The issue of how philosophers should evaluate colonialism has acquired a new importance due to two recent conflicting views on European colonialism: ‘anti-colonialism’ and ‘revisionism’. Especially revisionism challenges philosophical evaluation, because it purports to roughly rehabilitate European colonialism on moral grounds and suggests a critique of the prevailing view that European colonialism was an injustice. This article defends the thesis that to philosophically assess European colonialism is to insist primarily on its substantive injustice and thus its illegitimacy, even on a generous reading of the revisionist account. Four arguments are developed. First, accepting the anti-colonialist equation of (European) colonialism with slavery would be a non-starter philosophically: colonialism, as such and specifically European, is no obvious evil but requires further inquiry. Second, philosophers’ argument of colonialism’s procedural injustice, which suggests that a moral inquiry of evidence on European colonialism would be basically unnecessary, is inconclusive due to inherent instability and relevant-substantive emptiness. Third, Charles Beitz’s substantive justice theory of colonialism offers an appropriate philosophical perspective on empirical, European and other, forms of colonialism. Fourth, applying Beitz’s theory to revisionist evidence strongly suggests that European colonialism, even if presented in a most favorable light, remains a serious violation of substantive justice.
Menno R. Kamminga (Wed,) studied this question.