A Metaphysics of Dehumanization

Most contemporary accounts of dehumanization construe it either as a psychological phenomenon of seeing the other as non-human, or as as an interpersonal phenomenon of failing to treat the other as they are entitled qua moral agent. In this paper I offer an alternative way of thinking about dehumanization. Drawing on recent work in social metaphysics, I argue that we can productively think of the human as a social kind, and correspondingly of dehumanization as a process of excommunication from that social kind. Such an approach, I show, is better equipped to explain the variety of phenomenon that constitute dehumanization, and the range of processes through which dehumanization can occur.