Introduction to Africana Philosophy » (1st Edition)

Lewis R. Gordon is Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Judaic Studies at Temple University, Philadelphia.

This undergraduate textbook offers the first comprehensive treatment of Africana philosophy.

Preface ix

Introduction: Africana philosophy in context 1

Part I Groundings

1 Africana philosophy as a modern philosophy 21

2 Classic eighteenth- and nineteenth-century foundations 33

Anton Wilhelm Amo 35

Quobna Ottobah Cugoano 40

From David Walker's Appeal to the founding of the American Negro Academy 46

Two Caribbean men of letters Antenor Firmin George Wilmot Blyden 56

Conclusion 65

Part II From New World to new worlds

3 Three pillars of African-American philosophy 69

Anna Julia Cooper and the problem of value 69

W. E. B. Du Bois and the problem of double consciousness 73

Fanon's critique of failed dialectics of recognition 80

4 Africana philosophical movements in the United States and Britain 91

Prophetic and other recent forms of African-American pragmatism 93

Black feminist and womanist thought 100

Afrocentrism and Afrocentricity 106

African-American analytical philosophy 110

African-American and Afro-British European continental philosophy 120

Cedric Robinson's anthropology of Marxism 128

African-American existential philosophy, phenomenology, and their influence 132

5 Afro-Caribbean philosophy 157

6 African philosophy 185

African humanism 186

The theme of invention in recent African philosophy 195

African critiques of invention 200

Recent African political thought 220

Conclusion 249

Guide to further reading 251

Index 260