Conceived in chains: slavery and American philosophy

Abstract

ABSTRACTUsing Peter Wirzbicki's Fighting for the Higher Law as its analytic starting, this review essay considers the place of antislavery in the developments of American philosophy. Wirzbicki considers the role of African American Transcendentalists and their appeal to a “higher law,” a concept articulated significantly by a diverse group of thinkers associated with Transcendentalism. By 1850, such thinkers appropriated aspects of British and continental idealism, especially the relationship between “understanding” and “Reason,” to aggressively attack human chattel bondage. In doing so, they not only reflected the tenets of America's broader intellectual ethos (i.e., notions of democracy) but also cultivated the ground for philosophy in the postbellum period.KEYWORDS: higher lawTranscendentalismCharles FortenWilliam C. NellFugitive Slave Actlaboranti-capitalismRalph Waldo EmersonHenry David ThoreauThomas Sidneyabolitionantislavery Notes1 Douglass, “Letter to Thomas Auld (September 3, 1848)”, 111.2 Arendt, Men in Dark Times, ix.3 Consider the debates over gun control in the United States. Opponents of increased gun legislation often encourage a time of mourning over that of exploring the causes and working through solutions to address the problem. We should, of course, take time to mourn, but mourning and thinking about what to do about gun violence are not mutually exclusive. I often wonder whether the appeal to mourning is a way to put off discussions about solutions, demonstrating that this kind of public pietism only exacerbates the anti-intellectual strand of American society.4 Craig, “Interpreting Violence with Richard J. Bernstein”, 197.5 For French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), death is a constant companion of the philosopher. He capitalized on the notion that the objective of philosophy is to learn to die. Knowing how to die, he said, “delivers us from all subjection and constrain.” This understanding of death is, at the same time, the source of liberation. I believe that Montaigne’s position, which seems more in line with Stoicism, would not necessarily speak to the condition of the slave. The slave would certainly come to understand their limitations, but not in a general or universal sense of the predicament of human nature. Instead, slaves came to understand their world in and through the shadow of death. This is different from recognizing death and the need to find ways to live with such a reality, which makes death not so much of an enemy. Rather, for slaves, death was an enemy, and the philosophies of liberation demanded a rebellion against that enemy. Philosophy is the activity of not only preparing for death but also seeking to escape it, which highlights philosophy’s religious dimension. In seeking understanding, the philosopher seeks liberation; liberation, in turn, moves us ever closer to a deep sense of salvation.6 Meyns, “Why Don’t Philosophers Talk About Slavery?”.7 Foucault quote in El-Ra Radney, “Why African American Philosophy Matters”, 44–66.8 Yancy, “African-American Philosophy”, 551–74. Haberski and Hartman, American Labyrinth, 7. In Chapter 4 of American Labyrinth, Amy Kittlestrom writes, “While the history of philosophy done by philosophers and the intellectual history of philosophical ideas are distinct fields owing to their different disciplinary homes, scholars participating in these fields mingle often enough that the secularism and materialism of twentieth-century philosophy, especially after its Marxist phase, colored them both” (92). See also Philosophy Born of Struggle Association: https://pbos.com/.9 Dain, A Hideous Monster of the Mind, 151.10 Walters, The Antislavery Appeal, 67–8.11 Goodman, America Philosophy before Pragmatism, 6. In American Philosophy before Pragmatism, Goodman says that his work is “the first history of American philosophy to take a sustained look at philosophers’ thinking about it,” though Goodman’s dealings with slavery, commendable in intent, is, ironically, not as philosophical as one might expect other than to show the acceptance, justification, conflicts, and contradictions of slave ownership. Lydia Moland, “Lydia Maria Child on German Philosophy and American Slavery”, 259–74. See also Moland, Lydia Maria Child. Kaag presents Theodore Parker as “a forebearer to the American pragmatists” in “Religion, Pragmatism, and Dissent”, 1–20. Cassuto, “Frederick Douglass and the Work of Freedom”, 229–59.12 Sinha, The Slaves Cause, 1.13 Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”,, Bk. 2, Ch. 1. In line with Tocqueville, Cornel West described philosophy in America as an “evasion”; an evasion of the traditional way of engaging philosophy that began in the realm of abstract ideas, which paved the way for the pragmatist tradition. West, The American Evasion of Philosophy, 4.14 Acampado, “Understanding Experience”, 1–6; Armitage, “The Contiuity of Nature and Experience”, 49–72. Roth, Radical Pragmatism, 27–30.15 Peirce quote in Goodman, American Philosophy, 38.16 Arendt, The Human Condition, 71. Arendt, in fact, believed that thinking must continue even in the midst of “dark times.”17 Ratner-Rosenhagen, “The Longing for Wisdom in Twentieth-Century US Thought”,, 197.18 James McCune Smith introduction to Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, 125–37.19 Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, 272. Martin, Jr., The Mind of Frederick Douglass, 22. Collins and others feared that Douglass would sound too educated for whites to believe that he had been an actual slave.20 Yancy, “African-American Philosophy”, 551–74.21 McGary and Lawson, Between Slavery and Freedom, xxii–xviii.22 Kuklick, A History of Philosophy in America , x. Unfortunately, Kuklick mentions slavery only three times, and not in a way that considers how it formed American philosophy.23 Douglass, “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered”, 36.24 Lee, Slavery, Philosophy, and American Literature, 1830-1860, 3.25 Emerson, Prose Works, 398.26 Gura, American Transcendentalists, xiv.27 Ibid., 191.28 Ibid., 211.29 Emerson, Nature, The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ch. VIII (kindle).30 Holifield, Theology in America, 2.31 Emerson, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 44.32 Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 96.33 Perry, Civil Disobedience, 11.34 Jackson, Force and Freedom, “Introduction: The Philosophy of Force” (kindle).35 Blackmom, Slavery by Another Name.36 Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 7, 11.37 We should note that pro-slavery proponents and opponents of abolitionism likewise used “philosophy” in a similar manner. See Smith, Lectures on the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery; Faust, The Ideology of Slavery.38 Pleasants, “Moral Argument Is Not Enough”, 159–80.39 Paine, Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and Other Essential Writings of Thomas Paine, 3.40 I do not confuse “worldview” with “philosophy.” Rather, I hold that while the two are inextricably related, the former is the broadly pre-theoretical context from which cultivates or yields the latter (the theoretical or scientific). This is why I use the term “life situations” for the former. Here, I am appropriating the work of twentieth-century Dutch neo-Calvinist philosophers Dirk Vollenhoven (1892–1978) and Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977). For a brief discussion regarding the distinction between worldview and philosophy, see Marshall, Griffioen, and Mouw, Stained Glass, 19–23.Additional informationNotes on contributorsRyan McIlhennyRyan McIlhenny PhD, is Professor of Humanities and Liberal Arts at Xing Wei College in Shanghai, China. He is the author of To Preach Deliverance to the Captives: Freedom and Slavery in the Protestant Mind of George Bourne, 1780-1845, a monograph in the Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World series of LSUPress.