African American Philosophy

nineteenth century both the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian versions of American political aspirations had lost the spirit of the Enlightenment, had bartered with strange bedfellows in order to pursue the economic/philosophical inter- ests of certain dominant political groups, and had thereby become functionally (though perhaps not ideologically) disengaged from all significant humani- tarian concerns.‘

But the latter part of the nineteenth century saw the rise of a critical- realistic perspective in the assessment and espousal of the political and social dimensions of American life. This perspective enabled observers, dreamers, and critics of the nation to view the processes of industrialism and the con- comitant spread of the workings of scientific thought as the basis for forging a more adequate view of the complex evolving American cultural fabric. Eco- nomics, psychology and history were three of the major forces operating in the dominant thought at this time (1890-1910).5

It is noteworthy that the Afro-American thinker W. E. B. DuBois came upon the American intellectual scene during this very creative and trouble- some era. He pioneered in and championed the new empirical emphasis in social science and history. He achieved this distinction by stressing class and social environment as major causal agents in personality formation and the sociological understanding of reality.6 His emergence as a social theoretician and critic/activist came about as he was in the process of ferreting out his philosophical views on the nature of community and social change.

When DuBois completed his graduate work in 1896 he was totally im- mersed in the rigors of scientific research and had made a personal commit- ment (contrary to his earlier wish to do philosophy’) to undertake a career as a writer and teacher in the social sciences. The Philadelphia Negro (1899) was his great work in the social sciences, being an impressive monograph that deals with social stratification as an index into understanding the plight and social condition of the Negro population. In this seminal sociological study, DuBois observed that

N o t w i t h s t a n d i n g t h e l a r g e i n f l u e n c e o f t h e p h y s i c a l e n v i r o n m e n t o f h o m e a n d w a r d , n e v e r t h e l e s s t h e r e i s a f a r m i g h t e r i n f l u e n c e t o m o l d a n d m a k e t h e c i t i z e n , a n d t h a t i s t h e s o c i a l a t m o s p h e r e w h i c h s u r r o u n d s him: first his daily companionship, the thoughts and whims of his class; t h e n h i s r e c r e a t i o n s a n d a m u s e m e n t s ; f i n a l l y , t h e s u r r o u n d i n g w o r l d o f American civilization.*

The “surrounding world of American civilization” in 1900 was an existential reality that the thinker DuBois could not cavalierly dismiss or arrogantly wish away. DuBois could not turn his back upon this facet of the American reality because the problem it posed was his problem (the problem of being back in a world dominated by whites).

My life had its significance and its only deep significance because it was p a r t o f a p r o b l e m ; b u t t h a t p r o b l e m w a s , a s I c o n t i n u e t o t h i n k , t h e c e n t r a l p r o b l e m o f t h e g r e a t e s t o f t h e w o r l d ’ s d e m o c r a c i e s a n d s o t h e p r o b l e m o f t h e f u t u r e w o r l d .

Social Philosophy

Rights and duties are inextricably interwoven into the cultural fabric of American democracy. DuBois’ philosophical perspective on the social life of Afro-Americans was a reflection upon the chief problematic of the American identity both in actuality and in terms of its ideal creed: the reality of the American people in community and national vocation. And this crisis of iden- tity in community and collective purpose is, as DuBois sensed all too clearly, was inadequately treated in the philosophical probings of American intellec- tuals. This is what made DuBois’ encounter with American philosophy so dis- s a t i s f y i n g .

It was both Royce and DuBois who emerged in the American intellec- tual tradition as articulate voices treating the problematic of the American identity (vis-a-vis rights and duties) in its collective and social dimensions. Royce’s philosophical studies treated the motif of community-in-loyality as the creative perspective by means of which the American experiment is to be understood; and DuBois’ massive historical study of the attempt to democ- ratize the American nation through the actualities of the Reconstruction era looms as a classic example of probing that period in the American experience in all of the departments of its social-political-economic life. Those who read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction and Royce’s The Hope of the Great Com- munity back-to-back are in for a real intellectual challenge. And yet Santay- ana’s comment that Royce “seemed to view everything in relation to something else that remained untold0’6 .IS not an apt delineation of DuBois’ evolving view of things social, for DuBois’ view entailed his sensing that detached inquiry was not enough and that the truth alone did not encourage or enhance social reform.” Royce the philosopher was a blend of the necessarily moral and the detached observer (“Moralism and an apology for evil could thus be recon- ciled and merged in the praises of tragic experience”).r8 But DuBois the scholar was in actuality really only a graft on DuBois the Negro, thus prohibiting him from being merely a cool, calm, and detached scientist (“My life had its sig- nificance . . . because it was part of a problem . . . the problem of the color- line.“)lg Royce’s idea of community was couched in optimistic terms (i.e., that the diversity of ideas and the pervasiveness of human error could only be han- dled by means of the coexistence of all types of human beings who exist via a principle of loyality).zO This view of community was, in the final analysis, too sentimental and tame to guide the searchings and social analysis developed by DuBois. For DuBois, the problematic of the Black American identity through time was not infused with a calculated and measured idealism. His analysis was more radical-based as it was upon the reality and ambiguity of black existence in pursuit of justice, of a loyality and mutual interdependence that demanded the American people grant real equity, liberty, and opportu- nity to every citizen.

What DuBois espoused in his personal philosophy he firmly believed to be incumbent upon the American people: “I am by birth and law a free black American citizen. As such I have both rights and duties. If I neglect my duties

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With his characteristic knack for analysis, DuBois argued early in this century that blackness and black consciousness were significant components of black reality-were of the essence and ambiguity of being black in America. He cited a double-consciousness as descriptive of black people and stipulated that this myopia of a dual or bipolar consciousness/identity produced a funda- mental alienation in black folks: caused them to view themselves both through their own eyes and “through the eyes of othersttZ8 This self-consciousness in alienation is problematic because it embodies both the seeds of self-disregard and self-liberation (it is, as DuBois clearly recognized, the self in realization of itself-the self in search of its own identity and fulfillment through the presence of the other. More often than not, this ‘other’ was the pervasive hand of white oppression). Hence a pervasive contradiction and/or ambiguity is the factor upon which the dual consciousness of the Negro is structured-a phe- nomenon related to the yes and no of black life as it encounters in reciprocity white life (“Self-consciousness attains its satisfaction only in another self-con- sciousness”-Hegel, Phenomenology o/Spirit). This insight is indispensable for articulating the totality of the American-and the black-experience in the New World. Such a view is relevant and necessary to any viable program in American philosophy. For an analysis of consciousness--of an epoch, a na- tion, or a people-is one reliable means of carrying out the task of philosophy. An analysis of American consciousness that excludes black consciousness is f l a w e d .

And a black philosophy would assume the fundamental value of an eth- nic perspective and/or identity. Even assuming that philosophy is an under- taking committed to a search for the genera1 and regulative principles of human existence, then a black and/or Afro-American philosophy would enhance such an endeavor by elucidating the ambiguities and particularities of black life. Accordingly, the social dimension of the black experience would be a very important factor in such a task. To the degree that it succeeds in shattering the illusion of a possible freedom in racial bondage and individual self-deter- mination, and to the degree that it provides a corrective to those philosophies that support ethnic oppression and the cultural/cognitive invisibility of black people, black philosophy will enhance the task of philosophy in general and will also stand in the sociological/philosophical tradition of DuBois. That is, that no form of universal or individual selfishness will yield a social good and that the basis of social solidarity is mutual interdependence. If it follows the polemical and searching tradition of the Afro-American thinker DuBois, a black and/or Afro-American social philosophy would be the means of cor- recting all attempts at linguistic sovereignty, conceptual imperialism, and the espousal of the view that philosophizing is alien to the black imagination/ sensibility. This is simply a way of saying-and DuBois said it in many dif- ferent ways-that black existence and black reflection merit status, authority, and consideration in the philosophical arena: that the existence of black Americans is a legitimate and necessary means of pursuing philosophy through the idiom of American social reality.

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The immediate &aknge facing a black philosophy---an outlook OR ~~~~~ existence that accents what it means to be black, that discloses all attempts to subordinate black existence and that lays bare the rights and ob- ~~~~~~~~~ of Americans-is for it to serve as a means of liberation and enlight- ~~~e~t to the economically dispossessed, politically exploited, and racially

pies of the world. Such a view, in the final analysis, is neither hial, for in DuBois’ terms, it will serve as an appropriate means e “surrounding world of American civilization.“*Y And it may

case that a black social philosophy, spawned in the American intellec- stress mutual interdependence and individual collective un-

b a s i s o f a w o r k a b l e s o c i a l c0ntract.M

N o t e s

iafa RQ+GC, H~CY Provincialism, and Other American Problems (New YO&: the ~ac~iK~a~ Company, 19 I I); The Hope ofthe Great Community (New dark; TAR ~~~~iIIan Company, 1916); and The ktters ofJknh Royce (ed. by

ctnre titled “DuBois’ Philosophy of History,”

~~~~~~~~~~~t~r~~~~ writing, compare his Souls of Black Folk with Santayana’s &WM in ~%dety or his Block Reconstruction with Royce’s The Hope of the Great ~~~~~~~~r~ He wwc five novels and many poems of the social protest genre.

r~in~toa. Main Clurrenrs in American Thought. volume 3 (New York: 5Cc and world, hc., 1958), pp. 189-203.

~~~~~K. At this lime a decay of the older theological forces, which dom- da, was evident, making way foi the emergence of an urban

in many instances, begin to champion proletarian hopes. ~~~~~iu Negro (1899). See his famous “Atlanta Studies” ht-$ in ~~X~~~n m o n o g r a p h s , a n d e s p e c i a l l y h i s Black &con-

18. Santayana, pp. 80-81 and 76. 19. See note 9 above. Also, Souls ofBlack Folk. 2 0 . R o y c e , T h e H o p e o f t h e G r e a t C o m m u n i t y , p p . 4 9 , 5 2 . 21. DuBois, “A Philosophy for 1913”, published in The Crisis, January, 1913. 22. The Horizon (Vol. I, No. 2, February, 1907), p. 7 and 8. 23. The Crisis (Vol. XI, No. 3, March 1933), p. 56. 24. Blacks, he once argued, “Theoretically . . are part of the world proletariat in

the sense that (they) . . are mainly an exploited class of cheap laborers; but practically (they) . . are not a part of the white proletariat and are not recog- nized by that proletariat to any great extent.” (The Crisis, August, 1921, pp. 151-152).

25. Herbert Aptheker (ed.), The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois (University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), vol. II, pp. 92 and 76-103.

26. Logan, op.cit., p. 42-see note 7 above. 27. S. Redding, op.cit., p. ix-see note 17 above; also, Robert C. Williams “Moral

Suasion and Militant Aggression in the Theological Perspectives of Black Reli- g i o n ” , T h e J o u r n a l o f R e l i g i o u s T h o u g h t , V o l . X X X , N o . 2 , F a l l - W i n t e r , 1 9 7 3 - 7 4 , p p . 3 2 - 3 4 .

28. Souls of Black Folk, chapter I. 29. See note 8 above. 30. These two concepts could be enlarged upon by contrasting them with the notion

of distributive justice (John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice) and the theory of enti- t l e m e n t ( R o b e r t N o z i c k , A n a r c h y , S t a t e . a n d U t o p i a ) .

Note on the Author

Robert C. Williams is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University. He teaches in the area of the philosophy of religion and American and African phi- losophy. He is a former chairman of the Committee on Blacks in Philosophy, American Philosophical Association. His works have been published in theological and philo- sophical journals.

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