Racist Political Theory and the Mythology of Coherence

How should we deal with racist political theorists like Locke, Kant, and Jefferson? Does their racism affect their political theory? When they say “all men,” do they only mean all White men? Or is their racism a vile but personal prejudice that does not actually affect their political theory, such that “all men” really means “all men”? The best-known methodological tool for making such decisions, Quentin Skinner’s “mythology of coherence,” warns us not to overstate the coherence of texts. But this risks us treating racism merely as a personal prejudice rather than as something that can also cohere with an author’s political theory. Robert Bernasconi and Charles Mills, among others, warn us against such errors. My paper thus combines and adapts the insights of Skinner, Bernasconi, and Mills, to offer methodological guidelines for addressing potentially racist political theory—including two new “mythologies” to add to Skinner’s.