My edition of The Souls of Black Folks has an introduction to the text by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. A fine introduction which situates the text in its historical context. Reading the introduction, though, I can see why Du Bois’ text hasn’t made it as a standard part of the philosophy classroom.
Du Bois’ mentors in philosophy at Harvard were William James and George Santayana. Gates writes, “Du Bois’ first love was philosophy. But, because employment opportunities were limited for black philosophers, he decided on graduate study in history.” What would academic philosophy in America have looked like if Du Bois had stayed in it? A fascinating thought. Ironically, while Gates makes clear Du Bois’s philosophical education, in the introduction he hardly makes it clear what could be the philosophical import of the text.
Gates emphasizes two dimensions of the text. First, that it is a literary and aesthetic masterpiece: “Long after the social issues with which Du Bois wrestled so intensely and so passionately have become chapters in the chronicle of African-American history, students and their professions continue to turn to The Souls to experience the power of its lyricism, the “poetry” of its prose.”
Second, and most importantly, that it is a seminal text in the African-American experience: “Du Bois … created a narrative voice, a fictional “I”, that functions as articulator for the American Negro people at the turn of the century. Even when apparently at its most personal or individual, Du Bois’s “I” represents the Negro people, in the relation of a part to a whole.”
That Du Bois’ use of “I” could represent blacks in America is a magnificent achievement; that he did it in 1903 is unbelievable. Nonetheless, if Du Bois’ “I” could only reach out to African-Americans as signaling their self, then the text would not be philosophy. For it to be philosophy, the “I” of Du Bois’ text must be something that any person must be able to identify with. Gates nowhere mentions in the introduction how this could be possible.
In order for The Souls of Black Folk to be a philosophical masterpiece it has to track not only the African-American condition, but the human condition. And in a way that is more substantive than: “Look how much blacks suffered! And we all suffer, so the book speaks to all of us!” This is absurd. Purely in terms of suffering, there can be no inference from that of a people who were enslaved to the suffering that any person goes through in one’s life. One can be inspired by a Du Bois’ fortitude in the midst of his, and his people’s, suffering, and draw courage or moral sustenance from it, but one can’t thereby identify with it.
Identification requires a similarity of context and situation. If Du Bois’ text is to be philosophy and any person can identify with it, it has bring out a context that we all share as human beings. What can that be?
Here there is a cruel paradox which has thwarted our society’s appreciation of African-American philosophy. The fact of slavery meant that African-Americans were not able until devote their energies to intellectual activities until after the Civil War. Du Bois is a fountainhead of this emergence of African-American intellectuality. But this has put a particular pressure on the 19th and 20th century African-American thinkers, at least in how their work is received, both by blacks and others. And that is: as something particular to the African-American experience. In order for blacks to have a written intellectual history that they can point to, the way whites or Asians can point to, it became imperative that their texts be seen as essentially African-American texts.
This is understandable, and in many ways, right. But it has come with the serious drawback that it has made it hard to see the universal dimension in the texts. So the very need to have a canon of texts of the African-American experience (where the “I” of Du Bois the author is the “I” of all African-Americans) has muted those texts in the context of philosophy, which, after the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, was seen to be something transcending particular cultural contexts in order to be universal.
Here we see with Du Bois’ text a particular paradox that culture and community is often forced into in our global times. Speak as a particular community, but be ready to then be told that your voice has to be limited so that in the pluralistic society other voices can have their say as well.
So there is the framework of universality and the content of the particular communities which live together within the universal framework. What texts constitute that universal framework? Check out the canon of the standard Western philosophy curriculum: Plato’s Republic, Descartes’ Meditations, Kant’s Critiques, and so on. The assumption is that these texts are not just European texts the way Du Bois’ text might be an African-American text. Rather, these texts are the framework of universality, which make it possible for a society to be able to appreciate a plurality of cultural contents.
This is the reason philosophy departments in America by passed the canon wars which the other humanities struggled with for the past 30-40 years. What was obvious after the civil rights movement was that American education was not actually enabling a plurality of cultural contents: the universal framework was constructed by the Europeans, and the content as well was basically European. After the 60s, the problem with this was too evident. So, the humanities started to change the content.
But structurally the philosophy departments couldn’t, and didn’t feel the need to, go along with such change because, after all, they are not content, but the universal framework. They are what make possible the plurality of contents in the other humanities. So ironically, while making the literature curriculum pluralistic was seen as appropriate, it was seen as if there could be no such change for philosophy because it was already universal. That, in fact, to change philosophy with an eye towards cultural backgrounds would be to kowtow to content forces which philosophy is supposed to float above.
No wonder then that philosophy as meta-science became such a dominant theme in the 20th century, and especially in the second half of the century. Because it was a way to emphasize that just as there is no issue of making physics or math pluralistic, so too there is no issue of making philosophy pluralistic; that is an oxymoron. While literature departments went from teaching F. Scott Fitzgerald to Toni Morrison, philosophy professors focused more on teaching Quine and Rawls, as if that was the way that philosophy can contribute to pluralism.
No need to put down Quine and Rawls, but those authors loom prominent only on the assumption that academic philosophy as it is already tracks a universal framework. But in a cultural context where there is a great need for African-Americans to see Du Bois’ text as expressive of their experience, this pits Du Bois as content as opposed to Rawls as framework. One way to read Gates in the introduction not pressing Du Bois as philosophy is his accepting precisely this breakdown, and so embracing that Du Bois is great as content, and that academia is now better because it is now able to accept such content.
In a deep way, this does a great disservice both to Du Bois and to the African-American experience. As long as it is accepted that the universal framework has been constructed by whites, and that the most blacks can do is be free to be publically black, as if no deep change or question of the frameworks themselves are needed, then that is a great obstacle for African-Americans to see themselves as intellectuals. For philosophy is the root of the tree of knowledge, and if a community does not identify its tradition as philosophical – as concerned with the universal framework – then in an important way their intellectual potential will go untapped.
The greatness of Du Bois’ text as philosophy lies precisely in the rich challenge he poses to the idea that European philosophy by itself has already marked a universal framework for all human beings. A great philosophical text provides a great challenge to great philosophical traditions. The Souls of Black Folk poses precisely such a challenge.