The Received View and Its Rivals

Abstract

Chapter 3 considers the received view’s answers to the book’s final two questions, as well as the answers given by rival theories to all five of its questions. It begins by challenging three rival theories of the responsibility to combat injustice. These ground it in a duty of universal altruism or equity, in duties we acquire if we could at least potentially harm the injustice’s victims, or in the theory that oppression makes both the oppressed and the oppressor unfree, so that both have reason to abolish it. The chapter then challenges the received view’s theory that only the victim group are made unfree by oppression, as well as the theory saying that the unfree are the oppressor and the oppressed. It concludes by challenging theories holding that oppression’s ultimate harm is that it alienates or dehumanizes victims, constrains them from achieving their potential, or prevents them from living as free equals.