Tommy J. Curry’s Another white Man’s Burden is an excellent study of Josiah Royce’s philosophy, particularly his social philosophy, within its historical milieu. I think that Curry is right with respect to his criticism of Royce’s social philosophy. As I read Another white Man’s Burden, I found myself distinguishing between the “good Royce” and the “bad Royce,” along the lines of the simplistic yet fruitful good-bad dichotomy Richard Rorty used to characterize philosophers such as John Dewey. By the “good Royce,” (...) I mean the Royce whose thought is neither necessarily anti-black and racist, nor advances the cause of Anglo-Saxon cultural superiority. By the “bad Royce,” I mean the Royce whose... (shrink)

In Common Ground, Anthony Neal examines the role that the ideas of consciousness and consciousness-raising play in the writings of Howard Thurman and Huey Newton. He examines these ideas from a broadly Afrocentric framework in which the concerns, interests, and perspectives of Africans--whether they reside on the continent or live in the African diaspora--are the legitimate and central subjects of scholarly study. This approach warrants Neal’s interpretation of Thurman’s and Newton’s writings as fitting within the “African Freedom Aesthetic,” in which (...) the aesthetic expressions of transcendence, transformation, human consciousness, and collective will have become the means by which Africans living under oppressive conditions during the modern period could work to liberate themselves from those conditions. (shrink)

This book argues that Josiah Royce bequeathed to philosophy a novel idealism based on an ethico-religious insight.This insight became the basis for an idealistic personalism, wherein the Real is the personal and a metaphysics of community is the most appropriate approach to metaphysics for personal beings, especially in an often impersonal and technological intellectual climate. -/- The first part of the book traces how Royce constructed his idealistic personalism in response to criticisms made by George Holmes Howison. That personalism is (...) interpreted as an ethical and panentheistic one, somewhat akin to Charles Hartshorne's process philosophy. The second part investigates Royce's idealistic metaphysics in general and his ethico-religious insight in particular. In the course of these investigations, the author examines how Royce's ethico-religious insight could be strengthened by incorporating the philosophical theology of Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Emmanuel Levinas's ethical metaphysics. The author concludes by briefly exploring the possibility that Royce's progressive racial anti-essentialism is, in fact, a form of cultural, antiblack racism and asks whether his cultural, antiblack racism taints his ethico-religious insight. (shrink)

Gabriel Marcel’s reflective method is animated by his extraphilosophical commitment to battle the ever-present threat of dehumanization in late Western modernity. Unfortunately, Marcel neglected to examine what is perhaps the most prevalent threat of dehumanization in Western modernity: antiblack racism. Without such an account, Marcel’s reflective method is weakened because it cannot live up to its extraphilosophical commitment. Tunstall remedies this shortcoming in his eloquent new volume.

Since the publication of The Man-Not in July of 2017, the wealth of empirical information challenging the conclusions of intersectionality and Black masculinity studies has gained the public’s attention. The Man-Not argues that in western patriarchal societies Black males and other racialized men and boys are targeted for extermination and social ostracization. Following the work of social dominance theorists and Global South Masculinities, Black Male Studies argues that patriarchy places outgroup-racialized men at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Religious ethicists use a variety of conceptual tools from many disciplines—for example, psychology, sociology, anthropology, theology, philosophy, political science, cognitive science, and neuroscience—to study various religious traditions. They use these interdisciplinary tools to study how these traditions influence and are influenced by the cultural mores and societal norms of the societies in which these traditions are practiced. If William Schweiker's depiction of religious ethics in The Blackwell Companion to Religious Ethics is representative of the field's emerging self-conception, then religious ethics (...) is primarily a hermeneutical and multidimensional field (See Schweiker 2-3). Schweiker thinks that this .. (shrink)

In Gabriel Marcel and American Philosophy, David W. Rodick investigates Gabriel Marcel's relationship to classical American philosophy—more specifically, to Josiah Royce's idealism, William James's radical empiricism, William Ernest Hocking's empiricism, and Henry G. Bugbee's experiential naturalism—to provide Marcel scholars and scholars of classical American philosophy with a fruitful perspective for understanding Marcel's thought. He also seeks to capture Marcel's dynamic and concrete approach to philosophizing along with examining its "relevance to the contemporary world—a world in which philosophy, confined to the (...) ivory tower, remains at risk of becoming somewhat of a caricature of itself". In... (shrink)

Jacoby Adeshei Carter has done an invaluable service in editing this critical edition of Alain Leroy Locke’s series of six lectures in Haiti delivered “from April 9 to July 10, 1943, when he was the Inter-American Exchange Professor to Haiti under the joint auspices of the American Committee for Inter-American Artistic and Intellectual Relations and the Haitian Ministry of Education”. African American Contributions to the Americas’ Cultures consists of two parts. The first part is Locke’s series of six lectures entitled (...) “The Negro’s Contribution to the Culture of the Americas.” The second part is Carter’s critical interpretative essay on Locke’s lectures entitled “‘Like Rum in the Punch’: The Quest for Cultural... (shrink)

In this article, I contend that there are at least two contemporary types of Kantian transcendental pragmatism: Sami Pihlström’s naturalistic transcendentalpragmatism and Josiah Royce’s absolute pragmatism. Each one of these transcendental pragmatisms represents one side of the Kantian transcendentaltradition. Pihlström’s naturalistic transcendental pragmatism represents the side of the Kantian transcendental tradition that is familiar to most philosophers, namely, the transcendental inquiry into the conditions for the possibility of human experience. Royce’s absolute pragmatism represents the other, more neglected, side of the (...) Kantian transcendental tradition, namely, the transcendental analysis of the meaningfulness of moral, aesthetic, and religious experience, especially theistic religious experience. I contend that Royce’s pragmatism is more representative of the Kantian transcendental tradition than is Pihlström’s pragmatism. (shrink)

Philosophers often entertain positions that they themselves do not hold. This article is an example of this. While I do not advocate localized acts of violence to combat white supremacy, I think that it is worthwhile to explore why it might be theoretically justifiable for some African Americans to commit such acts of violence. I contend that acts of localized violence are at least theoretical justifiable for some African Americans from the vantage point of racial realism. Yet, I also contend (...) that the likely detrimental consequences of engaging in such violence on economically disadvantaged African Americans outweigh its possible benefits for them; hence, it should not be used by them to combat white supremacy presently. (shrink)

i find roger ward’s interpretation of Charles Sanders Peirce’s logic, semiotics, and pragmaticism in Peirce and Religion to be not only plausible, but also compelling. What makes Ward’s interpretation of Peirce’s thought compelling, at least to me, is the story he tells about how Peirce’s Trinitarian faith commitments shaped Peirce’s thought from the early 1860s to his death in 1914. Ward’s story accounts for how Peirce’s Trinitarian faith commitments led Peirce to consider his study of logic and semiotics as his (...) vocation. It also accounts for how Peirce’s Trinitarian faith commitments motivated Peirce to transition from being a proponent of a nominalistic pragmatism in the 1870s to being a pragmaticist by the... (shrink)

When thinking about Frank M. Oppenheim’s legacy, one cannot help but think, first and foremost, about his many contributions to Royce scholarship. Yet I personally have had some difficulty imagining how to characterize Oppenheim’s contributions to Royce scholarship until late 2013. Prior to that time, the more I thought about how to characterize his contributions to Royce scholarship, the less I became able to imagine an appropriate characterization of them. Then, on an autumn afternoon in 2013, I stumbled across a (...) Tumblr post, written by Missy H. Dunaway, that caught my attention. The title of that post was “‘The Lonely’ Lighthouse Keeper.” Dunaway’s post was an entertaining yet sad account of her fascination with... (shrink)

Despite differences between Cornel West's prophetic pragmatism and Dewey's pragmatism, they both conceive of “creative democracy” as an ethico-religious ideal. Accordingly, this article examines how Deweyan creative democracy is an ethico-religious ideal, in the sense of being a religious humanist ideal. This article concludes with an explanation of how a contemporary Deweyan democrat living in the United States cannot help but recognize the tragicomic undercurrents of creative democracy.

Ethical personalism is normally associated with three of the central personalist movements in the twentieth century: the Boston personalism of Borden Parker Bowne, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rufus Burrow, Jr.; the French personalism of Emmanuel Mounier; and the personalism of Pope John Paul II. In the twenty-first century, there are a growing number of people living in North America and Europe who are not affiliated with any religious tradition, yet are still sympathetic to the Christian ethical ideas associated with (...) twentieth century personalist movements. This essay attempts to situate the best ideas from ethical personalism, specifically from Boston personalism, in a non-Christian religious humanist context. That way, non-theists who are sympathetic to Boston ethical personalism can still identify themselves as ethical personalists. (shrink)