Instruments of the Soul

Indigenous peoples in the United States are perhaps more legally, politically, and culturally visible in the mainstream today than at any point since 1870. This shift breathes new life into old questions about Native sovereignty, philosophy, and ethics. In this book, Samuel Piccolo takes up this prompt and asks what we can learn about these as uniquely indigenous concepts, as well as sites of underappreciated overlap with North American political, legal, and philosophical traditions.Piccolo takes seriously the intellectual traditions and perspectives of Native American peoples, arguing that their accounts of sovereignty and political legitimacy are fundamental claims about the world, and not simply reactions to colonial oppression. Presenting Indigenous political philosophy as a tradition that understands itself as a continuation of precolonial thought, rich with its own positive metaphysical, ethical, and political perspectives, Piccolo establishes a dialogue between this tradition and one important pillar in Western philosophy, neo-Aristotelianism.Exploring the implications of this link allows Piccolo to make critical interventions across several scholarly fields, in particular by locating a common understanding of morality as embedded in nature. This corrective lens rewrites contemporary defenses of Indigenous sovereignty, making the case that it must be understood in relation to the substantive philosophy that undergirds it. Moreover, Instruments of the Soul finds in Native and Aristotelian perspectives some relief from the imbricated ills by which we are afflicted—novel understandings of our relationship with the nonhuman world, universal virtues, and alternative approaches to politics rooted in community.The thinkers in this book urge us to be motivated, not by anxiety about power, but wonder at the potential for meaning, beauty, and goodness around us amidst the tumult of contemporary life.