When Your Favorite Philosopher is a Bigot

Here is my latest column for the magazine Philosophy Now, which asks how we should respond when we find figures in the history of philosophy expressing views we now find obviously repugnant, e.g. justifying slavery or making misogynist remarks. Something I didn't have the chance to add in the piece itself (since there is no room for notes or acknowledgements) is that it was partially inspired by a talk I saw given by Charles Mills in Berlin, and that upcoming co-author of the podcast Chike Jeffers gave me some useful feedback on an earlier draft as did my brother Glenn Adamson.

I'd be very interested to hear what other people think about how historians should deal with these passages. I have been thinking about it anew even since writing this piece since I am just working on a script about medieval theories of sexuality and gender so am being confronted with plenty of scholastics explaining just why it is that women are worse than men, homosexuality is a heinous sin (in one case, deemed worse than incest with one's own mother), etc.