Charles Mills went from arguing that liberalism is racist, to arguing for a "deracialized liberalism", and philosophers just follow along for the ride. The narrative of the change is left to historians.

Jesus fuck

Bookish as a child, Dr. Mills said he regretted spending more time reading the works of J.R.R. Tolkien than Frantz Fanon, the revolutionary Franco-Caribbean philosopher. But he also joked that his love of science fiction had prepared him for a life in philosophy.

“It could just be that I’m a nerdy alienated weirdo, and nerdy alienated weirdos are disproportionately attracted to both fields,” he wrote in a biographical essay in 2002. “Have you been to an A.P.A. meeting recently? I rest my case.”

Like the man says, I rest my case. 

If I believed in the primacy of ideas, I'd have a hard time figuring who did more damage to the western and then global intellectual tradition in the post war era: Tolkien, Rawls, or the inventors of Dungeons and Dragons. But in the end of course they'd all follow von Neumann.