Frederick Douglass A Critical Reader

by Lawson, Bill; Kirkland, Frank

• ISBN13: 9780631205777
• ISBN10: 0631205772
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-01-26
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

In this powerful volume, 15 leading American philosophers examine and critically reassess Douglass's significance for contemporary social and political thought. Philosophically, Douglass's work sought to establish better ways of thinking, especially in the light of his convictions about our humanity and democratic legitimacy - convictions that were culturally and historically shaped by his experience of, and struggle against, the institution of American slavery. Contributors include Bernard R. Boxill, Angela Y. Davis, Lewis R. Gordon, Leonard Harris, Tommy L. Lott, Howard McGary, and John P. Pittman.

Author Biography

Bill E. Lawson is Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. His area of research is African-American Social and Political Philosophy and the theory of social contract. He has published numerous articles as well as two books, The Underclass Question, an anthology of writings by African-American philosophers on the issue of the "urban underclass", and Between Slavery and Freedom (with Howard McGary), an examination of ethical issues in the American slavery experience.

Frank M. Kirkland is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and at the Graduate Centre, both of the City University of New York. He has published a variety of scholarly articles on Kant, Hegel, and Husserl, as well as on the urban underclass and the relation of modernity to African American life. He has also edited a collection of essays entitled Phenomenology, East and West. He is currently completing a scholarly monograph, Hegel and Husserl: Idealist Meditations.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	ix	(4)
Preface	xiii	(2)
Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction	1	(18)
Part I: Racial Assimilation and Emigration	19	(64)
1 Douglass Against the Emigrationists	21	(29)
Bernard R. Boxill
2 Douglass on Racial Assimilation and Racial Institutions	50	(14)
Howard McGary
3 Douglass's Assimilationism and Antislavery	64	(19)
John P. Pittman
Part II: Natural Law and America's Founding Documents	83	(60)
4 Natural Law in the Constitutional Thought of Frederick Douglass	85	(15)
David E. Schrader
5 Whose Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass and "Original Intent"	100	(43)
Charles W. Mills
Part III: Enlightenment and Enslavement	143	(62)
6 The Claims of Frederick Douglass Philosophically Considered	145	(28)
Roderick M. Stewart
7 The Grammar of Civilization: Douglass and Crummell on Doing Things with Words	173	(32)
Stephen L. Thompson
Part IV: Moral Suasion and Rebellion	205	(106)
8 Douglass as an Existentialist	207	(20)
Lewis R. Gordon
9 Honor and Insurrection or A Short Story about why John Brown (with David Walker's Spirit) was Right and Frederick Douglass (with Benjamin Banneker's Spirit) was Wrong	227	(16)
Leonard Harris
10 Enslavement, Moral Suasion, and Struggles for Recognition: Frederick Douglass's Answer to the Question -- "What is Enlightenment?"	243	(68)
Frank M. Kirkland
Part V: Incarcerating and Lynching Black Bodies	311	(52)
11 Frederick Douglass on the Myth of the Black Rapist	313	(26)
Tommy L. Lott
12 From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison: Frederick Douglass and the Convict Lease System	339	(24)
Angela Y. Davis
Part VI: Douglass (1818-95): One Hundred Years Later	363	(29)
13 Frederick Douglass and African-American Social Progress: Does Race Matter at the Bottom of the Well?	365	(27)
Bill E. Lawson
Selected Bibliography	392	(3)
Index	395