哲学家是出了名的以一种干巴巴的，让我们面对它，无聊的方式表达自己。大多数哲学著作的指导思想是精确、清晰、逻辑严谨，以及那种不留任何痕迹的概念分析。即使那些哲学家是优秀的文体学家，也很少会偏离分析的直线和狭窄。

我并不反对清晰、精确等等——但这并不是研究哲学的唯一方法。在学术期刊之外，深刻的哲学思想往往通过文学、电影和歌曲来表达。没有什么比一个好故事更能激发注意力的了，也有一些伟大的哲学故事能让读者感到愉悦和参与，而不是让读者昏昏欲睡。

Increasingly, those of us who teach philosophy are drawing on these resources to engage our students. One of the great things about this is that, unlike formal philosophy, which tries to be ultra-explicit, stories don’t wear their meanings on their sleeve—they require interpretation, and often express conflicting ideas for the reader to wrestle with. Laying the foundation for some great classroom discussions.

Consider what philosophers call themetaphysics of race—an area of philosophy that explores the question of whether or not race is real, and if it’s real what it is that makes race real. There are three main positions that you can take on these questions. You might think of race as a biological property of individuals, and believe that a person’s race is written their genes (a position known as “biological realism”). Or you might think of race as socially real, seeing races as social constructions, like days of the week or currencies (“social constructionism”). Finally, you might think that races are unreal—that they’re more like leprechauns than they are like Thursdays or dollars (“anti-realism”). I’ve chosen three works of fiction that explore each of these three positions (as well as other aspects of race and racism) through the question of whether it’s possible for a person to change their race.

A great example of a story with social constructionist take on race is George Schuyler’s 1931 novelBlack No More. In the book, a Black scientist named Junius Crookman invents a procedure that makes Black people visually indistinguishable from Whites. Thousands of African Americans flock to Crookman’s Black No More clinics and pay him their hard-earned cash to undergo the procedure. This demographic upheaval in Jim Crow America spawns social and political havoc, as White racists can no longer distinguish people those people who are “really” White from those who merely appear to be White. In a final deliciously ironic episode, Crookman discovers that newly-minted Whites are actually a whiter shade of pale than those who were born that way, which kicks off of a trend of sunbathing to darken one’s skin—darkening it so as to look more White

Nearly forty years beforeBlack No More, the German writer Oskar Panizza wrote a short story called “The Operated Jew,” which has been described as “one of the most repulsive and insightful narratives ever written about German anti-Semitism.” It draws on a similar theme to present an unforgettable picture biological racial realism.

The story’s plot concerns a man named Itzig Faitel Stern, who exemplifies all of the anti-Semitic stereotypes of the day. Faitel (as he’s called in the text) is a grotesque figure who tries hopelessly to ape the speech and mannerisms of the dominant race: “I observed with astonishment how this monster took terrible pains to adapt to our circumstances, our way of walking, thinking, our gesticulations, the expressions of our intellectual tradition, our manner of speech…. Consequently, he was beheld with ridicule and astonishment.”

为了不顾一切地融入社会，费特尔经历了一系列激进的医疗干预，以重新配置他的犹太人身体，以及一系列旨在使他的行为符合雅利安规范的心理干预。他的骨头被打断并复位，他的犹太扁平足形成了拱形。费特尔腰间系着一条刺痛的腰带，把他那皱巴巴的犹太姿势变成了一个正直的德国人。他的肤色被化学药剂染白了，他的黑色卷发被拉直，变成了金色;他把自己怪异的意第绪语方言换成了刺耳的高地德语方言，甚至还接受了基督教的输血。费特尔改名为齐格弗里德·弗罗伊登斯顿后，与一位金发碧眼的德国女人订婚。但他在婚宴上喝醉了，他种族主义的外表灾难性地暴露了出来，暴露了他根深蒂固的兽性犹太本性。

现在房间里每个人的注意力都立刻被他吸引了。就连端着一大堆菜的侍者也停下来，盯着一排排桌子的中间，一张嗜血的、肿胀的、绯红的脸从下垂的松弛的嘴唇上喷出了口水，一双滔滔不绝的眼睛盯着他们....就在这时，费特尔从椅子上跳了起来，开始咂咂舌头，发出咯咯的声音，摇摇晃晃地来回走动，用他的屁股做着恶心、淫荡和野兽般的动作....他在房间里跳来跳去。“我不是为我自己买克利斯顿血的……我想让你们知道，我和你们一样，也是克利斯顿人。一点犹太血统都没有!

最后，费特尔瘫倒在地板上，颤抖着，一头直直的金发变黑了，变成了原来的卷发。

Jewish philosopher Salomo Friedländer, who wrote under the pseudonym Mynona, gives us an anti-realist rejoinder to Panizza. His short story “The Operated Goy,” published in 1922, revolves around the adventures of the über-Germanic Count Kreutzwendedich Rehsok (“kosher” spelled backwards), who successfully transforms himself into a Jew. At the start of the story, Rehsok’s anti-Semiticbona fidesare impeccable. Decked out with a swastika armband, he “strutted through the streets with the customary white student cap on his blond parted hair, his monocle on his eye, followed by his livery servant…. As soon as anything Hebrew showed itself, the servant made a shrill sound with a silver whistle. Of course, it would be superfluous to remark that the count’s Great Dane was carefully trained to bite any Jew who came too close.”

Rebecka Gold-Isaac, a Jewish woman, vows to take down the Nazi count. Donning a blond wig, and assuming an aristocratic German name, she arranges to encounter him on one of his walks, and he falls madly in love with her. Rebecka then decides that her best revenge would be to marry him. Her first ploy is to arrange for him to consult Sigmund Freud, who dismantles his self-deceptions and gets him to face up to the fact he is unconsciously attracted to Jews and to accept the fact that the woman that he desires is Jewish. Having got this far, she administers thecoup de gras, telling him him that she won’t marry him unless he becomes a Jew, “completely Jewish, a Jew to the point of excess… You don’t love me with all your heart unless you become Jewish deep in the marrow of your Aryan bones, a Jew and nothing but a Jew.”

现在，他的种族主义被治愈了，Rehsok在一位名叫Friedländer的医生手中接受了一系列痛苦的医疗程序，以改变他的种族。他割了包皮，皮肤变黑了，双脚变平了，他做了整容手术，长出了犹太人的鼻子，他的金发被剪掉了，他的骨头被打断了，重新安置，使他正直的贵族姿态变成了犹太人的无精打采。最后，他被打发到罗马尼亚学习《律法》，学习说完美的意第绪语和希伯来语，以及所有正确的音调和手势。

His transmutation completed, Kreutzwendedich Rehsok changes his name to Moishe Mogendovidwendedich (“mogendovid” – the star of David – replacing “kreutz” –the Christian cross). Moishe and Rebecka marry and settle down in Palestine and have five children. “Since then,” Friedländer concludes, “anti-Semitism has noticeably slackened.”

Certain orthopedists are feared and resisted by people who are still proud of the purity of their race. Nevertheless, Professor Friedländer has enjoyed an enormous increase in clientele. He has an institute that rents out masks, but it does not rent out mere costumes. Rather it produces skin and hair, bone and muscle as disguises…. One no longer bases everything dogmatically on racial differences. Racial blood has stopped being considered a special kind of vital juice. Meanwhile, Professor Friedländer gathers it in bottles and continues to transfer it undauntedly from one vessel to another.

Philosophically rich stories like these don’t take the place of the careful analyses provided by philosophers of race, but they bring these more technical works to life by leavening their austerity of with humor, horror, passion, and imagination. They are stories to think with.