Ideas of race in twentieth century American and continental philosophy

pp. 71-92

in: Naomi Zack, Philosophy of race, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

After World War II, American and continental philosophers addressed race in progressive ways that avoided modern science. W.E.B. Du Bois pioneered a methodology of looking for social causes of social circumstances, such as conditions of African Americans living in slums. Alain Locke and William T. Fontaine followed a more theoretical pragmatic tradition. Cornel West, whose idea of prophecy is not prediction, but criticism, has furthered Du Bois's sense of black destiny. The analysis of experience in Husserl's phenomenology was developed as existentialism in Franz Fanon's focus on white supremacy and Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis of French anti-Semites. Hegel's master-slave dialectic continues to motivate analyses of racism. Black theological existentialism is egalitarian in a spiritual dimension.