 2023 and funded by the Benedict Lecture series, the Boston University Center for the Humanities, and the Boston University Philosophy Department. We are grateful to the participants and audience for their interest in this topic and their original contributions to this inquiry. We also thank the Wellesley College Faculty Research and Awards Committee for their financial support to publish this special issue.”