Is There a Distinctive African-American Philosophy?

ARTICLES

Lucius Outlaw and Michael D. Roth

Editor's Note: Lucius Outlaw and Michael D. Roth did not know each other prior to the exchange of letters that appears below. Early in 1994, Professor Roth, concerned over the question of whether he should introduce material on ancient Africa in his course on ancient philosophy, contacted Professor Outlaw. In his reply, Professor Outlaw included his syllabus for his course in African-American philosophy. Roth responded by raising the issue of whether the reading list accompanying that syllabus was, in fact, really philosophy. That response evoked the following exchange.

20 June 1994 Dear Professor Roth: I appreciate your provocative letter of 23 May and the kind comments regarding the syllabi for my courses which I sent you. Thank you for sharing the syllabi with your colleagues. My apologies for the delay in responding. Your letter was quite challenging, however, in calling on me to persuade you that there really is a viable and justifiable disciplinary venture of Africana (African and African-American) philosophy. Such a challenge requires a serious response, one not dashed off in a hurry. So, I had to wait until I had cleared a number of other matters off my desk (and floor) before devoting attention to writing to you. First, there is a substantial burden on you to make the case that the term "philosophy" should only be applied to those instances of thinking or writing that you are satisfied already meet the criteria for being so designated, or to new candidates that you would accept. But, what are your criteria? Why are the instances of epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, theories of right and good, mind and language, or the nature of the state you would find acceptable? Why do you withhold philosophy from African and/or African-American instances of thinking or writing, choosing instead to label them as "thought"?

Lucius Outlaw is T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College, Haverford, PA. In the fall of 1994 he received an appointment as Truax Visiting Professor at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. During the 1996-97 and the 1997-98 academic years, Professor Outlaw is David S. Nelson Professor of Philosophy at Bos- ton College in Massachusetts. Michael D. Roth is professor of philosophy at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. Please address correspondence to Academic Questions/NAS, 575 Ewing Street, Princeton, NJ 08540-2741.

29 30 Academic Questions / Spring 1997

On your criteria, how would any new candidate or instance be properly clas- sified as "philosophy"? Further, what is being distinguished-possibly even privileged-by the "philosophy"/thought distinction? Why? My suspicion, my worry, is that you are harboring an essentialist notion of "philosophy" that, ultimately, is incoherent and insupportable. Still, I await your response. In the meanwhile, I've enclosed two articles of mine in which I explore some of the complex issues involved. In one, "African, African American, Africana Philosophy," I offer a critique of aspects of Molefi Asante's accounts of "Afrocentricity."1 In the second, ~The Future of'Philosophy' in America, "2 I discuss, drawing on an essay by A.J. Mandt, s the futility of any attempt to speak about "philosophy" in a univocal way, as though there is a single, unique form of discourse, of thinking or writing, definitive of all that we regard as instances of philosophizing. I invite you to read and consider the arguments as a second response to your challenge. (I strongly recommend you read the Mandt essay as well.) After you've done so and formulated your response, I look forward to hearing from you. Further, I would be quite willing to discuss these matters with you and your colleagues at Franklin & Marshall. Please share with them cop- ies of my articles. I would not want the case for such a potentially lively discussion to rest entirely on whether or not I convince you that there really is a properly delimited subfield of Africana philosophy. At least, not before you convince me that your definition of "philosophy" is cogent and can do the discriminating work you would have it do. Again, thank you for your letter. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely, Lucius Outlaw T. Wistar Brown Professor

Notes

1. Lucius Outlaw, ~African, African American, Africana Philosophy," The Philosophical Forum, vol. 24, no.l-3 (Fall-Spring 1992-93): 63-93. 2. Lucius Outlaw, "The Future of 'Philosophy' in America,"Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 22, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 162-182. 3. A.J. Mandt, ~The Inevitability of Pluralism: Philosophical Practice and Philosophi- cal Excellence" in The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis, ed. Avner Cohen and Marcelo Dascal (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1989).

16 November 1994 Dear Professor Outlaw: I have now read both of your papers twice and I have taken notes on them. I found the argumentation of both pieces to be subtle and complex and, as a result, I'm sure I've misunderstood some parts of your argument and failed Outlaw and Roth 31

to grasp the full force of other parts. Nevertheless, here, for what it is worth, is my response. You suspect I might be harboring an indefensible and self-defeating form of essentialism. Maybe I am, but I don't need to commit myself to such a strong position to justify what I said to you in my last letter. "Essentialism" is a tricky word and signifies a variety of metaphysical and logical doctrines with varying degrees of strength. (I confess that the ones which derive from "transcendental rules" I have not yet heard of.) When you say that certain practices and activities can be grouped together and "appropriately" called philosophy, I assume that you must hold the view that at least some views and some practices would be inappropriate as examples of philosophy-otherwise labeling the desired forms "appropriate" would be meaningless. Does everything or anything anyone wants to count as philosophy thereby count as philosophy? If, as I take it, your answer is no, then don't you yourself hold a kind of essentialism? I think some things are, 'appropriately', and can be "properly determined" (your phrase) to be philosophy while other things can't. It seems that this is all I need to commit myself to in order to defend the view I out- lined to you in my last letter. Perhaps we disagree about the criteria of appropriateness or the conditions under which such criteria are met. I'm not sure I can set out all the criteria that function in my own conception of philosophy, especially if those criteria are supposed to provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the locution, "x is a genuine instance of philosophizing." Do I need to produce such criteria in order to decide that Ken Burns's "Civil War" is not an example of contemporary analytic metaphysics? I don't think so. Moreover, it is by no means clear to me what your own criteria are for judging something to be an instance of philosophizing. The aspect of your article toward which I reacted most negatively was your attempt to get all issues of race, racism, racial categorization, and racial identity under the umbrella of formal academic philosophy. As I said, I read your papers twice and I'm still not clear as to your reasoning here. One of your arguments seems to be this: Anglo-American (or eurocentric?) academic philosophy is infected with racism since it takes its cues from and formulates its questions based upon its relationship to the larger American (eurocentric) society, which has been and continues to be racist. Thus it has unfairly (albeit unconsciously) left out the questions, issues, practices, concerns and intellectualizations of a whole group of people, black people, both Africans and African Americans. It is now time to make amends to redress this legitimate grievance that has been so damaging to the psychic health of black folks. If this is even close to your position, I find myself in disagreement on at least two counts. (1) I don't believe that America is a racist society (which is not to say there are no racists in it or it is free of all signs of racism). In support of my view I offer you the abolitionists; the Civil War; Brown vs. the 32 Academic Questions / Spring 1997

Board; the Freedom Riders; Lyndon Johnson's Great Society; affirmative action; Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman; the Civil Rights Act; and the march on Washington. Moreover, I don't buy into your argument that academic philosophy neces- sarily reflects all the ills of the larger society in which it flourishes. I have been in academic philosophy for more than thirty years. I have found, without ex- ception, the philosophical community to be a group of literate, humane, liberal-minded men and women who, as a group, unswervingly and vigorously have supported the rights and aspirations of black folks in their joint (black and white) attempt to attain equal footing for all Americans in our society. At the same time I never heard of anyone (until you-and I suppose Leonard Har- ris, whom I know mainly through you) in philosophy suggesting that one's personal convictions on issues of race was inexorably incorporated into and somehow reflected in one's stand on free will, antirealism, the existence of God, Nietzche's eternal return, the transcendental deduction of the catego- ries, and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings. Thus, I simply flat out disagree that academic philosophy is racist and is implicated in any way in the sustaining of racism or racist institutions. More- over, I submit to you that those issues do not concern us directly as professional academic philosophers although they should (and do!) concern us mightily as citizens. Insofar as the members of the academic philosophical community have addressed these issues, out of concern for either basic fair- ness and decency or for the integrity of their own discipline, I have never seen even a speck of any racist tendency. On the contrary, there has been an enormous good will for the effort to correct past injustice and an overwhelm- ing sensitivity toward creating an environment that blacks would find wel- coming. The current rush to avoid the charge of "racism" has led many departments of philosophy to adopt procedures that have, to my mind, been unfair to white males who were totally undeserving of that unfair treatment. (2) Moreover, even ifI agreed with you that academic philosophy had been racist (in whatever sense) I would still be inclined to disagree with you on how to fix it. My solution would be to increase the number of people such as yourself and Adrian Piper and Laurence Thomas and Reggie Savage andJoe Tolliver and Georgette Sinkler who will take their rightful place in the discussion of the traditional and time-honored philosophical issues of Western culture as those issues are manifested in the contemporary discourse. I believe a second argument you used to support your view went something like this: Philosophy is not a fixed set of questions and methods handed down for all time and place in tablets of stone. Philosophy is a set of activities and practices that are tied to and derived from the larger social community, the experiences of which tend to determine the nature and focus of the questions and concerns that are then "appropriately" categorized as philosophy. Thus, among African and African-American peoples, the consciousness of Outlaw and Roth 33

race and the role of race were the dominant imprints on their collective experience, hence the philosophical interest in issues of race. Now I am well aware that I may have misunderstood you on some or all of this and I would wel- come your correcting me (should you decide that you want to continue the dialogue). But if I have the argument right, or right to some rather substantial degree, then I have two reactions to it. First, I don't know whether to accept it or not because I think I need to hear more. As I have expressed it, the argument is too open-ended and lets in anything. Whatever a society or a culture chooses to call philosophy, well, then, that is its philosophy, and if somebody in this culture says that the society in question is being slighted and victimized by our not having course offerings in its "philosophy," then we have no choice (no moral choice, that is) but to get the course into the curriculum immediately. I've tried my best to keep this discussion nonpoliti- cal (well, I have, at least, tried to avoid direct political or ideological confron- tation), but one consequence of this open-ended flaw I see, or think I see, in your view is that it will almost certainly lead to a balkanization of any liberal arts philosophy curriculum. As more and more aggrieved parties morally compel us to acknowledge and represent their philosophy in our curriculum we will end up like some current university departments with several competing subprograms all vying for power and status and riven with discord and hostility. For me that's too high a price to pay. It would put an end to everything I find worthwhile in our own philosophy curriculum. My second objection is perhaps the more serious one and is, I suspect, the one that will cause the most profound disagreement between us. Even if I were to grant your argument and endorse the view that philosophy is a set of activities and practices, etc., tied in some sense to a particular community, I would still wish to remind you that such an argument cuts both ways. Just as Africans and African Americans have derived a set of such practices and activities relative to their collective experience and consciousness, so have we white European guys done (and, by your argument, were entitled to do) the same thing. Now while you are pretty critical of this eurocentric culture with its traditions and practices that have served to shape its philosophy, I happen to be quite an admirer of it. It is the culture that has given us Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Einstein, Yeats, the statue of David, and the Sistine Chapel. I would also add to that list (although I suspect you might not) Frederick Douglass, Sarah Vaughn, Gwendolyn Brooks, Bessie Smith, Blind Willie Johnson, Colin Powell, Rosa Parks, Arthur Ashe, Muhammad All, and Louis Armstrong. It is the culture that has, in my view, the greatest list of positive achievements in the history of the world. I believe that you and I are products of that culture and that it is our culture (yours as well as mine). Its philosophy is a set of practices and activities that have been shaped by certain aspects of that culture. To me, the Western philosophical tradition, the one starting with the Milesians ~ and going through the Middle Ages, the En- 34 Academic Questions / Spring 1997

lightenment all the way up to Russell and Wittgenstein and Quine and Kripke in this century is a magnificent intellectual achievement, commensurate with Bach's B-Minor Mass and the theory of relativity. To me, it is no more a reflection of racism than they are. Perhaps you think that I am simply blind to the warts. As a Jew I assure you I am aware of some of the darker aspects of "eurocentric" culture. I would point out to you, however, that these warts are to be found in any culture or society including all of those for which you would consider "black" and "African" or "African American ~ to be an appropriate designation. Cruelty and hatred are not the sole province of white males of European ancestry. I fear I am beginning to sound pompous and long-winded. I hope I haven't bored you or offended you. I am sure I did not persuade you. If you are as rigorous and tenacious as your course syllabi strongly suggest, I suspect you will have something in the way of a response to all this. If so, I look forward to hearing from you. If not, thank you for the opportunity to have this exchange. I wish you a successful semester at Hamilton and a joyous holiday season.

Sincerely, Michael D. Roth

Note

1. I say the Western tradition beginning with the Milesians. If the Milesians didn't begin it and we found evidence that, say, Egyptians or Ethiopians, who are clearly black racially, actually had posed these questions earlier and actually influenced the Milesians, I would cheerfully change my view to accommodate this evidence. If you remember, that's why I wrote you in the first place. But who were they? What did they say? Where are their books? Where are their thoughts preserved?

28 November 1994 Dear Michael: Thank you for devoting so much of your time and effort to multiple readings of the essays of mine I sent you, and for the thoughtful comments. In doing so you have paid me a very high compliment indeed, especially in light of the demands on your time and effort, at Franklin & Marshall and otherwise, and in light of your recent health problems. I hope that you are now well, and wish you continued good health. And, please, no apologies are needed for your just getting around to writing. I had set no deadline by which to hear from you, thus there has been no damage to my regard for you. I had simply begun to identify you as a colleague whom I had not met but who had presented himself as unconvinced of the viability of African or African-American philosophy. This "picture" of you I had left as almost wholly incomplete, to be filled in, if at all, gradually, over time, if and when a discussion you initiated continued. So, all is well, even more so after reading your letter of 16 November, which I received Outlaw and Roth 35

this morning. Let me now take my turn in the conversation by responding, much too briefly, however, to do full justice to your comments. As for your possibly "harboring an indefensible and self-defeating form of essentialism," I'm not ready to make that charge. I suspect as much. But, your comments do make even clearer to me that I've not yet fully acknowledged and taken steps to address my need for a more cogent critique of "essentialism," or, at least, instances of commitments to essences that I think are inappropriate, and to give the reasons why I think so. You are right, of course: I, as well as you, must have some idea of what constitutes philosophizing and dis- tinguishes it from any other form of intellectual (and other) activity. That is, I need a general term, "philosophy," to support my efforts to distinguish Africana "philosophy" from other, different yet similar, philosophizing. My critique, as you've shown, expressed as some too broad disparaging of "essentialism," is inadequate. A better approach is sketched out in the essay I sent you, "The Future of 'Philosophy' in America," wherein I draw on the work of A.J. Mandt, who points out [...] that the "great community" of professional philosophers constituted by, say, the American Philosophical Associa- tion, is quite pluralistic sociologically and normatively (metaphysically and epistemologically). What I object to are efforts to use the norms of some subcommunities of these thinkers as though they were grounded in a transcendental truth that allowed them to rule on candidates for recognition as "philosophy" on terms that required the candidate to look like the judges' own instances without the judges problematizing their criteria and relativizing them to histories, traditions, institutions, and communities of thinkers. Of course, after doing so I would expect you to continue to affirm your own choices: it's openness to others that I'm fighting for. You think, apparently, that this debate can proceed without becoming "po- liticar' or "ideological." I think it inherently ideological and political. One of the crucial issues for me is how we will conduct ourselves politically in settling our ideological differences: what kind of communities and institutions-what forms of political life, guided by what agendas, including what understandings regarding our various knowledges-will we agree to have and work for. These are the engaging issues, political and ideological, that demand our attention. I do not wish to have the struggle over these issues result in, as you worry in your letter, "put[ting] an end to everything I find worthwhile in our own philosophy curriculum." But, I ask you to think long and hard about the valuings involved in certain of your words: "I find worthwhile," "our own philosophy curriculum" (my emphasis). There's you: who does or will com- prise the we who will determine "our" curriculum? On what terms? As for my charge of racism in American philosophy, again, this is a charge I have to do a much better job of prosecuting or drop. As stated the charge may be too sweeping, but is not, I think, totally without merit [....] Wherever you find academic philosophy in America, throughout its history, addressing civic 36 Academic Questions/Spring 1997

affairs while remaining silent about slavery, antisemitism, or antiblack racism, I don't understand the basis, let alone the intent, of your "flat out" disagreement about academic racism. And the years of anecdotal experiences of many philosophers of African descent, mine and others, confirm again and again the play of racism in academic philosophy. There are committed antiracists among academic philosophers. The whole is not a single homogeneous kind. Nor is American society. Why don't the examples you offer (abolitionists, the Civil War, etc.) confirm the reality of racism in American society? Why else were they needed or did the persons feel themselves called forth to give their lives in struggle against racism?! The realms of citizenship and professional academic philosophy are, indeed, not identical. But they do overlap at crucial points. Your invoking of this distinction seems self-serving at best, counter to canonical roots of the best of Western philosophizing preserved in the academy at worst. Or, perhaps your sense of philosophizing and its relation to civic life reflects a changed sdf-conception of some philosophers, a conception with a traceable history worth reconstructing and critiquing. That you have "never seen even a speck of any racist tendency" in academic philosophy is noteworthy and an experience I'm happy you have had. It is not an experience I share completely, even though I continue to enjoy the respect of many folks in the discipline and in academies around this country. Finally, of course, my argument cuts both ways. To the extent that there are traditions of philosophizing by African and African-descended persons, those can and must be subjected to critique as well. I do not wish to have them replace what has been called "the Western philosophical tradition" (which is continuously reconstructed in various, often competing, ways). Rather, I'm interested in adding other traditions to those we consider and draw from. I'm just sick of this lie that only in the so-called West was there philosophizing at all, or philosophizing in its proper form(s). And yes, I am a product of Western culture. But not just. First we must rethink what we take "Western culture" to consist of. And I do include Douglass, Sarah Vaughn, and the other folks you name! It's just that I'd want to distinguish them as persons who contributed by drawing on dements from cultures other than western Europe and America, and from cultures made in the Americas but not entirely of American or European elements. Your notion of "Western culture" is, I think, too naive. We shall, I hope, continue our discussion. You help me enormously by pressing me to think and express myself much more clearly, carefully, and cogently (although I have hardly completed those tasks in this response). This is one of the highest forms of respect that can be shown to one by one's colleague in philosophy. Thank you, Michael D. Roth. Be well, Lucius Outlaw Truax Visiting Professor Outlaw and Roth 37

27 March 1996 Dear Lucius: If Job were alive today, it would be said of him that he has the patience of Outlaw who keeps waiting and waiting for Roth to reply to his letters. I hope someday to beg your forgiveness and to purge myself of my procrastinative proclivities-as soon as I get around to it. As I recall, the main question before us is still unresolved; whether there is a distinctive set of questions, practices, and methodologies, peculiar to certain African-American thinkers, which go to make up a legitimate branch of academic philosophy called African-American philosophy. Since we still disagree about the correct answer to that question, I am going to undertake a new initiative in support of my view. I propose that we both accept, solely for the purposes of our discussion, a working definition of American academic philosophy. I will attempt to make it a virtue of my proposed definition that it will put the ball squarely in your court, forcing you to return it to me so that our debate can proceed. If you accept the definition, then we can proceed with my arguments and your reaction to them. If you don't accept the definition, then I will expect you to tell me why you think it fails, and to replace it with your own improved version. I propose that we both accept what might be called a "mereological" definition of academic philosophy. On this account, philosophy is constituted, exclusively and exhaustively, by its traditionally recognized subdisciplines such as ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, etc. Thus the phrase "academic philosophy" becomes an umbrella term ranging over a rather large disjunction whose proper disjuncts are those constitutive subdisciplines. Taken in this way, it would follow that someone who is engaged in one or more of the practices that make up the work of academic philosophers (teach- ing and research) is engaged in "doing" ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, or whatever. A second virtue which I claim for our working definition is that it begs no questions either for or against the notion of African-American philosophy. A telling analogue here would be the notion of feminist philosophy. As you have probably guessed, I'm pretty hostile toward feminist philosophy. I find most of it pretty loopy and heavily politicized. However, I now concede that while many of the issues raised by so-called feminist philosophers remain controversial, feminist philosophy meets the requirements of our definition. There are philosophers who think of themselves as feminist philosophers who do raise issues in ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, and so on. Hence, feminist philosophy is a legitimate subdiscipline of academic philosophy (alas!). It should be clear to you from this analogy that our definition does not give me license to legitimize my own philosophical tastes. In short, my argument with African-American philosophy is not that I personally don't care much for it. 38 Academic Questions / Spring 1997

Assuming, arguendo, that we both still provisionally accept the proposed definition, we can now bring the issue before us into sharper focus by refor- mulating it as the question of how the notion of African-American philosophy fares relative to our definition. There is, I suppose, one way of interpreting the notion of African-American philosophy that clearly satisfies the definition. If you were to edit an anthology that included a piece by Adrian Piper on aesthetics, a piece by Reggie Savage on Leibnitz, a piece by Georgette Sinkler on Thomas Aquinas, a piece by Laurence Thomas on social philosophy, you might title the collection, "RecentAfrican-American Philosophy." Clearly, the only significant common thread that makes this collection an instance of African-American philosophizing is the fact that all the contributors are black. What is the point of that? I have no charitable answer to that question and I will assume that neither do you. If I am wrong, I am sure you will point that out to me in your reply. Now the only other viable unpacking of the idea of African-American philosophy centers on the claim that there is a distinctive set of philosophical questions, concerns, and approaches that are, in some sense, peculiar to Afri- can-American academic philosophers. On its face, the claim appears to be extremely dubious. Some of the feminist philosophers have tried to argue that gender plays an important role in the way we come to value things or in the way we justify our beliefs. There are, it is alleged, sound physiological as well as psychological reasons for the view that men and women are funda- mentally different in these respects. Do you wish to argue for similar distinc- tions between blacks and whites? I have heard no such argument, and I know of no evidence to support it. Perhaps you would find it more plausible to say that what makes African- American philosophy a viable subdiscipline of academic philosophy is the fact that its practitioners identify themselves with a culture and a community whose shared experience has been conditioned, to a large extent, by oppression and exploitation. This shared experience produces, in turn, a certain kind of common intellectual stance that shapes the character of the individual intellectual responses to this experience. Now I am acutely aware that I am trying to put words in your mouth here, and I may very well he missing you by a mile. I confess that thinking and writing about such topics as culture and community and identity have not dominated my own professional philosophical interests, but, having admitted all that, I believe that something along the lines of what I just said above is true. The response of black academics to their individual as well as their collective experience has been dominated by the consciousness of race and the issue of racism. Such a response is perfectly understandable and I have no quarrel with it. My hesitancy involves how this response gets expressed within the confines of formal academic philosophy. It might be helpful to both of us for me to make myself clear on a point on which we might not agree. I believe that the African-American encounter Outlaw and Roth 39

with racism has been notable both for its intensity and its seeming intractability. Moreover, it is undeniable that its effects have been devastating. But I also believe that the African-American response to that encounter is not significantly different from the response of any other group that might find itself on the short end of such an encounter. Had Norwegians or left-handed people or those scarred by really bad acne been singled out, enslaved, and deni- grated because of their membership in that particular group, their reaction, including their intellectual reaction, would not have been significantly different from the reaction of African Americans. Whether the voice belongs to Moses, Ghandi, Simone de Beauvoir, or Malcolm X, the reaction to oppression and injustice is a universal and thus human one. Perhaps you disagree and believe that injustice suffered because of one's race is felt or conceived differently than injustice suffered due to one's religious beliefs, sexual orien- tation, or gender. But such a supposition appears, prima facie, to be highly implausible and would require, at least for me, more than a little evidence. Moreover, even if you think I'm wildly off base here and wish to argue that the harm done to blacks due to racially motivated injustice is significantly different than the harm done to, say, Jews or gays or women, why must intellectual and insightful reflection on the nature of this harm (as well as the associated issues arising from it) be restricted to the responses of African Americans? To my mind, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, 1 and Gertrude Ezorsky's Racism and Justice, 2 would be as viable as texts for a course on racial injustice or racism as any by African-American authors. These last points have significant bearing on our discussion, Lucius, because, if I am right, then the fact that African Americans were, historically, the victims of racism, and the fact that black intellectuals responded to that racism do not, by themselves, make a case for African-American philosophy. If there is any merit to my argument, then there is, so far, nothing peculiarly African-American or peculiarly philosophical that follows from the above cited facts. If a group of African-American philosophers had developed a new theory of justice or a new method or set of criteria for valuing persons, then we would have the basis for launching a new subdiscipline of academic philosophy that could be appropriately labeled, "African-American philosophy." But I know of no such initiatives and, in the absence of them, I don't see anything that would constitute African-American philosophy according to the criteria of our working definition. What I do see are collections of black intellectualizations about race that are presented under the rubric, "African-American philosophy." A case in point is Leonard Harris's anthology, Philosophy Born of Struggle. 3 It is, quite frankly, a pastiche of sociology, literary criticism, history, economics, anthro- pology, theology, psychology, and, yes, even some philosophy. But there is really nothing that binds the few instances of what I would consider genuine philosophizing together except an affinity for Karl Marx and for certain fig- 40 Academic Questions / Spring 1997

ures in the continental tradition (Hegel, Kierkegaard, etc.). Surely, the irony of making that the basis of a distinctive African-American philosophy could hardly be lost on you. Now I am fairly confident, Lucius, in advance, that you will concede none of this to me. And when I reflect on what could serve as the source of our inability to attain even moderate rapprochement, I suspect that it is rooted in a claim in your last letter to me that our debate was "inherently ideological and political." I have done what you have asked me to do in that I have thought "long and hard" about my views on these topics (which, if truth be told, is at least partially responsible for the long delay in my response) and I have come to the conclusion that, for my part, the views that I have endorsed and de- fended in this letter are not derived from my political and ideological stand- points. It is not my views on race or my attitudes toward African Americans that guide my thinking on these matters, it is my views regarding the integrity of the academic discipline of philosophy. By my lights, philosophy is not born of struggle. Rather, it is the offspring of mating intellectual curiosity with quiet, dispassionate reflection. It neither embraces nor prohibits any particular political or ideological stance; it asks only that such stances present themselves for rational, critical examination. In my depiction of a perfect world, places like Franklin & Marshall and Haverford exist to do two things: (1) to teach our students how best to pursue the truth, and (2) to instill in our students, insofar as we are able, an appreciation of what is truly excellent. As individuals and citizens, it is appropriate for us to declare ourselves as passionately committed to either liberalism or con- servatism, capitalism or socialism, Judaism or atheism, but as teachers and scholars and philosophers, we are obligated to pursue the truth regardless even of our most passionately held commitments, and to do so from that detached perspective which Bishop Butler referred to as "the cool hour." I may have the most fervent wish that the conclusions of The Bell Curve be false, and that the arguments supporting those conclusions be severely flawed. 4 But, as a professional philosopher, the only hope I have of realizing my wish is by reading the book, and reading it in that cool hour. If, after I read it, I decide that its conclusions are warranted by the evidence and I judge that evidence to be true, then, alas, I must accept those conclusions, regardless of my politics or ideology. Without that, I believe there is no longer any reason for there to be a Haverford or a Franklin & Marshall. My suspicion, Lucius, is that in your own depiction of a perfect world the role of a liberal arts college, and by extension, a liberal arts college philosophy department, would be a bit more "activist" and a tad less detached from the social and political realities of the day. If you concede that to me, then I am prepared to say that it is this difference, more than any other, that keeps us on opposite sides of the chasm. As I said to you above, I have no illusions that in your reply to me I will discover that I have made a convert. So let me leave you with one of my Outlaw and Roth 41

favorite quotes. It has shaped my contributions to this discussion, and I offer it to you in the hope that it will shape your own contributions as well. I found it a long time ago in a letter written by H.G. Wells to his fellow novelist, James Joyce. After explaining to Joyce why he dislikes Ulysses, Wells goes on to say:

I can't follow your banner any more than you can follow mine. But the world is wide and there is room in it for both of us to be wrong.

Be well, Michael

Notes

1. John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, div. of Harvard University Press, 1971). 2. Gertrude Ezorsky, Racism andJustice: The Casefor Affrrmative Action (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991). 3. Leonard Harris, Philosophy Born of Struggle: An Anthology of Afro-Amerlcan Philosophy from 1917 (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishers, 1983). 4. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Struc- ture in American Life (New York: Free Press, div. Simon and Schuster, 1994).

17 July 1996 Dear Michael: Months after receiving it, and after our lunch together some weeks ago, I've now set myself the task of responding to your especially challenging letter of 27 March. And a formidable task it isl However, such challenges can serve to bring out the best in a person. Let's see whether I'm up to it. The main question that has provoked our ongoing discussion, you write in your letter, is "still unresolved," namely, "whether there is a distinctive set of questions, practices, and methodologies peculiar to certain African-Ameri- can thinkers, which go to make up a legitimate branch of academic philosophy called African-American philosophy." I'll begin my response by taking issue with this formulation of the question. For me, it is not a critical matter for delineating African-American philosophy as a field that the questions, practices, and methods of African- American thinkers to be regarded as philosophizing be "peculiar" to them. In other words, I do not think it necessary that the questions, practices, and methods be unique-that is, different from those of all other thinkers of whatever groupings-and so by virtue of the raciality and ethnicity of African Americans, as a condition of possibility for African-American philosophy as a field of discourse. Rather, I think the conditions of possibility more mod- est: (1) that there be African Americans; (2) that there be among them persons who engage in more or less systematic thinking of a variety of kinds, some of which academics such as ourselves have come to call "philosophy." 42 Academic Questions/Spring 1997

This brings me to your "mereological" definition of academic philosophy you propose we both accept: "philosophy is constituted, exclusively and exhaustively, by its traditionally recognized subdisciplines such as ethics, metaphysics, [and] epistemology." Sorry, Michael, but I'm afraid I can't accept that proposal[ .... ] Were I to accept your definition as "exclusive and exhaus- tive," then the discussion would be over. To the extent that you do not recognize African-American philosophy as a legitimate field already among "traditionally recognized subdisciplines" (Recognized by whom? When? On what terms? For what reasons?), then there's no way for me to win acceptance of African-American philosophy as a recognized subfield. Even more, there would be no way to recognize any new subfield, now or in the future, since your definition would freeze the scope of academic philosophy at the limits defined by your list of "traditionally recognized subdisciplines," a list con- structed in the present according to some set of criteria of the present. [...] You are in danger, Michael, of appearing to be one, who, having won recognition and institutional prominence for analytic philosophy in particular forms, wants to close the door against new candidates, notwithstanding your grudging recognition of feminist philosophy as a legitimate subdiscipline. What I don't understand, Michael, is your hesitancy about calling such works "philosophical" in terms of your sense of "academic philosophy" [ .... ] What is it, precisely, that you wish to protect and preserve through your re- strictive franchising of "academic philosophy"? You write that the African- American encounter with racism has been notable "both for its intensity and its seeming intractability," but the response to it, to oppression and injustice, "is a universal and thus human one." Of course, that's true, Michael. Who would deny such a claim? But what's your point? Philosophers, for centuries, have claimed rationality to be a universal human characteristic (though most of these same philosophers also denied that all humans were rational), but this hasn't stopped them/us from expending millions of hours of effort trying to understand and give accounts of rationality and its modes of exercise while distinguishing various traditions (French rationalism, British empiri- cism and analysis, American pragmatism and transcendentalism) and persons on the basis of the ways in which the efforts to understand and the account-givings have gone. But you would deny this to "African American." Why? [...] Once again, what motivates my efforts in behalf of Africa and African- American philosophy is to foster the study of intellectual efforts of philosophizing by African and African-descended peoples, in part to combat racism, but, even more importantly, to contribute to our understandings of the peoples of the world, both their differences and their similarities. I am opposed to having studies in philosophy and other fields occluded by the presumption of, let alone the search for, universals shared by all peoples with the result that we are blocked from appreciating the particular articulations of indi- Outlaw and Roth 43

vidual members of particular racial, ethnic, or cultural groups. For all the value of achieving understandings of the similarities among human beings, understanding what is "universal" among us, that same notion can be a dangerous abstraction and commitment. I am passionately opposed to having notions of the "universal" be normed on the experiences of peoples of Euro- pean descent, as has been the case much too often in "the academic discipline of philosophy." And there are important ways in which the concern for "universals," in one sense, is, in fact, a commitment and a political quest. Diversity is part of the facticity of human existence; universality is a quest (as in the important effort to have all nation-states explicitly and actively committed to principles of human rights). The quest for universal human rights is thus decidedly political: a quest to have humans throughout the world commit to and live by a particular set of principles, thus, to order human relations within and among nation-states in particular ways that we think provide enhanced conditions for human well-being. You, it seems clear, would have "the integrity of the academic discipline of philosophy" free of political involvements by denying that philosophy is "born of struggle" while regarding it (philosophy) as "the offspring of mating intellectual curiosity with quiet, dispassionate reflection." Well, to some extent I share your commitments, Michael, to intellectual curiosity and reflection, to being persuaded by evidence and not simply following one's own idiosyn- cratic passions; other, that is, than the passionate commitment to being persuaded by evidence. However, in my judgment philosophizing does not require that one be "dispassionate" or quiet, certainly not always. But make no mis- take, Michael, such commitments are, indeed, deeply ideological and political. They are part and parcel of those world-historic intellectual, political, social, and economic revolutions of the modern European Enlightenments, and the structuring political philosophies (ideologies) of various forms of liberalism. Put differently, what you set out as the proper posture of a professional philosopher are character traits of the modern liberal intellectual as these were developed by the likes of John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and others. Moreover, these character traits were thought by these persons to be necessary for the realization of enlightened societies, ones freed from the dogmatisms of tradition and religion. They were thought to be necessary for democratic, free, and tolerant societies structured by the norms of human (practical) reason. In other words, the posture you describe, Michael, is intimately a part of modern liberal democratic societies. It requires such societies in order to have full play, and thereby for citizens to develop and flourish as rational and free human beings. The very notion of a liberal arts college, as well as the ways of intellectual and social life at their best in such institutions, is such by virtue of particular arrangements and practices grounded in particular ideas and ideals (ideolo- 44 Academic Questions/Spring 1997

gies) that became norms and commitments. But all of these are tied inextri- cably to particular, historically determinate forms of political, social, and economic development and organization, including the formation of certain forms of the nation-state, the United States of America being a paradigmatic example of a sometimes more, sometimes less successful ongoing experiment in civic privatism, liberal political democracy, and capitalist economics. Which is a primary reason why neither you nor I have packed our bags and pur- chased tickets on the first thing smoking that will take us to permanent resi- dence in some other country. Which is why you have joined with others in institutions of higher education to oppose actively what you see as inappropriate practices and scholarship, and do so because you think it necessary if the institutions are to be preserved in their well-being to allow for the carrying- on of particular educational missions, missions that would have as outcomes the cultivation of particular kinds of citizens: those appropriate to liberal (free and tolerant), democratic (and capitalist?) societies and who, in the continuation of their lives, will reproduce these same institutions and societies. Not only do we hope for these outcomes, Michael, we work hard to refine yet conserve the institutions while nurturing the character development of our students so as to continue the best of the past and present as a means of producing a future we would have. We can't, Michael, both believe in and remain deeply committed to liberal arts colleges and their educational missions and programs, as we both do and are, and be "on opposite sides of the chasm" with regard to "detachment" from "the social and political realities of the day." Detached, yes, most of the time, from involvements in the myriad social and political goings-on that make up the realities of everyday life, but in order to cultivate enhanced understandings, bolstered by the cultivated enhancement ofparticular character traits, of these same goings-on, understandings that will prepare our students to inherit and to make better the world we have inherited and changed, for better or worse, that we bequeath to them. This is why I teach, Michael, why I engage in scholarship. To think that "philosophy" must be free, can be free, of political involvements where these matters are involved is not only naive, it is dangerously irresponsible. Educat- ing our students in contexts of complete detachment from the social and political realities of the day would be an excellent program by which to prepare them to be inept citizens who are easy prey for the media-enhanced rhetoric of demagogues and, at worst, ready cannon-fodder for tyrants. What happened to the ideal of the liberal arts college as a place to prepare persons to be critically informed and responsibly engaged citizens? Such preparation can- not be had through "detachment" of the kind of which you speak [....] Well, I've worked my way through each page of your letter, responding as best I might. It's now been over a week since I began this letter, which should give you some idea of how formidable the effort has been to respond (even Outlaw and Roth 45

with a couple of days of not working on it). Much more could be said. Instead, I'm enclosing a copy of an essay on Africana philosophy to share with you. It's my most recent effort to set out an argument in behalf of a subfield in philosophy devoted to exploring the philosophical articulations of African and African-descended people. It would be a miracle were this essay, along with this letter, to be successful in persuading you to my side of the discussion. I'm good, but not quite that good when up against a tough cookie like you, Michael. Still, if you're a reasonable man you'll have to concede that at least I'm making headway, right? We shall see. Best regards, Michael. Thanks for your patience in awaiting this response. And please know of my most deeply felt appreciation for your continuing with me in this engaging exploration.

Best regards, Lucius Outlaw T. Wistar Brown Professor

6 August 1996 Dear Lucius: What a wonderful reply, one filled with passion, eloquence, and integrity. The only criticism I have of it is that you are profoundly mistaken.

Be well, Michael

From the listing "Dissertations in American Studies, 1995- 1996" on page 755 of the December 1996 American Quarterly.

"Tramps like Us: Music and Meaning Among Springsteen Fans." American Civilization Program, Brown University, May 1996. Media critics and journalists often stereotype music fans as un- healthy or dangerous. This study addresses such stereotypes by fo- cusing on ways in which Bruce Springsteen fans themselves understand their attachment to Springsteen and his music and how their activities as fans enable them to shape identity, create community, and make sense of the world. Drawing on two years ethno- graphic research as well as my own experience as a fan, the text is a product of a dialogic editing process and juxtaposes fans' own sto- ries and ideas about their experiences with theories from anthro- pology, folklore, musicology, and literary criticism.