African American Philosophy

Catalog description

This course will explore central questions and themes guiding the evolution of African American philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries. Our course will study three different movements from the era. We begin with slavery and questions of reason, civility, and nationality. We move on to philosophies of value and culture in the early twentieth century, with the focus on secularization and the historical nature of philosophical truth. Finally, we will read the work of black political philosophers, and the turn to Marxism and Hegelianism. Issues to be discussed include the foundation and source of race as knowledge of the world, the nature of blackness and identity, the nation as a locus of consciousness and action, God's role in the universe, and the possibility of an Afro-Pessimism about these things.