Common Sense Philosophy/Chapter 21

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Chapter 21: The Global South Speaks -- Decolonial Critiques and Their Limits

The Challenge That Cannot Be Evaded

The two previous chapters examined the Western and Eastern philosophical traditions with a combination of appreciation and critique. But there is a third voice in global philosophical discourse that demands to be heard -- a voice that challenges not merely the content of these traditions but the very framework within which we have been evaluating them. This is the voice of the Global South: the decolonial thinkers, the postcolonial critics, the indigenous philosophers, the African ethicists who ask a question that cuts to the heart of this book's project.

The question is this: When you speak of "universal values" -- human rights, individual liberty, rational autonomy, the reduction of suffering -- are you describing genuine universals, or are you dressing up the particular values of Western European modernity in the language of universality and imposing them on the rest of the world? Is "Common Sense" truly common, or is it the sense of a particular civilization that has had the military and economic power to make its sense appear common?

This is not a question that can be dismissed. It is not the petulant complaint of thinkers who resent Western achievements. It is a serious philosophical challenge, grounded in a historical reality that is incontestable: for five centuries, the language of universal values has been used to justify conquest, enslavement, cultural destruction, and economic exploitation on a scale that is difficult to comprehend and impossible to excuse. When Hernán Cortés destroyed the Aztec civilization, he did so in the name of universal salvation. When Leopold II enslaved the Congo, he did so in the name of universal civilization. When the British starved Bengal, they did so in the name of universal free trade. The record is damning, and any philosophy that claims universality must reckon with it.

This chapter takes the decolonial critique seriously -- more seriously, in some respects, than its own proponents do -- and then explains why the critique, for all its force, ultimately supports rather than undermines the project of this book. The conclusion will be that relativism is not the answer to imperialism, and that abandoning universality is not the way to decolonize it.

Fanon and the Psychology of Colonization

Frantz Fanon remains the most important theorist of colonialism's psychological dimension -- the ways in which colonial domination does not merely exploit the bodies of the colonized but colonizes their minds. His Black Skin, White Masks (1952) is a devastating phenomenological account of what it means to be Black in a world that defines humanity in terms of whiteness. His The Wretched of the Earth (1961) is the most powerful theoretical text of anticolonial revolution, and its opening chapter -- "Concerning Violence" -- remains one of the most incendiary pieces of political writing in any language.

Fanon's central insight is that colonialism is not merely an economic or political system but a total ontological structure -- a way of organizing reality that divides the world into the "zone of being" (the colonizer, who is fully human) and the "zone of non-being" (the colonized, who is subhuman). This division is maintained not only by force but by language, education, culture, and -- most perniciously -- by the internalization of colonial categories by the colonized themselves. The colonized person who straightens her hair, who whitens her skin, who speaks the colonizer's language with a perfect accent while being ashamed of her mother tongue, who measures her worth by the colonizer's standards -- this person has been colonized not only externally but internally.

The relevance to this book's project is direct. If "universal values" -- reason, liberty, human rights -- are in fact colonial categories, then a philosophy that elevates them to universal status is perpetuating colonialism in philosophical form. The decolonial thinkers who followed Fanon have made precisely this argument.

Mignolo and the Colonial Matrix of Power

Walter Mignolo, the Argentine semiotician who is perhaps the most influential contemporary decolonial theorist, has developed the concept of the "colonial matrix of power" (matriz colonial de poder) -- a comprehensive framework for understanding how modernity, colonialism, and the claim to universality are structurally interconnected.

The core argument is this: Western modernity -- the complex of ideas, institutions, and practices that emerged in Europe from the sixteenth century onward -- is inseparable from colonialism. The Enlightenment was not a universal awakening of reason; it was a European project that defined reason in European terms and used that definition to classify the rest of the world as irrational, primitive, or undeveloped. The "universal" values of the Enlightenment -- human rights, democracy, scientific rationality -- are not truly universal but rather the values of a particular civilization at a particular historical moment, elevated to universal status through a combination of intellectual self-confidence and military power.

Mignolo does not deny that these values have been used for liberatory purposes. He acknowledges that anticolonial movements have invoked human rights, democracy, and self-determination in their struggles against colonial rule. But he argues that this merely demonstrates the hegemonic power of Western modernity: even the resistance to Western domination is conducted in Western terms, using Western categories, appealing to Western values. The colonized mind remains colonized even in revolt.

Anibal Quijano, the Peruvian sociologist who coined the term "coloniality of power," makes a related argument. The colonial system, Quijano argues, did not end with political independence. The former colonies may have achieved formal sovereignty, but the conceptual apparatus through which they understand themselves -- their categories of knowledge, their standards of evaluation, their ideals of progress -- remain colonial. "Coloniality" persists long after colonialism has officially ended, embedded in the very language and concepts that postcolonial societies use to think about themselves.

Said, Spivak, and the Critique of Representation

Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) made a different but complementary argument: that the Western scholarly tradition's representation of "the East" -- its construction of an "Orient" that is mysterious, irrational, sensual, despotic, and fundamentally Other -- is not a neutral description of reality but a discourse of power that serves Western interests. The "Orient" of Western scholarship is a Western creation, and its function is to define the West by contrast: the West is rational, the East is irrational; the West is progressive, the East is stagnant; the West is free, the East is despotic.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's famous essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (1988) pushed the critique further. The "subaltern" -- the colonized subject who has been silenced by colonial power structures -- cannot speak in any meaningful sense, because the very categories of speech available to her are colonial categories. When the subaltern speaks, she speaks in the colonizer's language, using the colonizer's concepts, appealing to the colonizer's standards. Her speech is always already mediated by the power structures that silence her. This is not a counsel of despair but a warning against the liberal fantasy that "giving voice to the voiceless" is a simple matter of inclusion.

Ubuntu: I Am Because We Are

African philosophy offers a different challenge to the Western philosophical tradition -- not a critique of universalism per se but an alternative account of what universalism might look like.

The concept of ubuntu -- a Nguni Bantu term usually translated as "humanity" or "humaneness" but carrying connotations that no single English word can capture -- represents a philosophical anthropology fundamentally different from the Western liberal tradition. Where Western liberalism begins with the autonomous individual and asks how individuals can be combined into a society, ubuntu begins with the community and asks how individuals emerge from communal relationships. The often-quoted formulation -- umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, "a person is a person through other persons" -- is not a slogan but a philosophical claim: that personhood is not a given but an achievement, realized through relationships of mutual recognition, care, and responsibility.

Ubuntu is compatible with the Common Sense framework in several important respects. Its emphasis on mutual care and communal responsibility aligns with the cooperative imperative developed in Chapter 8. Its insistence that personhood is relational rather than atomic corrects the excessive individualism of the Western liberal tradition, just as Confucian relational ethics does (but without Confucianism's hierarchical baggage). Its restorative approach to justice -- exemplified by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which Archbishop Desmond Tutu explicitly grounded in ubuntu -- offers a model of post-conflict justice that is arguably more humane and more effective than the retributive model that dominates Western legal systems.

But ubuntu, like every philosophical tradition, has its limitations and its dangers. The emphasis on communal harmony can suppress individual dissent. The definition of personhood as communally constituted can be used to exclude those who do not conform to communal norms -- the homosexual, the atheist, the woman who refuses her assigned role. The appeal to "African values" can become a rhetorical tool for leaders who invoke tradition to legitimize oppression -- as Robert Mugabe did when he declared homosexuality "un-African," or as various leaders have done when they claim that human rights are a Western imposition incompatible with African culture.

The honest assessment is this: ubuntu is a valuable philosophical resource, not because it is "African" (as if Africa were a monolithic culture with a single philosophy) but because it articulates truths about the relational nature of human existence that the Western tradition has neglected. But it is not a complete ethical framework, and it must be subjected to the same critical scrutiny as any other tradition.

Indigenous Knowledge Systems

Beyond the formal philosophical traditions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America lies a vast body of knowledge developed by indigenous peoples across the globe -- knowledge systems that have been systematically devalued, suppressed, and destroyed by colonial powers and that are only now beginning to receive the philosophical attention they deserve.

Indigenous knowledge systems contribute several insights that are directly relevant to this book's project.

First, ecological wisdom. Indigenous peoples have developed, over millennia, sophisticated understandings of their local ecosystems -- understandings that are not merely practical (how to fish, how to farm, how to manage forests) but deeply theoretical (how ecosystems function as complex adaptive systems, how human activities affect ecological balance, how sustainability requires long-term thinking across generations). The concept of the "seventh generation" -- attributed to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, which required leaders to consider the impact of their decisions on the next seven generations -- is a principle of sustainability that modern environmental policy has yet to match.

Second, relational ontologies. Many indigenous philosophical traditions understand the relationship between humans and the natural world not as one of domination (the Biblical "dominion over the earth") or exploitation (the Baconian mastery of nature) but as one of kinship, reciprocity, and mutual obligation. The Andean concept of Pachamama (Mother Earth), the Australian Aboriginal concept of "country" as a living entity with its own agency and rights, and the Maori concept of kaitiakitanga (guardianship rather than ownership of the natural world) all represent alternatives to the extractive relationship with nature that has produced the environmental crisis.

Third, epistemological pluralism. Indigenous knowledge systems challenge the Western assumption that there is only one legitimate form of knowledge -- the knowledge produced by the scientific method as practiced in Western research institutions. This does not mean that indigenous knowledge is equivalent to modern science in all domains (it is not -- indigenous medicine is not a substitute for evidence-based pharmacology, and indigenous cosmology is not a substitute for astrophysics). But it does mean that the claim to epistemic monopoly -- the assertion that Western science is the only legitimate form of knowledge -- is both empirically false and politically motivated.

How Common Sense Avoids the Western Universalism Trap

Having taken the decolonial critique seriously, I must now explain why this book's project survives it -- why Common Sense is not merely Western universalism in a new disguise.

The answer has several components.

Acknowledging the Critique

First, Common Sense acknowledges what many universalist philosophies deny: that the language of universality has been weaponized. When European colonizers claimed to bring "civilization" to "savages," they were using universalist language to justify conquest. When the United States invades countries in the name of "democracy" and "human rights," it is using universalist language to serve geopolitical interests. When international financial institutions impose structural adjustment programs on developing countries in the name of "economic rationality," they are using universalist language to enforce a particular economic model that serves the interests of creditors over debtors. The historical record is unambiguous, and any honest universalism must begin by acknowledging it.

Distinguishing Genuine from Fake Universalism

Second, Common Sense distinguishes between genuine universalism and fake universalism. Fake universalism claims that its principles apply to everyone but exempts itself from scrutiny. It criticizes authoritarianism in China while tolerating it in allied states. It condemns human rights violations in adversary nations while ignoring them at home. It insists on the rule of law internationally while exempting itself from international jurisdiction (as the United States does when it refuses to submit to the International Criminal Court).

Genuine universalism applies its principles to itself first. It evaluates Western civilization by the same standards it applies to others -- and, as Chapter 24 will show, finds Western civilization wanting in many respects. It acknowledges that the reduction of suffering, the protection of dignity, and the expansion of liberty are standards that Western nations have frequently violated, that they continue to violate, and that they have no special claim to have invented.

Empirical Rather Than Cultural Foundations

Third, Common Sense grounds its claims not in Western cultural traditions but in empirical observations that are accessible to anyone. The claim that torture causes suffering is not a Western claim; it is an empirical fact observable by any sentient being. The claim that political participation reduces the risk of tyranny is not a Western claim; it is an empirical generalization supported by evidence from every continent. The claim that education enhances human capability is not a Western claim; it is a finding confirmed by research conducted in every culture.

The decolonial thinkers are right that the articulation of these claims has historically been dominated by Western thinkers, in Western languages, within Western institutional frameworks. But the substance of the claims is not culturally specific. Torture is bad in Lagos and London alike. Tyranny destroys human potential in Beijing and Berlin alike. Poverty stunts human capability in Mumbai and Manhattan alike. To say that these observations are "Western" is to confuse the geography of articulation with the logic of the argument.

The Convergence Argument

Fourth, the values this book defends are not uniquely Western. They emerge, independently, in every major philosophical tradition. The reduction of suffering is central to Buddhism. The protection of dignity is central to Confucianism (the concept of ren). The expansion of liberty is defended in the Daoist tradition. The cooperative imperative is articulated in ubuntu. Non-violence appears in Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity alike.

The convergence is not perfect -- the traditions differ in emphasis, scope, and application. But the pattern is clear: wherever human beings have reflected seriously on the conditions of a good life, they have arrived at broadly similar conclusions. This is not because one tradition influenced the others (though there has been influence). It is because the conditions of human flourishing are not culturally variable. Human beings need food, shelter, health, safety, social connection, meaningful activity, and the freedom to direct their own lives. These are biological and psychological facts, not cultural constructions.

But Relativism Is Not the Answer

The decolonial critique, however valid in its diagnosis, produces a prescription that is incoherent and dangerous: cultural relativism.

If all values are culturally specific, then the values of the colonizer have no more authority than the values of the colonized -- but neither do the values of the colonized have any authority over the values of the colonizer. The colonial power that invaded, enslaved, and exploited was expressing its own cultural values -- values of conquest, domination, and racial superiority. If there are no transcultural standards by which to evaluate these values, then colonialism cannot be condemned -- only described.

This is not a hypothetical paradox. It is the actual logical consequence of thoroughgoing relativism, and it is a consequence that the decolonial thinkers themselves cannot accept. Fanon condemns colonialism as unjust -- but injustice is a universal category. Mignolo criticizes the "colonial matrix of power" -- but the claim that power should not be used to dominate others is a universal moral claim. Spivak insists that the subaltern deserves to be heard -- but the claim that all voices deserve a hearing is a universal principle of inclusion.

The decolonial thinkers are, in practice, universalists. They cannot help being universalists, because the critique of colonialism is itself a universalist project -- it requires the claim that domination is wrong, that exploitation is unjust, and that all human beings deserve dignity. The only coherent decolonial position is not relativism but a better universalism -- one that applies its principles genuinely, that acknowledges its own historical failures, and that draws on all human traditions rather than pretending that one tradition has all the answers.

That is what Common Sense aspires to be.

The Weaponization of Universalism -- and Why That Is Not an Argument Against Universalism

The decolonial critique has identified a genuine and recurring pattern: the use of universalist language to serve particularist interests. But it is essential to be precise about what this pattern demonstrates and what it does not.

It demonstrates that universalism can be weaponized. It does not demonstrate that universalism is inherently a weapon. It demonstrates that powerful actors have used the language of human rights, democracy, and civilization to justify exploitation. It does not demonstrate that human rights, democracy, and civilization are merely masks for exploitation.

The distinction is crucial, and the failure to maintain it is the central intellectual failure of the most extreme forms of decolonial thought. If every appeal to universal values is merely a disguised exercise of power, then the decolonial critique itself -- which appeals to universal values of justice, dignity, and equality -- is merely a disguised exercise of power. The argument is self-refuting. You cannot condemn colonialism as unjust if injustice is a culturally relative concept. You cannot defend the rights of the oppressed if rights are merely Western constructions. You cannot demand that all voices be heard if the demand for inclusion is itself an imperialist imposition.

The more sophisticated decolonial thinkers -- Enrique Dussel, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Linda Tuhiwai Smith -- understand this and have attempted to develop what Santos calls an "ecology of knowledges": a framework that takes seriously the plurality of human knowledge systems without collapsing into relativism. Santos's concept of "epistemicide" -- the systematic destruction of indigenous knowledge systems by colonial powers -- names a real and devastating historical phenomenon. But the remedy Santos proposes is not the abandonment of all evaluative standards; it is the pluralization of the sources from which those standards are drawn.

This is exactly what Common Sense has attempted to do throughout this book: to draw on Western, Confucian, Buddhist, Daoist, Hindu, African, and indigenous traditions as co-equal sources of insight, while subjecting each tradition to the same standards of evidence and argument. The result is not Western universalism with a multicultural veneer. It is a genuinely pluralistic universalism -- one that arrives at universal conclusions through a process that includes all voices rather than privileging one.

The test of this claim is practical. When Common Sense evaluates Western civilization, does it apply the same standards it applies to others? It does -- as Chapter 24 demonstrates in detail. Western colonialism, American racial injustice, European treatment of migrants, the destruction of indigenous cultures -- all are evaluated by the same markers and found wanting by the same standards. A universalism that applies its principles equally is not imperialism. It is the opposite of imperialism: it is the insistence that no civilization, including the most powerful, is exempt from moral evaluation.

Toward a Chastened Universalism

The universalism this book defends is not the triumphalist universalism of the colonial era -- the claim that Western civilization represents the apex of human achievement and that other civilizations should be grateful for the opportunity to be dominated by it. That universalism is dead, and good riddance.

Nor is it the naive universalism of the early human rights movement -- the claim that a set of principles drafted by a committee in 1948, dominated by Western and Western-allied delegates, represents the final and definitive statement of universal human values. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a remarkable achievement, but it was also a product of its time, shaped by the specific political circumstances of the post-World War II moment and the specific cultural assumptions of its drafters.

The universalism this book defends is chastened -- disciplined by an awareness of its own history, humbled by the recognition that no tradition has a monopoly on truth, and committed to the ongoing process of cross-cultural dialogue and mutual correction. It makes claims that it believes are true for all human beings -- that suffering should be reduced, that dignity should be protected, that liberty should be expanded, that cooperation should replace domination -- but it holds these claims provisionally, open to revision in light of new evidence and new perspectives.

It is, in other words, a universalism that has learned from the decolonial critique without surrendering to it. It takes the critique's diagnosis -- that universalism has been weaponized, that Western philosophy has been provincial, that other traditions have been silenced -- as a mandate for improvement rather than an argument for abandonment.

The alternative -- the abandonment of universality in favor of cultural relativism -- is not liberation. It is capitulation. It leaves the powerful free to dominate and the powerless without grounds to resist. It treats the suffering of women under patriarchal systems, the oppression of minorities under majoritarian systems, and the exploitation of the poor under plutocratic systems as "cultural differences" to be respected rather than injustices to be opposed.

Common Sense refuses this capitulation. It insists that human suffering is real, that it can be measured, and that civilizations can be evaluated by how much of it they produce and how much of it they alleviate. This insistence is not Western imperialism. It is human decency. And it is available to anyone, from any tradition, who is willing to look at the evidence honestly and follow the argument wherever it leads.