Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, is perhaps one of the most interesting and intriguing American intellectuals from the last half of the 20th century. Newton’s genius rested in his ability to amalgamate and synthesize others’ thinking, and then reinterpreting and making it relevant to the situation that existed in the United States in his time, particularly for African-Americans in the densely populated urban centers in the North and West. Newton saw himself continuing (...) the Marxist-Leninist tradition and one of the most important aspects of his thought was his reinterpretation of Marxist class structure. This paper presents Newton’s position that it is the urban poor—who Newton identifies with the lumpenproletariat—that act as the revolutionary class that will bring about a change in the socio-economic order. To that end, there is first a discussion of Newton’s view of the lumpenproletariat and how it differs from the traditional Marxist understanding. Then there is an explanation of the role of the vanguard and its relationship to the lumpenproletariat. The paper concludes with a comparison of Frantz Fanon’s and Newton’s understanding of the lumpenproletariat, and responds to the “problem of lumpenization” in the Black Panther Party. (shrink)

Huey P. Newton remains one the left’s intellectual enigmas. Although lauded for being the leader of the Black Panther Party, Newton is relatively unacknowledged as an intellectual. This article challenges the neglect of Newton’s thought by shedding light on his theory of empire, and the present-day value of returning to his thought. The article centres on how Newton’s critique of what he called ‘reactionary intercommunalism’ prefigures many of the elements found in the work of Hardt (...) and Negri on empire. This comparison will be used to show how Newton not only foresaw elements of the rise of contemporary neoliberal globalization, but also offered an idea of political solidarity and revolutionary politics for such a context. The article concludes by highlighting how Newton’s ideas about the need for a war of position based on ‘survival pending revolution’ presents a more theoretically and empirically salient conceptualization of resistance than his successors. (shrink)

This article is a discussion of the rabble in the context of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. The article will progress as follows: First, I present how Hegel discusses the formation of a rabble and consider Michael Allen’s and James Bohman’s arguments regarding the domination inherent in Hegel’s theory. Next, I critique Joel Anderson’s “Hegelian” solution to the problem of the rabble. Finally, I show that the rabble are precisely the “class” that Marx needs to bring about change in the organization (...) of society. Interestingly, there is a surprising similarity between Hegel’s discussion of the rabble and justified disobedience and the Marxism of Huey P. Newton. (shrink)

This article is a discussion of the political thought of Huey P. Newton, and by extension, the theory and practice of the Black Panther Party. More specifically, this article will explore a tension that exists between Newton's theory of Intercommunalism and the Black Panther Party Platform. To that end, there is, first, a discussion of the ideological development of the Black Panther Party, which culminated in Newton's theory of Intercommunalism. Second, there is a presentation of what (...) will be broadly construed as the Party Platform, which articulates the basic principles and practices of the Black Panther Party. Finally, there is a discussion of several ways in which there seems to be a conflict between Newton's ideology and his political practice. While some are only apparent contradictions, there does remain a deep conflict between the dialectical basis of Intercommunalism and the foundational basis of the Party Platform. (shrink)

In this paper, I reconstruct the conception of political will implicitly developed by the ‘philosophical theoretician’ of the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton. Counterintuitively, I argue that his ‘dialectical’ account of political will is best understood through categories derived from G.W.F. Hegel. Briefly, both Hegel and Newton identify abstract negation and situational concretion as equally essential to actualizing the free will, and thus advocate the channeling of revolutionary enthusiasm into reformist modes of institutional transformation. I conclude (...) by arguing that it is precisely this collective, but contested, unity of revolutionary and reformist tendencies that the Black Panther Party itself embodies. (shrink)

Our work analyses revolutionary suicide, as it was conceived by Huey Pierce Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Its historical-philosophical context is some political revolutionary self-sacrificial theories. These theories underpin both the link and the difference between Newton and other theories of civil resistance. Our method consists in focusing mainly in Newton’s essays entitled To Die for the People and in his autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide. The originality of our proposal is based on (...) the fact that the subject has scarcely been developed and that it was even absent in the special issue about the Black Panther Party published in 2017 by the Journal of African American Studies. Our conclusion asserts that self-sacrifice is the key that allows Newton him to embrace, renew and transmit a singular inflexion of civil resistance tradition, which also stems from some authors who are rarely quoted by Newton. (shrink)

In this article, I channel the autobiography of Black Panther cofounder Huey P. Newton, entitled Revolutionary Suicide, against the misogyny of the alt-right movement today. Both Newton and the alt-right have been powerfully influenced by Nietzsche, but one way of grasping the central difference between them is by comparing their conceptions of Dionysus. While the alt-right sticks closer to Nietzsche’s conception, which minimizes the god’s androgyny, Newton’s thought resonates with that androgyny, thereby bringing him closer to (...) the most influential Dionysus scholar since Nietzsche, Walter Otto. I therefore turn to the latter’s Dionysus: Myth and Cult, whose analyses I synthesize into the following image inspired by the god’s closest animal familiar: the dancingly-graceful panther as aqueous-androgynous soul-hunter. Reimagining Newton’s Black Panther in this way, finally, can help us overcome the alt-right. (shrink)

This study examines the idea of consciousness as a phenomenal reality in the writings of legendary civil rights figures, Howard W. Thurman and Huey P. Newton. Thurman is best known for his 1949 title, Jesus and the Disinherited, which is said to have inspired Dr. Martin Luther King, while Newton is best known for his work with The Black Panthers.

Aristotle and Huey P. Newton, Confucius and Abbie Hoffman, Gandhi and Eldridge Cleaver, and Plato and Noam Chomsky are some of the contrasts to be found in the groupings of selections in this unusual book of readings. The editors insist that in choosing "relevant" readings, they are using the same criterion of relevance as applies in logical argumentation, but they explain as follows a special application of this concept: "The material for the readings in this book has been (...) primarily chosen for its emphasis on relevant issues that are outside the traditional area of philosophy." Five topics are covered—education, protest, technology, national liberation, and the good life. The longest section is the one on protest, which includes passages from the writings of Sophocles, Plato, the New Testament, Thoreau, Bobby Seale, and nine others. Authors in the section on the good life range from al-Farabi to Bakunin, Aldous Huxley, Erich Fromm, and Jerry Rubin. Teachers of philosophy, if considering this book as a textbook, may be staggered by the high proportion of radical viewpoints presented in it. Nevertheless, the volume has a number of important merits. The topics treated are at the center of student interest, and the philosophical roots of the topics are displayed, at least in outline, in the range of selections. The readings are spicy, but they agitate the elements of genuinely profound problems.—W. G. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In 1978, the evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers and Huey P. Newton, cofounder of the Black Panthers, began a collaboration exploring the evolution of self-deception. Together they published a brief paper that used their ideas about the naturalistic basis of deceit and self-deception to explain the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 in Washington, D.C. Given the continued power of the naturalistic fallacy in the modern life sciences, historical attention typically focuses on highly visible controversies with great popular (...) traction. This essay instead mobilizes the muted legacy of Trivers and Newton's publication to underscore the inherent difficulties scientists face in finding a receptive audience for their theories, even naturalistic ones. (shrink)

BSTRACT Frantz Fanon’s works have been invaluable in the analysis of colonies and the colonized subject’s mentality therein, but an analysis of the colonial power itself has been largely left to the wayside. The aim of this paper is to explicate a key element of Fanon’s theoretical framework, the metropolis/periphery dichotomy, then, using the writings of Huey P. Newton and Stokely Carmichael, among others, show its reversal within the colonial power. I will analyze this reversal in three ways: (...) first, the reversal of the relationship between, and the roles of, the metropolis and periphery; second, the role of police and the differences between the colonial police and the police within the colonial power; and third, the modified role of prisons within the colonial power. (shrink)

Having elsewhere connected Walter Otto’s interpretation of Dionysus as a politically progressive deity to Huey P. Newton’s vision for the Black Panthers, I here expand this inquiry to a line of Otto-inspired scholarship. First, Alain Daniélou identifies Dionysus and Shiva as the dancing god of a democratic/decolonizing cult oppressed by tyrannical patriarchies. Arthur Evans sharpens this critique of sexism and heteronormativity, concluding that, as Dionysus’s chorus is to Greek tragedy, so Socrates’s circle is to Western philosophy. I thus (...) call for the creation of a hybrid Dionysian-Socratic revolutionary philosophical chorus, modeled on Dionysus Lyseus, wielding philosophical analysis to loosen injustice’s bonds, as a vanguard of social justice. I find a handbook for this chorus’s creation in Euripides’s Bacchae, whose Dionysus is an ally of immigrant women, overthrower of Theban patriarchy, and international revolutionary. Finally, I offer a contemporary example of such a chorus that is based in my hometown in Alabama, namely, the Birmingham Philosophy Guild. (shrink)

Frantz Fanon’s works have been invaluable in the analysis of colonies and the colonized subject’s mentality therein, but an analysis of the colonial power itself has been largely left to the wayside. The aim of this paper is to explicate a key element of Fanon’s theoretical framework, the metropolis/periphery dichotomy, then, using the writings of Huey P. Newton and Stokely Carmichael, among others, show its reversal within the colonial power. I will analyze this reversal in three ways: first, (...) the reversal of the relationship between, and the roles of, the metropolis and periphery; second, the role of police and the differences between the colonial police and the police within the colonial power; and third, the modified role of prisons within the colonial power. (shrink)

2. Without creation, becoming would be either a repetitive routine or a random movement, and no possibility would appear as an objective. But creative becoming embraces a determinable future containing unrealized objectives in the form of possibilities. It also maintains itself as a consistent continuation of the past. Thus I can accept Mr. Hartshorne's comment on Thesis 2. As I see it, the idea of creation involves a theory of endless becoming, a world without end. Creation is an adjustment of (...) pattern and context, a determinate embodiment of pattern in a context consistent with a relevant past and contributing toward a relevant future. Hence no first act of creation and no last act are called for, nor can creation be reconciled with a world history present as a totum simul. (shrink)

2. Being and becoming are of equal status, mutually dependent upon one another for their reality. Being is the possibility of some sort of becoming; becoming the embodiment of some sort of being.

Now, it seems to me that there is much philosophy written today that does not justify our recognizing such relativism as characteristic of recent thought. In fact, however dominant this way of thinking may appear in other fields, a freshly oriented concern for an absolute may be detected in twentieth-century philosophy. Such concern is for an absolute within rather than behind or above our experience--if you will, for a finite absolute. For such a philosophy, the absolute has not so much (...) "fallen" as settled down, "down to earth" so to speak, where it enters our daily experience. Thus the one of Parmenides whose presence pulverized our common sense is no longer with us, nor are we likely to revive it, but we do hear of an absolute reality present in our conscious lives. Witness Sartre's insistence upon the "absolute character of free involvement" or choice, in contrast with his dismissal of the l'être en soi et pour soi as an impossible ideal. The cogito of Descartes, rather than his perfect being, appears as the historical archetype of our absolute. Thus today the metaphysician is often more concerned with what we way call the quality of man than with the more traditional efforts to discuss cosmic horizons, even though a traditional concern for an authentic reality continues to inspire his work. (shrink)

To avoid this blunt and embarrassing alternative seems to be the goal of much recent philosophy--and especially of continental European thought. It becomes apparent at once that these problems cannot be separated from our experience and interpretation of process and duration, of time and change, and of our place within them. It is this consideration, recognized as the very heart of the matter, to which Professor Chaix-Ruy has turned his attention. He finds his central problem to be an ancient and (...) recurring one, and he pays as much attention to Augustine and Pascal as to Bergson and Einstein. There results a panorama of Western thought apprehended from an unusual point of view. The detailed studies included are often fresh and penetrating and the whole argument is of absorbing interest. We may introduce this argument by indicating that at one point, although at one point only, Chaix-Ruy agrees completely with Sartre: the relation of essence to existence in human life is a unique one, quite different from that to be found elsewhere among non-human or sub-human beings. This contrast involves a description of man's relation to time and to change. Human nature is subject to change, or better, man subjects himself to change. "Chez nous l'essence est in fieri". We are reminded of Sartre's "Faire et en faisant se faire," although, as we shall soon see, we need not think of the initiative as lying wholly with our existence, as opposed to our essence. After all, an existence capable of transforming essence must have a structure of its own and a modus operandi. Even the freest choice is "structured." This would seem to be true even if our creative self-realization in some way embraces or contains nonbeing. (shrink)

To avoid this blunt and embarrassing alternative seems to be the goal of much recent philosophy--and especially of continental European thought. It becomes apparent at once that these problems cannot be separated from our experience and interpretation of process and duration, of time and change, and of our place within them. It is this consideration, recognized as the very heart of the matter, to which Professor Chaix-Ruy has turned his attention. He finds his central problem to be an ancient and (...) recurring one, and he pays as much attention to Augustine and Pascal as to Bergson and Einstein. There results a panorama of Western thought apprehended from an unusual point of view. The detailed studies included are often fresh and penetrating and the whole argument is of absorbing interest. We may introduce this argument by indicating that at one point, although at one point only, Chaix-Ruy agrees completely with Sartre: the relation of essence to existence in human life is a unique one, quite different from that to be found elsewhere among non-human or sub-human beings. This contrast involves a description of man's relation to time and to change. Human nature is subject to change, or better, man subjects himself to change. "Chez nous l'essence est in fieri". We are reminded of Sartre's "Faire et en faisant se faire," although, as we shall soon see, we need not think of the initiative as lying wholly with our existence, as opposed to our essence. After all, an existence capable of transforming essence must have a structure of its own and a modus operandi. Even the freest choice is "structured." This would seem to be true even if our creative self-realization in some way embraces or contains nonbeing. (shrink)

For Professor Wahl, the va-et-vient of speculative concepts reveals a restless dialectic whereby the emphasis of the theorist passes periodically from one contrary to another. Thus such notions as subject, object, the one, the many, have each in turn a recurring moment of dominion. But this movement, although it animates the development of ideas, cannot reach a stable equilibrium; and the notion, that may perhaps be attributed to Hegel, of a rational dialectic that has achieved a final resolution, is for (...) Wahl, as for Kierkegaard, a false ideal. This does not mean, however, that we are thereby finally condemned to a relativism or historicism. We can escape the vacillating one-sidedness of a "rational" dialectic. Indeed, the dialectic process seems to invite us to transcend it, or we might say, the very purpose of argument is to transcend itself since vision and not a discursive strategy is the goal of the philosopher. (shrink)

2. Thesis 2 I accept insofar as it asserts the relation of possibility to actuality to be a fundamental aspect of things. This relation is sui generis.

It may be helpful to recall that here as elsewhere Leibniz' pluralism finds a complementary counterpart in Spinoza's monism. Spinoza never deserted the notion of a single world-system wherein existence exhausts all possibility, so that, sub specie aeternaitatis, the two are the same.

Marcel is concerned with human existence or, better, with the quality of human life which we usually recognize more or less clearly under the concepts of freedom and responsibility. Such humanity is a de jure rather than a strictly de facto notion. We are always in danger of losing, caricaturing, or forfeiting our humanity and thus the adjective subhuman assumes a genuine significance, at least as indicating a limiting concept that stands as a warning before those "techniques of degradation," the (...) modern systems of mass propaganda and thought control. (shrink)

McKeon is, however, not eager to aid history in repeating itself. He strives to set philosophical discussion upon a new plane altogether. His attitude to the contemporary situation is set forth in the following quotation.

It would seem that "possibility," "concrete actuality," and "decision" are terms indispensable in describing my existence. It may also be that the meaning of no one of these three terms may be adequately conceived without reference to the other two. By preferring to follow Santayana, Mr. Eddins emphasizes concrete actuality. Now, as I read Santayana, existence like essence is a category, not strictly a "realm" of being, a category that we come to respect as we act and make decisions. It (...) should not, even in Santayana's materialism, be considered in abstraction from critical situations. Santayana's animal faith accepts the presence of a concrete actuality, the "realm" of matter conceived as a field of action. I might add that a human faith will accept our act of decision that makes its terms with the changing conditions constituting this realm. Thus I have asserted that "to exist is to have an unfinished history and a problematic future, the two being united in decision." When I think of my own existence or that of my friends, I bear this meaning more or less clearly in mind. My own existence is apparent to me every time I consider my past and my open future as the margins of a decision that is being formulated in my mind. Suppose now that someone convinces me that my decisions do not face an open future but stand to their future in a strictly chronological relation comparable, let us say, to the relation of earlier and later events as portrayed in an elementary text-book of history. Then I must face the difficulties latent in Leibniz' theology. (shrink)

It would seem that "possibility," "concrete actuality," and "decision" are terms indispensable in describing my existence. It may also be that the meaning of no one of these three terms may be adequately conceived without reference to the other two. By preferring to follow Santayana, Mr. Eddins emphasizes concrete actuality. Now, as I read Santayana, existence like essence is a category, not strictly a "realm" of being, a category that we come to respect as we act and make decisions. It (...) should not, even in Santayana's materialism, be considered in abstraction from critical situations. Santayana's animal faith accepts the presence of a concrete actuality, the "realm" of matter conceived as a field of action. I might add that a human faith will accept our act of decision that makes its terms with the changing conditions constituting this realm. Thus I have asserted that "to exist is to have an unfinished history and a problematic future, the two being united in decision." When I think of my own existence or that of my friends, I bear this meaning more or less clearly in mind. My own existence is apparent to me every time I consider my past and my open future as the margins of a decision that is being formulated in my mind. Suppose now that someone convinces me that my decisions do not face an open future but stand to their future in a strictly chronological relation comparable, let us say, to the relation of earlier and later events as portrayed in an elementary text-book of history. Then I must face the difficulties latent in Leibniz' theology. (shrink)

(1984). Showing Movement in Children's Pictures: a study of the effectiveness of some non‐mimetic representations of motion. Educational Studies: Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 255-261.