Customer Reviews

Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lewis Ricardo Gordon (born 1962) is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, and an Ongoing Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He has also written/edited An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge Introductions to Philosophy), Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (Africana Thought), and Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism.

Contributors include Bernard Boxill, Naomi Zack, Howard McGary, and Joy James, as well as Gordon himself. Gordon notes in the Introduction to this 1997 collection, "I should like to stress that not all of the contributors to this volume are black existentialists in any sense. This volume raises questions of black existential philosophy, and in that regard, some of the individuals who have something to say of value on that subject are also those who are most critical of it, or at least suspicious of an existential philosophy premised on what Fanon calls ... the lived-experience of the black. Such is the case."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"On balance the African response to this existential situation was a positive one. It was able to affirm and empower agency in spite of anxieties of fate. Existence was grounded in an ordered cosmos, which had a specific niche for human beings." (Pg. 23)
"In my view, Afro-Caribbean existential philosophy will not achieve the self-consciousness it requires without a fuller coming to terms with its African roots. In doing so, it will not only creolize itself, but also the larger discourse of Caribbean philosophy." (Pg. 35)
"Stated more bluntly, this means that blacks must first save themselves from the debilitating effects of their inherited folk religion if they are to achieve liberating self-transformation." (Pg. 47)