βPhilosophy Talksβ publishes blog by philosopher David Livingstone Smith of 911±¬ΑΟΝψΊμΑμ½ν

David Livingstone Smith, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, recently wrote a blog that was published by the Philosophy Talk website. Titled βThe Unnatural is the Political,β the blog argues that one sense of the unnatural carries great political potency.
Writes Smith, ββ¦ the concept of the natural gets used to justify the social order, and the concept of the unnatural fuels efforts to punish or destroy those who deviate from it.β He poses the example of the claim that it is unnatural for women to prefer high-powered careers over motherhood. βWhen people say such things, theyβre not claiming that women canβt pursue such careers. Instead theyβre saying that thereβs something deviant or wrongβsomething contrary to female nature β something unnatural about it,β writes Smith. He points to miscegenation and homosexuality as other concepts that historically have undermined socially entrenched conceptions of the natural order.
Smith warns that βtarring people with the brush of unnaturalness can have very serious, in fact deadly, consequences.β He further cautions that there exists βan even more sinister conception of the unnatural.β Smith explains: In any system of categories there are things β in this case people β who donβt wholly fit into any of the boxes. Itβs not that theyβre out of place, itβs that they donβt even have a place. Such people implicitly call the whole system β the whole conception of a society β into questionβ¦ They pose what the philosopher Noel Carroll calls a cognitive threatβ and will be βmarked for destruction or shunted off to the margins of society β in the past, exile, and in the present, prison.β
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