I view privilege as a purely rhetorical device that's used to shut debate down. At this, I admit, it's incredibly good, and I get a fair bit of use out of it. But I don't think it does any actual theoretical job, and I think those questions are great examples of that.
Q1: If you view privilege as just the possession of normalised advantages that enable particular kinds of human development relative to some element of a society (without any extra connotations), then it is completely unsurprising that entitlement plays into things. Because that is a fairly basic description of something like Sen and Nussbaum's "capabilities approach" to human development. And they're all about basic entitlements. But this has nothing to do with "privilege" as it's normally used. Something else is doing all the conceptual work.
Q2 & Q3: When you come across an idea that people object to so strongly, persistently and predictably, then the automatic assumption should not be "my idea is right and is the reason these people are objecting," because that begs the question. The standard assumption should be "there is something wrong with the concept or its phrasing." I think that the thing that is wrong is that: the term “privilege” doesn’t actually mean what it may intuitively seem to mean; the meaning that the term “privilege” is stipulated to carry is actually held by a set of other concepts (like the capabilities approach) that form part of the backbone of Western ethical thought; and the stipulative meaning of the term doesn’t match up with the way it’s used. I think that way “privilege” as a term is actually used is just as a covert way of saying “x-ist.” The inference that goes along with the whole “systematic advantaging of a group” is a silent “at the expense of” at the end. Which is fair enough, but dishonest if you’re trying to pretend that you’re being completely neutral and non-condemnatory when you use it.
I also think privilege is unhelpful as a concept because it doesn’t actually have enough apodictic force to act as anything other than a rhetorical tool. It doesn’t give you any guidance to behaviour, or policy.
Also, there are always those old debates that go on about what "luck" and "deserve" and "free-will" actually mean. Many of which become stupid when the person putting them forward makes a claim that ends up translating into something like "you only deserve something if you, by the power of your mind alone, compelled the universe to fall into such a co-ordination of atoms as to give to you something that you had absolutely no desire for (because desire is both socially codified and naturalised)"
no subject
Q1: If you view privilege as just the possession of normalised advantages that enable particular kinds of human development relative to some element of a society (without any extra connotations), then it is completely unsurprising that entitlement plays into things. Because that is a fairly basic description of something like Sen and Nussbaum's "capabilities approach" to human development. And they're all about basic entitlements. But this has nothing to do with "privilege" as it's normally used. Something else is doing all the conceptual work.
Q2 & Q3: When you come across an idea that people object to so strongly, persistently and predictably, then the automatic assumption should not be "my idea is right and is the reason these people are objecting," because that begs the question. The standard assumption should be "there is something wrong with the concept or its phrasing." I think that the thing that is wrong is that: the term “privilege” doesn’t actually mean what it may intuitively seem to mean; the meaning that the term “privilege” is stipulated to carry is actually held by a set of other concepts (like the capabilities approach) that form part of the backbone of Western ethical thought; and the stipulative meaning of the term doesn’t match up with the way it’s used. I think that way “privilege” as a term is actually used is just as a covert way of saying “x-ist.” The inference that goes along with the whole “systematic advantaging of a group” is a silent “at the expense of” at the end. Which is fair enough, but dishonest if you’re trying to pretend that you’re being completely neutral and non-condemnatory when you use it.
I also think privilege is unhelpful as a concept because it doesn’t actually have enough apodictic force to act as anything other than a rhetorical tool. It doesn’t give you any guidance to behaviour, or policy.
Also, there are always those old debates that go on about what "luck" and "deserve" and "free-will" actually mean. Many of which become stupid when the person putting them forward makes a claim that ends up translating into something like "you only deserve something if you, by the power of your mind alone, compelled the universe to fall into such a co-ordination of atoms as to give to you something that you had absolutely no desire for (because desire is both socially codified and naturalised)"