American Philosophies

African-American philosophy has historically struggled against the efforts of many European-Americans to marginalize and denigrate the importance of African-American experiences and reflections upon the unique situations of black Americans. For many centuries punished if they learned to read or write, black Americans communicated largely through the development of rich oral and religious traditions that cultivated unique and diverse philosophies of justice, morality, and human nature. As public participation and formal education among African-Americans increased following the Abolitionist Movement of the nineteenth century and the American Civil War, African-American scholars and activists such as W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), Alain Locke (1886–1954), and Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) contributed to national and international debates on human rights and the nature of justice.

W. E. B. Du Bois is most famous for his explanation of the phenomenon of "double-consciousness," by which he described the ambiguous ways in which African-Americans see themselves both from their own perspectives and from the perspectives of others. Du Bois, throughout his long career, argued that racism separates the human community, thus betraying its interdependent natures. From the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) early in his career to his later development as a communist, Du Bois worked continuously to embody and refine his social philosophy and reflections upon African-American experience.

Alain Locke, a Rhodes scholar and the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University, remains perhaps the most famous of African-American philosophers. During his time at Howard University, the school became the prime location for the education of African-American social thought and philosophy. Locke also published The New Negro in 1925, an anthology of work meant to encapsulate and present the Harlem Renaissance. According to Locke, this movement embodied and carried forward the notion of value pluralism, a rejection of absolutist philosophies and a positive construction of alternatives to the essentializing tendencies of Western philosophy.

From his inspirational sermons, to his elaboration of the philosophy of non-violence, to his leadership role in the American civil rights movement, the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. is a testament to the American spirit of uniting philosophy with action, theory with practice. Steeped in both the tradition of the Southern black churches and the philosophy of personalism espoused by Borden Parker Bowne (1847–1910) and Edgar S. Brightman (1884–1953), King believed in a living, personal God whose struggle for justice is evidenced in the concrete actions of ethical human persons. King urged that people treat each other with respect for the presence of God in the growth of individuals and communities—that is, he urged that individuals treat each other as persons. King's personalism and his encounter with the work of the Indian religious leader Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) led him to preach a philosophy of non-violent resistance toward social injustices, thus providing the grounds for one of the more momentous public movements in American history.