A Westian Vision of the Role of Black Philosophy

Abstract

The role of black philosophy? I believe Bro. Cornel West pointed us down the right path. In 1977 he wrote: “Afro-American philosophy is the interpretation of AfroAmerican history, highlighting the cultural heritage and political struggles, which provides desirable norms that should regulate responses to particular challenges presently confronting Afro-Americans.”1 Where he spoke of “Afro-American philosophy,” I would speak of Africana philosophy, a term I will treat as interchangeable with “black philosophy.”2 In what follows, I will use West’s defi nition to build a vision of the role of Africana philosophy in the intellectual life of the black world. I will also provide an example of what I would see as the fruitful development of the fi eld by briefl y exploring the prospects for increased work on the topic of Pan-Africanism. I would defi ne philosophy in a general sense as the activity of raising and trying to answer, in a refl ective and critical fashion, fundamental questions about the nature and value of things, about how we gain knowledge, and about how we ought to live our lives. Africana philosophy in the broadest possible sense is, on this defi nition, immeasurably old, as I see no reason to doubt that this activity has been carried out by people on the African continent for as long as our species has possessed the linguistic and cognitive capacities we associate with being human. Ancient Egyptian thought serves, I believe, as the initiating source of Africana philosophy as a historically ascertainable tradition, given the diffi culty of measuring the age of sources in the oral tradition.3 In the modern era, as Africans and African descendants confronted the slave trade, slavery, segregation, and colonization, Africana philosophizing developed a strong sociopolitical focus. The modern period also brings us the fi rst black professional philosophers, people like Anton Wilhelm Amo, from what is now Ghana, who received the equivalent of a doctorate in philosophy in Germany in 1730, and Thomas Nelson Baker, who became the fi rst African American in the United States to receive a PhD in philosophy in 1903.4 I shall concentrate here on Africana philosophy as a professional enterprise, that is, on the work of trained philosophers. I should explain right away, though, that I do not take all work in philosophy by black professional philosophers to count as black philosophy. I count only work that is distinctively Africana, in the sense that it is concerned with issues arising out of the black experience and/or it participates in a philosophical tradition associated primarily with black people.5 Works by black philosophers