## 1. Chronology




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| 1885  |  Born Arthur Locke September 13 to Pliny Ishmael Locke and Mary
Hawkins Locke in Philadelphia, PA. |
| 1902  |  Graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia during that
same year Locke was afflicted by rheumatic fever, which did permanent
damage to his heart. |
| 1904  |  Graduates with Bachelor of Arts degree from Philadelphia School
of Pedagogy first in his class. Publishes "Moral Training in
Elementary Schools," his first known publication. |
| 1904-07 |  Locke attends Harvard University, earning his second Bachelor
of Arts degree and graduating *magna cum laude*. During his
time at Harvard Locke was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society
and studied under Josiah Royce, George Herbert Palmer, Hugo
Munsterberg, and Ralph Barton Perry. Though he was a member of
the faculty at the time Locke never actually studied with William
James. While at Harvard Locke received the Bowdoin Prize in English
for an essay composed on Tennyson entitled "The Prometheus Myth:
A Study in Literary Tradition." It was while at Harvard that
Locke first met Horace Kallen, who worked as an instructor. |
| 1907-09 |  In 1907 Locke was chosen as the first-ever African-American
Rhodes Scholar. Even though he held a right to admittance to an Oxford
college as a Rhodes Scholar he encountered some difficulty in this
regard until he was finally admitted to Hertford College. While at
Oxford Locke studied philosophy, Greek, and literature. It was while
at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar that Locke first met and became friends
with Pixley Ka Isasha Seme. In 1907 and 1908, Horace Kallen was also
at Oxford as a Sheldon Scholar. |
| 1910-11 |  Following his studies at Oxford University and before returning
to Harvard University to complete his PhD, Locke studied at the
University of Berlin under the German sociologist Georg Simmel, where
he was reacquainted with his Harvard professor Hugo Munsterberg.
While at the University of Berlin Locke deepened his interest in value
theory, particularly in the work of theorists such as Alexius Meinong,
Christian Freiherr von Ehrenfels, and Frantz Brentano. |
| 1912-14 |  Appointed as assistant professor of English, philosophy, and
education to Teachers College at Howard University. |
| 1915  |  Gives a series of lectures to the Howard chapter of the NAACP
on the scientific study of race and race relations entitled
"Race Contacts and Interracial Relations: Lectures on the Theory
and Practice of Race." |
| 1917  |  Doctoral dissertation entitled *The Problem of
Classification in Theory of Value* submitted to adviser Ralph
Barton Perry September 17, 1917. |
| 1918  |  Receives PhD in philosophy from Harvard University. |
| 1925  |  Fired from Howard University following efforts to achieve pay
equity between black and white faculty. December of that year Locke
publishes *The New Negro*: *An Interpretation* perhaps
his most famous work and earns himself recognition as a leading
African-American literary critic and aesthete. |
| 1928  |  Returns to Howard University following the appointment of
Mordecai W. Johnson, the university's first African-American
president. |
| 1935  |  Reportedly it was in this year that Locke renewed his interest
in writing philosophy as signaled by the publication of "Values
and Imperatives," in *American Philosophy, Today and
Tomorrow* edited by Horace M. Kallen and Sidney Hook. |
| 1942  |  Publishes two edited volumes and an article: *When Peoples
Meet: A Study in Race and Culture* edited with Bernhard J. Stern,
*Color: The Unfinished Business of Democracy* special volume of
*Survey Graphic* and "Who, and What, Is
Negro?". |
| 1943  |  Delivers a series of lectures entitled "The Contribution
of the Negro to the Culture of the Americas," under the auspices
of the Haitian Ministry of Public Instruction as the Exchange
Professor for the Committee for Inter-American Artistic and
Intellectual Relations. |
| 1953  |  Retired from Howard University and moved to New York. |
| 1954  |  Died June 9 in Mount Sinai Hospital, New York from persistent
heart trouble. |


## 2. Axiology/Value Theory



Locke's seminal essay in value theory, "Values and
Imperatives" is as ambitious in its aims as it is pioneering. In
it Locke states what he takes to be the central problem for axiology;
details the reasons for the failure of American philosophy,
particularly pragmatism, to make anything more than a minimal
contribution to the development of the philosophical study of values;
argues that values are primarily rooted in human attitudes; and
provides an elaborate theoretical account of value formation and the
functional role of values. A value, according to Locke, is "an
emotionally mediated form of experience." Locke issues the
following warning: 



> 
> [i]n dethroning our absolutes, we must take care not to exile our
> imperatives, for after all, we live by them. We must realize more
> fully that values create these imperatives as well as the more
> formally super-imposed absolutes, and that norms guide our behavior as
> well as guide our reasoning. (VI 34)
> 



Values are an important and necessary part of human experience. Values
are an essential part of human existence as all human persons are
inherently valuing beings. He writes:



> 
> [t]he common man, in both his individual and group behavior,
> perpetuates the problem in a very practical way. He sets up personal
> and private and group norms as standards and principles, and rightly
> or wrongly hypothesizes them as universals for all conditions, all
> times and all men. (VI 35)
> 



Valuations of multiple kinds pervade nearly every aspect of our lives;
our aesthetic, moral and religious evaluations and judgments.



On Locke's estimation,



> 
> the gravest problem of contemporary philosophy is how to ground some
> normative principle or criterion of objective validity for values
> without resort to dogmatism and absolutism on the intellectual plane,
> and without falling into their corollaries, on the plane of social
> behavior and action, of intolerance and mass coercion. (VI 36)
> 



This is the central and driving question of Locke's axiology and as
such it points to some of the crucial aspects of his overall
philosophical view, but his theory of value specifically, and
importantly his social and political philosophy. On the axiological
plane the question is reformulated as whether or not the fundamental
value modes automatically or dispositionally set up their end values
prior to evaluative judgment. If value modes automatically or
dispositionally set up their own ends, then there would exist a more
direct approach to the apprehension of values. Moreover, if a
connection can be discovered between certain psychological states and
particular valuations then that might yield at least one avenue for an
objective assessment of values and valuations. On the social and
political plane--the practical plane where persons actually form
valuations and act on them in myriad ways--the question is
formulated in terms of how best to avoid a theory of value that is
static, arbitrary and overly formulaic in ways that impede the
theory's ability to provide an adequate understanding of value
phenomena. To do this, a functional analysis of value norms is
required, and normative principles must be the result of the immediate
context of valuation. This we will see in the following sections is
the major thrust of Locke's value pluralism and relativism. 


### 2.1 Value-Feelings and Value-Modes



Locke begins by considering what he takes to be the most basic feature
of values; their emotional character. He writes



> 
> the value-mode establishes for itself, directly through feeling, a
> qualitative category which, as discriminated by its appropriate
> feeling-quality, constitutes an emotionally mediated form of
> experience. (VI 38)
> 



There is a particular feeling or feeling-quality associated with each
value-mode. In fact, Locke contends that value-modes differ in virtue
of differences in feeling-qualities. The value-mode, or perhaps
better, the mode of valuing, refers to the qualitative character of a
particular way of experiencing as mediated by a given emotion or
attitude which Locke terms the feeling-quality. This has several
important implications for the general theory of value: predicating a
value to a subject depends on the feeling-quality associated with it;
values are immediately recognized through an apprehension of their
emotional quality; value-predicates are determined by the affective
and volitional influence of the feeling-quality; and the imperatives
of a given value are given immediately once the primary
feeling-quality has been established.



Locke claims that there is a necessary connection between the
feeling-quality and the value-mode with the former determining the
later. The value-mode is normally established as the value is being
apprehended. If this were not the case, the value-mode would be
indeterminate even while its immediate quality is being felt. The
basic categories of value are not rational: one cannot simply reason
one's way to an understanding of them. In developing and articulating
his axiology, Locke looks for the categories of value in the actual
valuations of human beings. Rather than predetermining the categories
of valuation and attempting to cram experiences of values into them,
his theory begins with our concrete valuations and determines which if
any features they have in common. It is then on the basis of the
commonalities observed to obtain between particular experiences of
values that they are classed together as members of the same class.
Locke writes,



> 
> [f]lesh and blood values may not be as universal or objective as
> logical truth or schematized judgments, but they are not thereby
> deprived of some relative objectivity and universality of their own.
> The basic qualities of values...pertain to psychological
> categories. They are not grounded in types of realms of value, but are
> rooted in modes or kinds of valuing. (VI 38)
> 



Locke is aware that it is not easy to demonstrate that the fundamental
identity and unity of a value-mode depends on a feeling-quality. It
may be that the position thus far articulated is merely hypothetical
and speculative and requires an experimental methodology to prove it.
Locke notes that the main objections to the position have been
addresses by developments in the Gestalt psychology insofar as it has
established an empirical basis for a comprehensive perceptual scheme
functioning in recognition, comparison and choice. Further
circumstantial evidence is offered for the position by the phenomenon
of transvaluation (see
 section 2.3
 below).


### 2.2 A Functional View of Values



On Locke's view, though the value-mode is determined immediately by
the affective character of the value, this is not the final
determination of the value. Even after the value-mode has been
ascertained, the legitimacy of the value may still be in question, its
place in the overall value scheme may be unclear, and particular
aspects of the context of valuation may be uncertain. This leads Locke
to conclude that the primary normative character of value norms is
best sought in their functional role as stereotypes of feeling
attitudes and as habitual impulses toward certain choices of actions.
This would make them culturally specific, as well as temporally and
geographically contingent as values can only be habituated and
function with any degree of reliability in specific contexts.
Moreover, as in the case of apprehending value-modes, the
functionality of a given value is to be discovered experientially;
rather than, postulated *a priori*. Values, then, would only
become absolutes--should they become absolute at
all--because reason and judgment secondarily re-enforce them as
such. In their immediate character and quality values are affective,
but they are further mediated by reason and judgment. Value
predication depends on reason and judgment; but the predicates
themselves are determined by the modal quality of the value. So, the
judgment that an object is beautiful or ugly involves reason and
judgment, but that the object is experienced as aesthetic depends on
its affective apprehension; its being experienced aesthetically. 



Commenting on his own preference for a functional theory of value
Locke writes:



> 
> I confess at the outset to a preference for a functional theory of
> value, but my brief for a functional analysis of value norms is not
> completely *parti* *pris*, but is made rather because a
> functional approach, even should it lead to a non-functionalist theory
> of value, of necessity treats the value varieties in terms of their
> interrelationships, guaranteeing a comparative approach and a more
> realistic type of value analysis. (FVVU 81)
> 



Moreover, a functional account of value has the theoretical advantages
of being able to account for parallels between values, value
interchangeability, and transvaluation. It is perhaps in taking a
functional view of values and their associated imperatives where
Locke's theory of value is most pragmatic. A functional view of values
emphasizes the fact that values are an essential feature of our
lived-experiences. At its most basic level value functionality aims to
provide a way of understanding how particular values operate as
coordinating mechanisms for individual and collective action. Some
values have a specific social role; a societal aim or goal that they
have been modified and adapted over time to help achieve or maintain.
Such values are often codified in the customs and traditions of a
culture and can sometimes remain ritualized long after their
functional role is obsolete. The importance and usefulness of a
functional view of values in Locke's social and political philosophy
is further explored in
 section 3.2
 below.


### 2.3 Transvaluation



Transvaluation is a central tenet of Locke's axiology. He writes:



> 
> [t]he further we investigate, the more we discover that there is no
> fixity of content to values, and the more we are bound, then, to infer
> that their identity as groups must rest on other elements. (VI 40)
> 



The feeling-quality of a given value necessarily establishes the mode
of valuation, i.e., the type of value in question (for example,
aesthetic, religious, moral etc.) as well as the appropriate
value-predicates. However, there is no necessary connection between a
given object that serves as the content of a value and any particular
emotional response to that object. One and the same object may affect
the same person differently at different times, or may at the same
time elicit from multiple people different emotional reactions.
Transvaluation, then is most simply valuing something in a different
way, which requires, at first, having an atypical emotional
association with the object of value. There are multifarious potential
causes of such transformations in one's affective responses to an
object, and those causes can be immediate or unfold over time.
"The changed feeling-attitude creates a new value" says
Locke "and the type-form of the attitude brings with it its
appropriate value category. These modes co-assert their own relevant
norms; each sets up a categorical imperative of its own" (VI
41).



Locke treats transvaluation as inevitable; values are dependent upon
social and cultural forces that are always in a state of flux and
subject to myriad transformative influences at any given time, hence
static values are implausible. Value transformation can take place on
the individual level or on the level of widespread social or cultural
values. Locke's hope is that this analysis will bring us closer to a
practical understanding of value and the mechanism of valuation, which
he hopes will bring us closer to understanding the grounds for both
agreements among values and value conflict.


### 2.4 Taxonomy of Values



Locke offers a schematization of four traditional
values--religious, moral, logical and aesthetic--to
demonstrate how his theory classifies values into types according to
their characteristic feeling-quality (see the table below) (VI 43).
The schema also charts the value-predicates and the positive and
negative poles associated with each value-type (type of value).
Finally, the schema further divides each value according to its
directionality; that is, whether the value is primarily introverted,
functioning inwardly on the individual subject, or is extroverted,
functioning externally in a social context. 



Locke contends that his position has certain advantages over more
logical theories of value. In particular, it is better able to explain
certain value phenomena that are troubling for the latter type of
theories. Phenomena such as transvaluation, value merging, and value
conflict are able to be explained in terms of the basic doctrine that
the mode of valuation is determined by the character of a subject's
affective response in a value context. Locke claims that logical
theories of value have historically had difficulty accounting for
phenomena such as the aesthetic appraisal of a logical or mathematical
proof; moral commitment to aesthetic production; or aesthetic
appreciation of religious practice. In particular, logical theories
have struggled to make sense of assigning predicates from one
value-type to objects that are traditionally the content of a
different value-type as when a proof in logic is deemed beautiful or
ugly. Traditional theories treat such value predication as merely
metaphorical or analogical. 




|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Modal Quality** | **Value Type** | **Value Predicates** | **Value Polarity** |
|  |  |  |  | Positive | Negative |
| Exaltation: (Awe
Worship) |
| a. | Introverted: Inner Ecstasy | *Religious* | Holy--Unholy | Holiness | Sin |
| b. | Extroverted: Religious Zeal |  | Good--Evil | Salvation | Damnation |
| Tension: (Conflict
Choice) |
| a. | Inner Tension of "Conscience" | *Ethical* | Good--Bad | Conscience | Temptation |
| b. | Outer Tension of Duty | *Moral* | Right--Wrong | Right | Crime |
| Acceptance or Agreement:
(Curiosity--Intellectual
Satisfaction) |
| a. | Inner Agreement in Thought | *Logical Truth* | Correct--Incorrect | Consistency | Contradiction |
| b. | Outer Agreement in Experience | *Scientific Truth* | True--False | Certainty | Error |
| Repose and Equilibrium |
| a. | Consummation in Contemplation | *Aesthetic* | Beautiful--Ugly | Satisfaction | Disgust |
| b. | Consummation in Creativity | *Artistic* | Fine--Unsatisfactory | Joy | Distress |



Locke explains value conflict in terms of a more fundamental
psychological incompatibility. Not only does the value-feeling
determine the qualitative character of a given value, it also
establishes broader categories of value by grouping values according
to their common affective quality. As he puts it "[c]hange the
attitude, and, irrespective of content, you change the value-type; the
appropriate new predicates automatically follow" (VI 44).



Value attitudes can be psychologically incompatible, and where they
are Locke contends that a hierarchical ranking of values will not
resolve the incompatibility. In fact, he suggests that people resolve
the incommensurability of their various value attitudes by shifting
from one mode of valuation to another. This is why a functional
account of values that determines the various value-modes on the basis
of underlying psychological states is desirable. Such a theory is
better able to achieve a reflective equilibrium with our actual value
practices. All values have associated with them a set of imperatives.
Locke does not have a great deal to say about how imperatives are
formed. Presumably, imperatives are determined, at least in part, by
the qualitative character of the value in question. People begin by
forming a value-attitude based on one's initial affective response to
the object of valuation. As a mediating form of experience a value
supplies motivational drives toward acting and refraining from acting
in certain ways. Values provide normative direction not only for
cognition and psychological drives, but also for action. Imperatives
are partially in place as soon as the affective quality of the value
is apprehended.


## 3. Pluralism



Locke's philosophical worldview is pervaded by a concern for
diversity. Locke takes pluralism in all its form--religious,
cultural, value etc.--as a basic feature of the world. His
primary focus then becomes one of understanding the multiplicity of
ways in which peoples meet, and providing some normative guidance
concerning how best to act when they do. Values organize, coordinate,
mediate and direct experience. In so doing, they serve both a valuable
epistemic as well as existential function. Values direct and guide our
activity, but more than that they color the nature of our encounters
with other persons, and frequently function as a source of conflict
between individual persons and groups of human beings. The common
mistake among valuers that leads to a "totalizing" of
values as "absolutes" or "ultimates" is to
forget that any given value encompasses only an aspect of reality and
ought not to be treated as transcendent or reducible to that reality.
This is a fundamental insight of Locke's philosophy of value as it is
applied to social theory. And Locke believes that if he is correct in
asserting that "[a]s derivative aspects of the same basic
reality, value orders cannot reasonably become competitive and rival
realities" that he will have provided the necessary theoretical
foundation for a more latitudinarian exchange between diverse human
collectives (VI 47). Locke's presentation of his pluralist position
proceeds as a response to three obstacles or barriers to pluralism:
absolutism, (counter) uniformitarianism, and arbitrary dogmatism. If
individual valuers or value groups are able to avoid these three
pitfalls, then either may possibly develop a pluralistic value
orientation.


### 3.1 Three Barriers to Pluralism



The first barrier to pluralism is absolutism. Values and their
associated imperatives are absolute when they are thought to apply to
all human beings, at all times irrespective of social or historical
conditions. This is because absolutist conceptions of values are
derived from, and ultimately justified by something other than the
lived-experiences of human beings, be it God, or human rationality.
Whereas pluralism is intended to accommodate a wide array of
contending values, absolutism countenances one, and only one set of
values universally applicable to all human beings. Locke claims that
"absolutism has come forward again in new and formidable
guise," and he warns us to be on guard for "social and
political forms of it, with their associated intellectual tyrannies of
authoritarian dogmatism and uniformitarian universality" (PID
53). These newer forms of absolutism, Locke claimed, are the products
of older ones. When values are held to be absolute there often results
a tendency to discount the legitimacy of rival values. Pluralism
avoids conceiving of values in absolutist terms. Setting various value
conceptions on equal footing is the aim of Locke's pluralism.



Uniformitarianism, the second obstacle to pluralism, is the view that
values ought to be uniform within a given community or group. The
experiences of members of a given group are filtered through the same
forms of mediation to produce value uniformity. Values are ascribed a
single form for all members of a group; rather than allowing for a
multiplicity of mediated experiences. Value uniformity can be achieved
violently, coercively or peacefully, but in all instances it is an
attempt to replace diversity with homogeneity. Locke suspects that it
is the desire to defend one's own culture and to create consensus
among competing value claims that is at the root of the quest for
uniformity. Unfortunately, that motivation can easily lapse into an
attempt to force one's own value system onto others without
justification. Uniformitarianism is a refusal to accommodate the
myriad value forms that are essential to pluralism.



Finally, Locke warns us to avoid the pitfalls of arbitrariness and
dogmatism. Value commitments are arbitrary when one forms
them--thereby rejecting viable alternatives--in the absence
of any justification for choosing them over other available options.
One holds her values dogmatically when she takes them to be
indisputable and is closed-off to the possibility of taking a critical
view of her value commitments that could possibly result in her
altering or rejecting them.


### 3.2 Pluralism as a Functional Base



Locke describes pluralism as a functional base, one that can function
as a foundation from which to achieve a rapprochement of conflicting
values. Pluralism, as Locke envisions it, has the potential to create
agreement among competing and conflicting values, through the
recognition of common features of various values and value systems. A
closer look at Locke's analysis of values; in particular, the three
concepts of basic human values, basic equivalence, and functional
constancy will illuminate what it means for pluralism to function in
this way.



First, is the concept of basic human values, by which Locke means
those values that are common to many, or all value systems; values
such as belief in god, commitment to one's cultural community, respect
for human life, etc. which though they may have multifarious
manifestations, are in a more general way common to most, if not all
groups. Of course, value communities differ, and no two value
communities will be exactly alike, but there does exist substantial
overlap of a subset of values across values communities. Basic human
values then, are basic and human in virtue of their common expression
in a plurality of value contexts and their pertaining to the lives of
human beings, and not as a matter of their universal applicability
across all of humanity.



The next two concepts--basic equivalence and functional
constancy--are perhaps best understood as two sides of a
distinction between formal and functional equivalence. Basic
equivalence refers to a similarity of form and functional constancy
refers to a similarity in function. Basic equivalence is a formal
resemblance owing to a corresponding value-mode. It is a similarity in
the type of value, or better, being particular values of the same
type. This notion rests on drawing a distinction between the object of
valuation and the way the object is valued. The object may differ
where the value mode does not. As a consequence a single object can be
valued multiple ways, and many different objects can be valued in the
same way. Take for example the institution of marriage as the object
of valuation. Marriage is valuable in least two senses, first, it may
be valued as the religious union of a man and a woman, and secondly,
the marriage ceremony itself could be valued as a ritualized aesthetic
experience. In both cases one and the same phenomenon is the content
of two different value modes. In the first instance, marriage is
valued religiously; the characteristic quality of the value, its form,
is spiritual. In the second instance, marriage could be valued because
of the elegant decor, grandiose ceremony, and beautiful
arrangements that characterize the event. The example goes to
illustrate the fact that different ways of valuing can be applied to
the same object by the same person or by different people. Valuation
works the other way as well, that is, different objects can be valued
the same way. As for example, a marriage, a baptism, or a christening
can all be valued religiously or aesthetically. One can recognize a
similarity in the form of competing values even though their objects
may differ, or a difference in form where the object stays the same.
Basic equivalence then speaks to an identity of form not of content.
It is a conceptual tool that enables persons to recognize that their
respective value expressions are species of the same genus. Locke
speaks of the objective comparison of basic human values which leads
one to think that his claim is that different groups may regard
different sets of values as basic to human beings though these may not
be identical, but rather, formally equivalent values.



The other side of the formal/functional equivalence distinction is the
notion of functional constancy. By functional constancy is meant the
ability of basic equivalent values to operate as stable features of
value processes and activity within various value communities. Locke
envisions that what will be found beneath potentially vast differences
in content, and beyond a similarity of form, is a comparable utility
of various values across contexts. Every value has an attendant
function; a role that it plays within a given value community. Values
that differ either in form or in content may still be equivalent as
regards their function. These functional constants are discovered
through comparison of fundamental values found across value
groups.



Thus functional equivalence provides a constancy of two sorts: first,
the function is constant within a given value community insofar as it
plays the same role for different members of the same value group, and
second, the function can be a common feature across value groups.
Think here again of the example of marriage. Admittedly, there is a
wide variety of particular manifestations of such a value, and there
can be differences in the form as well as the content of such values.
But it is still the case that such variation results in a similar
function within a value community. Children are reared, networks of
support are maintained, property is held in common and bequeathed to
successive generations etc. and these social roles are served by a
myriad of expressions of familial ties in the community. Moreover,
family values function in this way across cultures. To be sure, there
may not be an exact equivalence of function across value communities,
or even within them for that matter, but to a large extent this
equivalence of function is there to be observed. It may be the case
that there exist social functions for a given value in one context
that are absent in another: if so, there is no equivalence to be made.
All values have a function, but as there is no necessary connection
between a given value and a particular function, it does not follow
from this that every value function can be found in every culture.


## 4. Relativism



Relativism, for Locke, begins as a systematic approach to the
recognition of the sorts of value equivalence discussed earlier, and
is then able to militate against the pernicious forms of valuing that
often turn cultural exchanges into intractable problems. The view is
termed relativist because it makes a comprehensive and accurate
understanding of the values of a given culture dependent--at
least in part--on that culture being viewed in relation to other
cultures. Moreover, Locke claims that cultural relativism can serve as
"a scientifically impartial interpreter of human values, and
sometimes even as a referee and mediator among conflicting
values" (CRIP 70).


### 4.1 The Principle of Cultural Equivalence



Relativism, on Locke's view, is not a negative skeptical position that
is predicated upon the belief that one is unable to make a
satisfactory determination about the relative worth of value
communities. Instead, it is a positive and affirmative position
concerning the relative worth of distinct value traditions and
cultures. Locke formulates his relativism in terms of the three
principles of cultural equivalence, cultural reciprocity, and cultural
convertibility. He claims that the three principles are derivable from
this larger relativist outlook and will enable "a more objective
and scientific understanding of human cultures and...more
reasonable control of their interrelationships" (CRIP 73).



The first of the three principles is:



> 
> The principle of *cultural equivalence*, under which we would
> more wisely press the search for functional similarity in our analyses
> and comparisons of human cultures; thus offsetting our traditional and
> excessive emphasis upon cultural differences. Such functional
> equivalences, which we might term 'culture-cognates' or
> 'culture-correlates,' discovered underneath deceptive but
> superficial institutional divergence, would provide objective but
> soundly neutral common denominators for intercultural understanding
> and cooperation. (CRIP 73)
> 



The effect of the first principle is to lay bare the fact that the
seemingly vast differences between cultures is more a matter of our
selective preferences; that is, the habits of mind we have cultivated
for being more keenly attuned to difference rather than similarity.
The first stage of relativism, then, is to reorient our focus in favor
of the similarity to be found across value communities. Cultural
cognates and correlates are objective because they are discovered to
be real features of multiple value systems. They are in an important
sense "there" to be discovered both by internal and
external observers of the value group. The reason that these value
cognates count as neutral is that they do not, in virtue of their
being objective, privilege any value-type or value-content over any
other. At this stage they are taken as mere facts of the matter about
the values that exist within communities.


### 4.2 The Principle of Cultural Reciprocity



The second principle of cultural relativism is:



> 
> The principle of cultural reciprocity, which, by a general recognition
> of the reciprocal character of all contacts between cultures and of
> the fact that all modern cultures are highly composite ones, would
> invalidate the lump estimating of cultures in terms of generalized, en
> bloc assumptions of superiority and inferiority, substituting
> scientific, point-by-point comparisons with their correspondingly
> limited, specific, and objectively verifiable superiorities or
> inferiorities. (CRIP 73)
> 



This aspect of Locke's relativism requires a "beneficent
neutrality between divergent positions" (CRIP 70-71). It
begins by fostering a disposition toward cultural toleration in the
hope that such toleration will lead to mutual respect, which would in
turn serve as a foundation upon which to base reciprocal exchanges
between cultures. In the most likely case, these initial exchanges
will be centered around specific values that form narrowly defined
communities of agreement. In the end, if cultural relativism is able
to foster reciprocity between value communities to a sufficient
degree, then cultural relativism may well establish a foundation of
mutual understanding and appreciation to support active cooperation
between value groups. The principle of cultural reciprocity restrains
the inferences that we are able to make as a result of the principal
of cultural equivalence in at least two ways: first, its emphasis on
point-by-point comparisons limits the scope of the value cognates that
are discovered, and second, it issues an injunction against
identifying or connecting specific values with specific cultures or
value communities. Relativism is to borrow from an idealized model of
scientific practice; a point of view that does not prejudge the
results of a given observation before it is carried out. Moreover, it
points out that the discovery of cognates and correlates is not likely
to be wholesale, but instead, specific and contextualized.


### 4.3 The Principle of Cultural Convertibility



Finally, we have the principle of cultural convertibility:



> 
> The principle of limited cultural convertibility, that, since culture
> elements, though widely interchangeable, are so separable, the
> institutional forms from their values and the values from their
> institutional forms, the organic selectivity and assimilative capacity
> of a borrowing culture becomes a limiting criterion for cultural
> exchange. Conversely, pressure acculturation and the mass
> transplanting of culture, the stock procedure of groups with
> traditions of culture 'superiority' and dominance, are
> counterindicated as against both the interests of cultural efficiency
> and the natural trends of culture selectivity. (CRIP 73)
> 



All value-types are independent of any given value-content; any given
value-type can be joined with any value-content. This fact of
valuation is what grounds cross-cultural transformation. The extent to
which cultures are modified by their interactions with other cultures,
is in part a function of how stringently the cultures in question
associate their own value-forms with specific value-content. At a
higher level, Locke indicates that associations might even be made
between a value and its institutional form, by which he seems to mean
the manner in which the value is organized into the social structure
of a value community. If specific values are correlated with
particular institutional forms, a necessary connection may be assumed
to exist between them where it does not.


## 5. Aesthetics



Locke is perhaps best known for his work in aesthetics, in particular,
his role as both an intellectual purveyor of Negro art and literary
critic. Locke managed to position himself at the forefront of one of
the most significant and important artistic rebirths in American
history. His seminal work, *The New Negro*, was ground-breaking
in its presentation of Negro art as thoroughly self-expressive of the
individual artist, and not as merely representative of aesthetic,
cultural and social possibilities. Locke's publication of *The New
Negro* was in many ways in direct defiance and contradiction of
the black intellectual elite of his day, most notably W. E. B. Du
Bois, as well as being the advance guard of the aesthetic sentiments
of the average Negro of his day. There is evidence of his
philosophical views, especially in the areas of axiology, culture,
race and ethnicity throughout his writings on aesthetics. Major themes
in Locke's aesthetics include: universal human appeal and the
relationship of universal and particular; the transition from folk art
to high art; the centrality of individual expressivity; and
cross-cultural communicability through the aesthetic.


### 5.1 The New Negro



Prior to the period of individual expression characteristic of the
Harlem Renaissance, Negro art in Locke's estimation had as its primary
function representation of a Negro type that was socially acceptable
and laudably ideal. The aim of much Negro art was to advance
presentations of the Negro as civilized, cultured, and capable of
making a worthwhile contribution to American society, or to portray
blacks in America as a progressive people, needing only to be
liberated from slavery or Jim Crow segregation to realize their true
potential. In discharging this representative function, Negro art was
consumed with the promulgation of stereotypes and counter-stereotypes.
It had constantly to react against negative portrayals and stifling
social pressures; to attempt to make out of Negro life and experience
something worthy of respect, a fitting object of honor and emulation.
As Locke put it, 



> 
> for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a
> formula than a human being--a something to be argued about,
> condemned or defended, to be 'kept down,' or 'in his
> place,' or 'helped up,' to be worried with or
> worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social
> burden. (NN 3-4)
> 



The primary consequence of this social environment on black aesthetics
in the United States according to Locke was its Ghettoization. In
dealing with this specialized subject matter of social uplift Negro
aesthetics segregates itself from the broader American social context
and fails to achieve universal human appeal. "The thinking
Negro," by whom Locke seems to have Du Bois primarily in mind,
"has been induced to share this same general attitude, to focus
his attention on controversial issues, to see himself in the distorted
perspective of a social problem" (NN 3-4).



Art at its best on Locke's view is not propaganda, and though there
may be some initial phase in which art is forced to perform such a
function that is not the ultimate goal. "Until recently,"
Locke comments "lacking self-understanding, we have been almost
as much of a problem to ourselves as we still are to others."
Yet as "the thinking few know" as that self-understanding
is achieved and worked into artistic expression the result is
"that in the reaction the vital inner grip of prejudice has been
broken" (NN 4). This is the first significant change in the
social environment that produces the "New Negro"; namely,
the attitude of young Negro artist to racial segregation.



Another change in American society that had a profound impact on the
aesthetic advancement of African-Americans at the time of Locke's
publication of *The New Negro* was the Great Migration. One
major consequence of "that shifting of the Negro
population" was that it "made the Negro problem no longer
exclusively or even predominantly Southern" (NN 5). Locke did
not however regard the cause of the great migration as chiefly racial;
that is, escape from the segregation of the South was not the major
motivation behind the mass African-American exodus from the South to
the North and Mid-West. Instead,



> 
> The tide of Negro migration, northward and city-ward, is not to be
> fully explained as a blind flood started by the demands of war
> industry coupled with the shutting off of foreign migration, or by the
> pressure of poor crops coupled with increased social terrorism in
> certain sections of the South and Southwest...The wash and rush
> of this human tide on the beach line of the northern city centers is
> to be explained primarily in terms of a new vision of opportunity, of
> social and economic freedom, of a spirit to seize, even in the face of
> an extortionate and heavy toll, a chance for the improvement of
> conditions. (NN 6)
> 



The Great Migration brought with it a need for a plurality of social
adjustments as the droves of African-Americans flooded into Northern
cities. Principal among this was the realization that the Negro
was



> 
> rapidly in process of class differentiation, [and] if it ever was
> warrantable to regard and treat the Negro *en masse* it is
> becoming with every day less possible, more unjust and more
> ridiculous. (NN 5-6)
> 



Negro life in America according to Locke is comprised of many diverse
elements. The plurality of groups that congregated in places like
Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia and Harlem all with varying motivations
and group specific aims constituted some of the largest concentrations
of diverse segments of the Negro population. These circumstances
coupled with the oppressive effects of prejudice forced myriad sectors
of the African-American population to discover and interact with one
another. Prior to that Locke claims that 



> 
> it must be admitted that the American Negroes have been a race more in
> name than in fact, or to be exact, more in sentiment than in
> experience. The chief bond between them has been that of a common
> condition rather than a common consciousness; a problem in common
> rather than a life in common. (NN 6-7)
> 



Locke explains that in part the artistic endeavors of the Negro have
failed to achieve universal resonance because the Negro himself has
been so poorly understood. He readily admits that "[i]t does not
follow that if the Negro were better known, he would be better liked
or better treated[,]" and goes on to note that despite this fact
"mutual understanding is basic for any subsequent cooperation
and adjustment" predicated upon, or in pursuit of an
understanding of the universality of Negro experiences as expressed in
art. Moreover, 



> 
> effort towards this will at least have the effect of remedying in
> large part what has been the most unsatisfactory feature of our
> present stage of race relations in America, namely the fact that the
> more intelligent and representative elements of the two race groups
> have at so many points got quite out of vital touch with one another
> (NN 8-9)
> 



And in addressing that crucial fact, such efforts may go a long way
towards facilitating an appreciation of Negro art as expressive both
of the peculiar racial, ethnic, and cultural experiences of
African-Americans, and as expressive of ubiquitous aspects of human
experience. It is a mere "fiction...that the life of the
races is separate," and a dangerously divisive one at that,
"[t]he fact is that they have touched too closely at the
unfavorable and too lightly at the favorable levels" (NN 9).
Hence, it is not simply a failure of contact, but a failure of the
right sort of contact that accounts for the under appreciation of the
aesthetic life of black peoples.



For his part, Locke argues, the "New Negro" in recognizing
"the necessity for fuller, truer self-expression,...[and]
the realization of the unwisdom of allowing discrimination to
segregate him mentally, and a counter attitude to cramp and fetter his
own living" has played a vital role in demolishing "the
'spite-wall' that the intellectuals built over the
'color-line[.]'" (NN, 9-10). Life for the
Negro in the early 1920's was steadily progressing toward the ideals
of American democracy. The Negro of the time was also characterized by
a new vein; one around which there was a growing consensus primarily
of feeling and attitude; rather than opinion or program. As Locke has
it:



> 
> Up to the present one may adequately describe the Negro's 'inner
> objectives' as an attempt to repair a damaged group psychology
> and reshape a warped social perspective. Their realization has
> acquired a new mentality for the American Negro. And as it matures we
> begin to see its effects; at first, negative, iconoclastic, and then
> positive and constructive. In this new group psychology we note the
> lapse of sentimental appeal, then the development of a more positive
> self-respect and self-reliance; the repudiation of social dependence,
> and then the gradual recovery from hyper-sensitiveness and
> 'touchy' nerves, the repudiation of the double standard of
> judgment with its special philanthropic allowances and in the sturdier
> desire for objective and scientific appraisal; and finally the rise
> from social disillusionment to race pride, from the sense of social
> debt to the responsibilities of social contribution, and offsetting
> the necessary working commonsense acceptance of restricted conditions,
> the belief in ultimate esteem and recognition. Therefore, the Negro
> today wishes to be known for what he is, even in his faults and
> shortcomings, and scorns a craven and precarious survival at the price
> of seeming to be what he is not (NN 11).
> 



Locke ends his exposition of what is characteristic of the New Negro
with the observation that the reception of black aesthetic products is
an experiment in democracy. As African-American art resists
ghettoization and increasingly makes its presence felt in the American
artistic mainstream it seeks to establish itself as a subset of
American art; rather than, the totality of Negro American art. And
since, according to Locke,



> 
> [d]emocracy itself is obstructed and stagnated to the extent that any
> of its channels are closed...the choice is not between one way
> for the Negro and another way for the rest, but between American
> institutions frustrated on the one hand and American ideals
> progressively fulfilled and realized on the other. (NN 12)
> 



The North American Negro artist in being 'new' is a living
instantiation of the fact that no culture, people, race, or society is
a static one. Such entities are always in process of transformation,
and always a composite of myriad cultural, ethnic, racial, and social
influences. The emergence of the new is at once a presentation of what
has been and an indication of what the future may hold. This is a
deeply pragmatic current running through Locke's aesthetic philosophy.
Locke is later critical of the Harlem Renaissance because it failed to
sustain a cyclical process of rebirth. In the years following the
height of the Harlem Renaissance he remarked later that that a new
Negro must be born every decade or two.


### 5.2 The Young Negro



Locke explains that the aesthetic renaissance that took place in
Harlem and elsewhere was primarily a movement of young artists. The
youth, Locke claims, speak in distinctive overtones, and "out of
a unique experience and with particular representativeness" (NN
47). The experiences of young American Negroes is uniquely
representative because



> 
> [a]ll classes of people under social pressure are permeated with a
> common experience; they are emotionally welded as others cannot be.
> With them, even ordinary living has epic depth and lyric intensity,
> and this, their material handicap, is their spiritual advantage. (NN
> 47)
> 



Here we find an interesting problem in Lockean exegesis: How is it
that the aesthetic contribution is at once characterized by a
disavowal of representativeness, while at the same time being uniquely
representative? Locke goes on to note that



> 
> [r]acial expression as a conscious motive, it is true, is fading out
> of our latest art, but just as surely the age of truer, finer group
> expression is coming in--for race expression does not need to be
> deliberate to be vital. Indeed, at its best it never is. (NN 47)
> 



Locke's resolution of the seeming paradox comes by way of recognizing
that "[o]ur poets have now stopped speaking for the
Negro[;]" the sort of representativeness characteristic of past
aesthetic pursuits and instead now "speak as Negroes" (NN
48). The main difference being that "[w]here formally they spoke
to others and tried to interpret," the experiences of
African-Americans for white or other nonblack audiences "they
now speak to their own and try to express." "They
have" he notes "stopped posing, being nearer the
attainment of poise" (NN 48). With this change in the mind of
the Negro artist the aim of art is no longer the presentation of an
ideal type, or an effective counter-stereotype; instead, it is the
expression of the universal truth contained in the particularity of
Negro experiences.



This is a major theme that runs throughout all of Locke's aesthetic
philosophy; the idea that within a particular manifestation of human
experience can be found something of universal human significance.
Indeed, this is the quintessential marker of "high art" or
"classical art". In the case of the young Negro artist
Locke claims "[r]ace for them is but an idiom of experience, a
sort of added enriching adventure and discipline, giving subtler
overtones to life, making it more beautiful and interesting, even if
more poignantly so. When viewed from this more objective attitude and
"so experienced, it affords a deepening rather than narrowing of
social vision" (NN 48).



The youth "constitute a new generation, not because of years
only, but because of the new aesthetic and a new philosophy of
life" (NN 49). Locke explicates this new aesthetic philosophy by
way of comparison to "[t]he elder generation of Negro
writers" who were resigned to expressing themselves in
"cautious moralism and guarded idealizations" (NN 49).
This generation of artists, with



> 
> the repercussions of prejudice...heavy on its heart...felt
> art must fight social battles and compensate social wrongs; "Be
> representative": put the better foot foremost, was the
> underlying mood. (NN 50)
> 



This hampered both the individual expressivity of the older generation
of artists as well as their ability to communicate cross culturally
the truth of black experiences. The artist was not free to speak his
heart or mind, but had to remain cognizant of the way he presented the
Negro yet again. With the youth of the Harlem Renaissance there came a
"newer motive," for the younger generation of American
Negro artists the aim "in being racial is to be so purely for
the sake of art." (NN 51) The new artist does not take folksy
racial types to be emblematic of anything but the individual artist.
Locke sees this manifested in the artist's ability to make of
"the racial substance something technically distinctive,"
a method of giving expression to a specific type of experience that
allows for full expression of that experience across cultural, racial,
or ethnic boundaries. In this way techniques that exist as "an
idiom of style may become a contribution to general resources of
art"; (NN 51) available in the end, not only to those who
created, cultivated and refined them, but to any artist who wished to
deal with that particular idiom.


### 5.3 The Negro Spirituals



In Locke's estimation, the spirituals are the quintessential Negro
contribution to American art and culture; manifesting as they do so
much, not only about the North American Negro and his aesthetic and
cultural heritage and evolution, but also in standing as a paragon of
processes of aesthetic transition and development.



> 
> The spirituals are really the most characteristic product of the race
> genius as yet in America. But the very elements which make them
> uniquely expressive of the Negro make them at the same time deeply
> representative of the soil that produced them. Thus, as unique
> spiritual products of American life, they become nationally as well as
> racially characteristic. It may not be readily conceded now that the
> song of the Negro is America's folksong; but if the spirituals are
> what we think them to be, a classical folk expression, then this is
> their ultimate destiny. Already they give evidence of this classic
> quality. Through their immediate and compelling universality of
> appeal, through their untarnishable beauty, they seem assured of the
> immortality of those great folk expressions that survive not so much
> through being typical of a group or representative of a period as by
> virtue of being fundamentally and everlastingly human. (NN 199)
> 



The best evidence, Locke seems to think, in support of the spirituals'
claim to universality is that they have withstood the test of time. As
an art form they have outlived not only the generations that produced
them but the peculiar social environment that enlivened them. Beyond
this the spirituals have survived



> 
> the contempt of the slave owners, the conventionalizations of formal
> religion, the repressions of Puritanism, the corruptions of
> sentimental balladry, and the neglect and disdain of second-generation
> respectability. (NN 199)
> 



In short, they have successfully made the transition from folk art to
formal music.



The spirituals at once exemplify all of the three major themes of
Locke's aesthetic philosophy: they are expressive of the individuality
of a given artist--think of the distinctiveness of Paul Robeson's
baritone renderings of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"; they
have universal human appeal; and they epitomize the process of
transition from a folk art to high or classical art. "In its
disingenuous simplicity, folk art is always despised and rejected at
first; but generations after, it flowers again and transcends the
level of its origin" (NN 199).



Negro folk music or spirituals contain the raw material for myriad new
musical developments. That material was at the time of the publication
of *The New Negro* to Locke's mind underdeveloped, but as Negro
artists grew in sophistication and craft Locke saw the potential for
them to complete the conversion of so fundamentally American and
pedestrian an art form into an avenue for insight into some of the
most deeply emotional aspects of humanity.



Locke credits Du Bois with being among the first to give the
spirituals "a serious and proper social interpretation,"
with his chapter in *The Souls of Black Folks* on the Sorrow
Songs. "But underneath the broken words, childish imagery,
peasant simplicity, lies" Locke notes



> 
> as Dr. Du Bois pointed out, and epic intensity and a tragic profundity
> of emotional experience, for which the only historical analogy is the
> spiritual experience of the Jews and the only analogue, the Psalms.
> (NN 200)
> 



But whatever they may lack in terms of poetic form, they more than
compensate for in their ability to embody the religious mood. This
North American Negro folk form is replete with the spirit of
exaltation. The spirituals are remarkable for their ability to
transcend the profound tragedy that gives birth to them and offer up a
model of enduring hopefulness in this world or the next. "Their
words are colloquial," Locke notes, being the products of
unlettered folk "but their mood is epic" giving emotive
expression to experiences that exemplify the possibilities of humanity
at its best (NN 201). The spirituals "are primitive, but their
emotional artistry is perfect" (NN 201).



Historically, Negro colleges were the mechanism through which the
spirituals were popularized. The travelling choirs of Negro
institutions such as Hampton University, Wilberforce University, Fisk
University and Tuskegee University performed the spirituals across the
country as a means of raising funds for their respective institutions,
all the while bringing to black and white audiences in the United
States knowledge and appreciation of this indigenous musical form.
Many of these university choirs also recorded compilations of Negro
spirituals and published them. It was thus, as Locke has it, that the
spirituals were able to avoid simply falling out of fashion and
failing to survive "that critical period of disfavor in which
any folk product is likely to be snuffed out by the false pride of the
second-generation" (NN 202). This, by Locke's lights, is not an
uncommon situation for folk arts to face, finding it necessary as they
often do to resist being disavowed by subsequent generations wishing
to distance themselves from the supposedly deficient quality of the
folk expression.



Emotions and attitudes form the very foundation of Locke's philosophy
of value: undoubtedly, one reason that Locke was so enamored with the
spirituals was that as he understood them their primary artistic
virtue was their deeply emotive character. "Emotionally,"
he points out, "these songs are far from simple" (NN 205).
There is to be found in the spiritual folk music of the American Negro
the entire range of human moods and emotions, and within a given
spiritual there can be a drastic change in mood from the deepest
sorrow to glorious praise, as each and every song is infused with
religious sentiment. Surprisingly, when it comes to the problem of
classification of the spirituals, Locke does not insist upon the
primary mode of classification being the feeling-quality of the song
as his value theory might suggest. In fact, Locke argues that



> 
> [i]nteresting and intriguing as was Dr. Du Bois's analysis of their
> emotional themes, modern interpretation must break with that mode of
> analysis, and relate these songs to the folk activity that they
> motivated, classifying them by their respective song-types. (NN 205)
> 



In the case of the spirituals Locke is in favor of a different method
of classification because contemporary interpreters of the Negro's
music tend to mischaracterize, or characterize in a way that is not
true to the folk that produced it, the music of the Negro. Locke
laments the fact that "at present many a half secularized ballad
is mistaken for a 'spiritual,' and many a camp-meeting
shout for a folk hymn" (NN 205). He believed the folk music of
the Negro is best categorized according to the sort of activity they
inspired. "From this point of view" Locke claims



> 
> we have essentially four classes, the almost ritualistic prayer songs
> for pure spirituals, the freer and more unrestrained evangelical
> shouts or Meeting songs, the folk ballad so overlaid with the
> tradition of the spirituals proper that the distinctive type quality
> has almost been unnoticed until late, and the work and labor songs of
> strictly secular character. (NN 205)
> 



However, discriminating Negro folk music into types on the basis of
the folk activity that underlies them is not necessarily to exclude
the emotive content of the song. In fact, it seems that what is really
being discriminated is the active expression of the underlying
emotional content, i.e., the activity that is most commonly associated
with a particular emotion or mood. And here we see perhaps the most
direct effect that Locke's axiology has on his assessment of
spirituals discriminating them as he does into types in terms of their
feeling-quality, but also linking each form with a set of imperatives
in this case, a practical imperative understood by the type of
activity that each song is used to motivate.



Locke sees as a major problem with the scholarship on Negro folk music
in his day the tendency to overemphasize one of the various
distinctive elements of the music over the others. The result was a
jaundiced view of Negro music. "Strain out and emphasize the
melodic element" Locke informs



> 
> and you get only the sentimental ballad; emphasize the harmonic idiom,
> and you get a cloying sentimental glee; overemphasize the rhythmic
> idiom and instantly you secularize the product into syncopated dance
> elements. (NN 206)
> 


### 5.4 Who, and What, is "Negro"?



Lurking in the background of all of this talk of the "New
Negro" is the assumption that there is something distinctively
Negro about at least some American art. As to what that is, or could
be, answers are sometimes extremely hard to come by. But, Locke warns




> 
> [s]ooner or later the critic must face the basic issues involved in
> his use of risky and perhaps untenable terms like 'Negro
> art' and 'Negro literature' and answer the
> much-evaded question unequivocally,--who and what is Negro? (WWN
> 209)
> 



Beyond this Locke thinks it a meaningful query to ask whether the
racial concept has any place in art at all. Perhaps it would be better
to understand art as a cultural or social mode of production that cuts
across racial and ethnic divisions.


#### 5.4.1 Who is Negro?



In answering the question "Who is Negro?" Locke begins by
exposing a common misguided assumption in such queries:



> 
> [t]he fallacy of the 'new' as of the 'older'
> thinking is that there is a type Negro who, either qualitatively or
> quantitatively, is the type symbol of the entire group. (WWN 210)
> 



Locke sees this as the unfortunate consequence of the past need to
proffer counter-stereotypes to combat demeaning stereotypes of Negro
persons. Counter-stereotypes may well contain some element of truth,
but they fail to convey the whole truth about as diverse a population
of human beings as Negroes in the United States, let alone the
Americas or Negroes the World over. There is no distinctive singular
Negro type. The answer then to the question posed "who is
Negro?" is no Negro in particular. The Negro is a dynamic and
multifaceted population admitting of myriad cultural and social forms
characterized as those are by variegated linguistic, religious and
artistic elements. This is important for Locke to note as the Negro of
his day was thought to be classless, undifferentiated, and ethnically
homogeneous. In fact, Locke himself thought it possible (and actual)
for human beings biologically similar in the way that American race
thinking presupposes to be members of different races. A full and
accurate artistic portrayal of who is Negro would, Locke argued, have
to picture the many diverse Negro strands in their own right, weaving
together from these diverse threads a multifaceted presentation of
Negro experiences.


#### 5.4.2 What is Negro?



"Turning to the other basic question,--what is
Negro," Locke begins by narrowing the question to "what
makes a work of art Negro, if indeed any such nomenclature is
proper,--its authorship, its theme or its idiom?" (WWN
211). In other words, what gives a particular work of art its
distinctive, if any, racial character: the racial identity of its
author, its treatment of themes characteristic of a particular racial
experience in a particular place, or its use of styles and modes of
expression peculiar to a given people? Of these three candidates for
the foundation of Negro art Locke claims each has had its day
depending on the social environment that was prevalent at the time.
Locke dismisses nearly out of hand the first option remarking that
many a Negro artist has produced the most amateurish works of art due
primarily to their poor mastery of Negro idioms, and inadequate
treatment of Negro themes. What is more, some white (or at least
non-Negro) artist have been quite adept in either their use of
characteristically Negro styles, or their dealings with Negro motifs.
Of course, it stands to reason that artist steeped in the cultural,
ethnic and racial environments that give rise to these idioms and
themes are most likely to master their use and expression, and that
persons who do so are most likely to be members of these communities,
having the same racial, ethnic or cultural identities as other
members. However, such communal membership is not a necessary
condition for the work of a particular artist to count amongst the
works that comprise a racially distinctive body of art such as might
be called "Negro art."


## 6. Philosophy of Race



Locke understood race as primarily a product of social culture. Locke
denies as do nearly all contemporary race theorists that races are
biologically distinct categories of human beings. Locke maintained
that culture and race were distinct, but often overlapping categories.
There is no tight causal or otherwise necessary connection between
race and culture. The two are mutually exclusive even though they do
sometimes vary together or otherwise correspond. Race, for Locke, is
not determinative of culture or civilization. Locke's position on race
does not deny, as some of his contemporaries concerned with the notion
of race and culture did, that there ever is a significant connection
between racial and cultural factors, nor does it deny that "race
stands for significant social characters and culture-traits or
represents in given historical contexts characteristic
differentiations of culture-type" (CRASC 188). This is primarily
a cautionary observation on Locke's part seeing as how



> 
> [i]t is too early to assume that there is no significant relationship
> between race and culture because of the manifestly false and arbitrary
> linkage which has previously been asserted. (CRASC 189)
> 



Locke has some hesitation about the prudence and possibility of
completely eradicating racial categories. He states,



> 
> [i]n some revised and reconstructed form, we may anticipate the
> continued even if restricted use of these terms as more or less
> necessary and basic concepts that cannot be eliminated altogether, but
> that must nevertheless be so safe-guarded in this continued use as not
> to give further currency to the invalidated assumption concerning
> them. (CRASC 189)
> 



Locke attributes the original idea that race is a primary determining
factor in culture to the work of Arthur de Gobineau, though he thinks
the main scientific justification for the view has been offered by
those who seek to interpret culture in evolutionary terms such as the
social evolutionism of Herbert Spencer. Positing a fixed link between
race and culture was useful for such theorists in developing a
step-by-step account of the development of cultures. But even in
Locke's day, the supposed scientific foundations of such theoretical
positions faced challenges. In light of that Locke thinks it
understandable for some to want to correct this misinterpretation of
the facts by insisting that there is no connection at all between race
and culture. We see here again perhaps some of the influence that
pragmatist thinkers, in this case Dewey, may have had on Locke, as
Dewey was apt to point out on numerous occasions the shortcomings of
Spencer's social Darwinism, and chiefly its attempt to offer a
universal account of all aspects of human development. Locke worried
that extreme cultural relativism



> 
> leaves an open question as to the association of certain ethnic groups
> with definite culture traits and culture types under circumstances
> where there is evidently a greater persistence of certain strains and
> characteristics in their culture than of other factors.
> 



It is "[t]he stability of such factors and their resistance to
direct historical modification" Locke thought, which



> 
> marks out the province of that aspect of the problem of race which is
> distinctly ethnological and which the revised notion of ethnic race
> must cover. (CRASC 190)
> 


### 6.1 Theoretical and Scientific Conceptions of Race



Locke postulates three conceptions of race: theoretical or scientific,
political, and social or cultural. Scientific conceptions posit race
as natural biological kinds. The existence of race and racial
differentiation are explained in terms of biological or ethnological
features of human populations. Scientific theories frequently assert a
natural biological hierarchy between races and aim to explain
divergent cultural characteristics of groups though biological
factors. Locke argues that genetic inheritance varies both within and
between human populations and cannot be the basis for the sociological
concept of race. The factors that create genetic subdivisions of the
human species such as physical and social reproductive isolation
produce various consequences (Locke, 1989, 190 - 92 see also
Locke, 1992, 4-6) that may not vary conterminously with the
group's social history. Genetic subdivisions produce population
variances that may not track the social distinctions that a given
society deems salient in terms of group identity.



Locke argues that biological race is an ethnic fiction. (Locke, 1992,
11 - 12). Putative biological races do not necessarily
correspond with the racialized social identities operative in a given
society. One way race can be an ethnic fiction is when
non-biologically determined ethnic or cultural groups are presumed to
be real biological populations, when in fact they are not. Locke does
not seem to think that this fictitious conception of race undermines
the social reality of the phenomenon. On Locke's view race
amounts to something significant even if many common conceptions of it
are mistaken. Racialized populations can be comprised from various
genetic, cultural and ethnic intermixtures throughout its history.
Isolating any one of the plurality of factors around which a
population is racialized as the single factor constituting the race
can cause a significant divergence between one's conception of
racial groups and any underlying reality. Such divergence can inform a
whole host of mistaken beliefs and misguided racial practices. Locke
writes: "[a]s I pointed out, these groups, from the point of
view of anthropology, are ethnic fictions. This does not mean that
they do not exist, but it can be shown [that these groups do] not have
as [permanent] designations those very factors upon which they pride
themselves. (Locke, 1992, 11)



Locke's understanding of race is influenced by the ethnology of
his time. The notion that racial types are not permanent he derives
from Frantz Boas. (Locke, 1992, 75-76) Locke's belief that
race and culture vary independently of each and are thus not causally
linked stems from the work of R. H. Lowie. (Locke, 1989, 189-90)
Locke agreed with Sapir that unique cultural or ethnic traits are best
explained historically; rather than, biologically or psychologically.
(Locke, 1989, 190) His reading of Flinders-Petrie's account of
assimilative processes initially informed his view of social race, and
racial differentiation, though these are latter most influenced by his
concept of cultural pluralism. (Locke, 1989, 191-92) Finally, he
derives the view that race practices are deeply rooted in imperialism
from Lord Cromer. (Locke, 1992, 64)


### 6.2 Political Conceptions of Race



Political conceptions of race reject two basic assumptions of
scientific theories, they reject that races are distinct biologically
determined populations, and secondarily reject that biological
differences of race account for cultural variation, or establish the
relative inferiority or superiority of putative race groups. Political
conceptions of race contend that racism is constitutive of races.
Racial groups result from political, economic, and social mechanisms
that create relative group advantage or disadvantage. Racial
differentiation and hierarchy are the consequences of group exercise
of political power.



Political race, for Locke, is merely favorable or unfavorable social
inheritance masquerading as genetic ethnic inheritance. Racial
differences and inequalities are caused by these factors, and so, will
not account for the duration or amelioration of inequalities and
differentiations. The permanence of racial groups, if it is to be
promoted, must be based on something other than metaphysical realist
notions of race. Conversely, if racial inequalities are to be
eradicated, that too will likely require attention to, and control of,
factors and elements of putatively racial groups other than their
supposed biological or anthropological similarity.



Characteristically racial modes of living are wrongly regarded as
biologically, rather than, socially inherited. This social inheritance
can be either favorable or unfavorable. Locke observes that cultures
are often racially diverse. Multiple races may share some larger
cultural elements. (Locke, 1989, 193-94) Races are regarded as
"concrete culture-types," according to Locke, which are
"composite racially speaking, and have only an artificial ethnic
unity, of historical derivation and manufacture." (Locke, 1989,
194) Race is a learned epistemic mode of being. A sense of race
membership is enculturated and socialized, and once acquired, the race
sense partly conditions how one perceives and understands the
world.


### 6.3 Social or Cultural Conceptions of Race



Locke's social conception of race is a proto-social
constructionist account of race. Race, for him, is a
cultural-historical phenomenon and not a natural kind distinction.
Race, for Locke, is culture; or conversely, culture is race. The
cultural conception views race as a learned socially inherited
phenomenon. Culturally conceived, a race is a transactionally
constituted, and inherently transformational, subcultural variant, not
fixed by biological determinants. Race for Locke is the characteristic
differentiation of culture-type perpetuated through social heredity.
Locke states that "[r]ace in the vital and basic sense is simply
and primarily the culture-heredity, and that in its blendings and
differentiations is properly analyzed on the basis of conformity to or
variance from culture-type." (Locke, 1989, 192) Locke's
view of social race implies that there are further distinctions to
make within current racial categories. Many groups commonly regarded
as one race constitute several different races.



Locke held that race was in point of fact a social and cultural
category rather than a biological one. For this reason he developed
the notion of ethnic race or culture group. By ethnic race, I take
Locke to mean a peculiar set of psychological and affective responsive
dispositions, expressed or manifested as cultural traits, socially
inherited and able to be attributed through historical
contextualization to a specifiable group of people. The concept of
ethnic race is a way of preserving the demonstrated distinctiveness of
various groupings of human beings in terms of characteristic traits,
lifestyles, forms of expression; without resulting to the
scientifically invalidated notion of biological race.
"Race," Locke argues "would have been regarded as
primarily a matter of social [as opposed to biological]
heredity," if only the science of his day had reached a more
tenable understanding of the relationship of race to culture which
would likely have resulted from focusing more on the ethnic; rather
than, anthropological factors. The distinctiveness of a given race
would be understood as the result of "the selective
psychological "set" of established cultural
reactions" (CRASC 191).



The notion of ethnic race is better able to capture the myriad
differences between culture groups in terms of the actual social,
cultural and historical conditions that give rise to such variation,
and without the scientifically indefensible reliance on biological
factors. On this view, race is no longer thought to be the progenitor
of culture; instead race is understood to be a cultural product. Locke
held that the more objective analysis of culture he advocated would
likely result in the development over time of distinctive
culture-types for which it may prove possible to work out some
principle of development or evolution. This he thought might
eventually make it possible to develop "a standard of value for
relative culture grading" (CRASC 194).



Nearly every culture is highly composite; consisting as most due in
the union of various social and historical influences; moreover, every
ethnic group in the unique outcome of a specific social history. A
more scientific understanding of man replaces the abstract artifice of
biological race, and requires that we deal with concrete culture-types
which are frequently complex amalgamations of supposed races united
principally by entrenchment of customary reactions, standardized
practices, traditional forms of expression and interaction, in sum,
the specific history of a given people in a particular place. It is
noteworthy and perhaps illuminating of Locke's conception of ethnic or
social race that the groupings of human persons formerly thought to
constitute "races" in the biological sense such as
"Negro," "Caucasian," or "Asian"
are in fact each composed of several different social or ethnic races.
On Locke's view there are many so-called "Negro,"
"Caucasian," or "Asian" races. This revised
understanding of culture constitutes in Locke's estimation a
fundamental paradigm shift in the study of human cultures "[s]o
considerable...[in] emphasis and meaning that at times it does
seem that the best procedure would be to substitute the term
*race* the term *culture group*" (CRASC 194).



Locke quickly notes while the notion of race has been invalidated as
an explanation of culture groups understood as totalities, race does
help to explain various cultural components within a given culture.
"Race operates as tradition," Locke noted, "as
preferred traits and values," changes in these aspects of
culture in a distinctive way by a subset of a culture group
constitutes "ethnic remoulding" (CRASC 195). Race becomes
a term that designates the specific outcome of the "peculiar
selective preferences" in favor of some, and against other,
culture-traits of a given group. "Such facts" Locke
observed



> 
> nullify two of the most prevalent popular and scientific fallacies,
> the ascription of a total culture to any one ethnic strain, and the
> interpretation of culture in terms of the intrinsic rather than the
> fusion of its various constituent elements. (CRASC 195)
> 



To illustrate Locke's view consider African Americans, they
share a common culture with white Americans in terms of language,
religion, aesthetic sense, and many other cultural elements. Even with
these cultural elements in common there are characteristic,
qualitatively distinct, and phenomenologically unique forms that
common language, religion, and aesthetic sense have among African
Americans that are not characteristic of white Americans.
Characteristic differences such as have produced the musical styles,
literary techniques, humor, oratorical idioms, mannerisms, forms of
worship and religious expression, hair styles etc. and many other
elements of culture that are the frequent objects of
appropriation.



A sense of kinship among members of a subcultural group which yields
an understanding that "different practices [operate in] their
society from those which [operate in other societies and therefore]
determine their treatment of other groups," Locke argues is a
key element in racial differentiation. (Locke, 1992, 20) Racial
consciousness is not itself pernicious, but a group's sense of
itself and its difference from other social races can be based on the
domination and oppression of other groups. (Locke, 1992, 20)



A social group's sense of itself as a distinctive subculture
yields the formation of peculiar values and beliefs, alongside
specific practices and forms of living. These produce over time
distinguishing qualities of the subculture in terms of elements that
are noticeably present in one, or lacking from other groups. (Locke,
1989, 194-96) Culture-traits--ways of acting, speaking,
interrelating, worshipping, eating, expressing etc.--establishes
a dominant and characteristic pattern in a population. This pattern
consists of social norms toward which members of the group conform.
With sufficient conformity around those norms a culture-type is
eventually established. (Locke, 1989, 194-95) Some people
self-identify in racial terms, but the core elements with which they
identify may be illusory. Such identification can benefit a racialized
group. Observing that some racial conceptions are ethnic fictions does
not lead Locke to deny the practical utility of racial
identification.


### 6.4 Race Creeds, Race Practices, Racial Difference and Prejudice



Political and social conceptions of race are more useful in explaining
racial domination and cultural assimilation and pluralism than
scientific theories of race, which have been thoroughly undermined as
the cause of cultural variation. Moreover, the distinctions made, the
very populations designated by, anthropological race, rarely if ever
coincide with those of ethnic race. The three conceptions carve up the
world differently, and of them, Locke finds the political analysis and
social or ethnic conception of race more accurate historically and
sociologically. This is a matter of some debate in recent work in the
philosophy of race. Also, advances in recent decades have raised
important questions about the viability and usefulness of treating
genetically discernable populations of human beings as races. Locke
provides us further reason to doubt the viability of such projects.
Moreover, he was adept enough to envision that even in the light of
such advances it is a separate question whether the genetic
populations of evolutionary biologists track closely the social
populations putatively taken to be races.



Putatively biological conceptions of race, Locke argues, are social
fictions. This aligns his thinking with fictionalist, or antirealist
accounts of race, and inclines him in the direction of racial
eliminativism. He argues that theoretical and scientific conceptions
of race are misguided and ought to be eliminated for metaphysical,
epistemological and normative reasons. Despite this he regards race as
a fundamental category for understanding human social interactions.
This informs his view that political conceptions of race are useful
for understanding the way a society's race creeds can rest on
false beliefs, race practices are misguided and effectuate oppression,
and understanding of the role of race in advancing imperialism and
colonialism. In good pragmatist fashion, Locke is careful not to
interpret political conceptions of race as postulating race as a
metaphysical reality. His political conception of race offers a model
for interpreting and analyzing a society's racial creeds and
race practices, it does not establish that race is a real biological
or cultural factor of human populations or of individual persons.
Locke argues that the only viable meaning of race is social. The
conception of social race is for Locke the only plausible meaning of
race. This aligns him with contemporary social constructionist. Locke
endorses a form of substitutionism by contending that metaphysically
realist conceptions of race should be abandoned in favor of ethnic or
social race. His view is reconstructionist in that it aims to correct
classical racialist views as well as the prevailing metaphysically
realist views of his day.



Locke distinguishes between racial conceptions and a society's
race practices. The social differentiations that produce various
social groupings including races, result on his analysis from social,
political, and economic causes. Locke does not deny that racial
differences or racial prejudices exist. Racial differences, he
thought, often parallel racial inequalities. (Locke, 1992, 1-14)
Locke claims that "[w]e should expect naturally that race theory
should be a philosophy of the dominant group." (Locke, 1992, 3)
As it was in the United States and other European colonial powers
whose members proffered racial theories that privileged dominant
groups. This leads Locke to argue that much of what has passed for
race theory in Western civilizations is "bad science."
Specious justifications of exploitive and oppressive race practices
abound, and such theories, Locke observes are resistant to correction
by more accurate scientific investigation, or social scientific or
historical facts.



Locke is doubtful of the prospects of a thorough-going racial
eliminativism. He writes: "I believe that a word and an idea
covering so indispensable, useful, and necessary a grouping in human
society will never vanish, never be eradicated, and that the only
possible way in which a change will come about will be through a
substitution of better meanings for the meanings which are now so
current under the term." (Locke, 1992, 84-85) This is a
clear articulation of Locke's racial substitutionism. He rejects
eliminativism as the appropriate response to problematic conceptions
of race or pernicious race practices and creeds. But Locke, unlike Du
Bois, is not clearly a racial conservationist. He argues that
prevailing conceptions of race are illegitimate, present race
practices are pernicious, and contemporary race creeds unjust.



Locke is arguably a qualified or partial eliminativist as he advocates
a radical redefinition of race in terms of culture, the elimination of
certain race practices, race creeds, and race prejudices. Race
prejudices, Locke claims, are ultimately based on cultural differences
and differences in the type of civilization. Racial difference is at
base a difference in the social consciousness of groups. Race
prejudice erroneously assigns that variation to biological and
anthropological factors that are unrelated to racial groups. This
leaves racial prejudice in the paradoxical situation of being
"an almost instinctive aberration in favor of anthropological
factors erected into social distinctions" without any scientific
warrant for so doing. (Locke, 1992, 10)



Race prejudices, Locke claims, result from aberrant psychological
predispositions and tendencies. These habits often function
unconsciously, but are not exempt from control and amelioration.
Moreover, race creeds are for Locke distorted conceptual schemes and
at the root of our notions of racial superiority and inferiority. Race
prejudice and race creeds can and should be eliminated as features of
race practice. His racial eliminativism is partial or qualified
because he advocates jettisoning the more pernicious forms of our race
practice, and is adamant about substituting current racial conceptions
for the view of race as social culture.