Frederick Douglass A Critical Reader

by Lawson, Bill; Kirkland, Frank

• ISBN13: 9780631205784
• ISBN10: 0631205780
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• 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

Acknowledgments

List of Contributors

Preface

Introduction

Racial Assimilation And Emigration

Douglass against the Emigrationists

Douglass on Racial Assimilation and Racial Institutions

Douglass's Assimilationism

Natural Law And American's Founding Documents

Natural Law in the Constitutional Thought of Frederick Douglass

Whose Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass and 'Original Intent'

Enlightenment And Enslavement

The Claims of Frederick Douglass Philosophically Considered

The Grammar of Civilization: Douglass and Crummell on Doing Things with Words

Moral Suasion And Rebellion

Douglass as an Existentialist

Honor of 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

Enslavement, Moral Suasion, and Struggles for Recognition: Frederick Douglass's Answer to the question - 'What is Enlightenment?'

Incarcerating And Lynching Black Bodies

Douglass on the Myth of the Black Rapist

From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prisons: Frederick Douglass and the Convict Release System

Douglass (1818-95): One Hundred Years Later

Frederick Douglass and Racial Progress: Does Race Matter at the Bottom of the Well?

Selected Bibliography

Index

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