PHIL 274H.001 – Honors African-American Political Philosophy

Instructor: Bernard Boxill. This course meets TR 2:00 – 3:15 p.m. in CW 105.

The object of the course is to introduce students to some of the main issues that African Americans have raised in their philosophical efforts to understand and to appropriately respond to their enslavement and oppression in the U.S. To this end we will study the historically most representative and influential African American political writers; most prominently Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, Booker T.Washington, and W.E.B. DuBois. Supplementing our study will be electronically available articles by contemporary African American philosophers such as Charles Mills, Anthony Appiah, Jorge Garcia, Lucius Outlaw, and others. Prominent topics will be: how did African Americans understand slavery, freedom, segregation, integration, and resistance? What is race? What is racism? What is self-respect and why is it so important?