by Thomas Meagher
One of the preoccupations of Africana philosophy could be characterized in terms of axiology. Africana philosophy emerges out of a context of axiological colonization. This is a context in which black people are regarded as lacking in value or, indeed, as being of negative value—it is asserted that the world would be better off without them. White people, in contrast, are regarded as indispensable: their value is viewed as overwhelming and self-evident. The proper function of black people, such a world avows, is no more and no less than to serve whites. And a variety of efforts are made not only to develop a consensus among whites about these matters but also, further, to make black people share these repugnant values—that is, to bring about the axiological colonization of Africana peoples.
It is not only within Africana philosophy that one may find rejections of such a schema; one can find critics of racism in every modern philosophical tradition. But what is perhaps distinctive about Africana philosophy is its radical effort to explore the implications of such axiological colonization. As Lewis Gordon argues in An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (2008), it is a tradition characterized not only by the insistent focus on the question of liberation but also by the question of philosophical anthropology and the matter that Gordon calls “the metacritique of reason.”
It is the contention of much Africana thought, then, that Euromodern thought, colonized by an axiological imperative to serve the ideological underpinnings of a racist world order, fundamentally distorts its conceptions of humanity. Hence, Africana philosophy demands a more radical and rigorous effort to answer questions posed in philosophical anthropology. Yet Euromodern thought also asserts a false equivalence between European Man and reason. Reason, then, becomes subject to axiological colonization: its purpose becomes to indicate the self-evident value of whiteness and disvalue of blackness. Reason in black, then, confronts several existential paradoxes. It must ask whether reason can really serve black liberation and, if so, what forms of reason may ultimately beget valuable forms of human life.
An implication of this is that the value of Africana philosophy is not limited to black people or even oppressed people more generally. This is because Africana philosophy contributes to making philosophy more rigorous in general. By reflecting on reason and humanity from a context of axiological colonization, Africana philosophy makes evident dimensions that may be occluded in a variety of taken-for-granted attitudes. Hence, while the concern with liberation is a leitmotif in Africana thought, it is typical of Africana philosophers to be preoccupied with questions whose implications are far broader.
In that sense, the work of Dwayne Tunstall is, in many ways, paradigmatic of Africana philosophy. Tunstall’s work touches on questions of ethics, religion, metaphysics, and metaphilosophy, primarily through an engagement with thinkers from the American pragmatist and personalist traditions, African American thinkers, and European phenomenologists and existentialists. That Tunstall is African American and that African American philosophers play an important role in his work may suffice, for many, to characterize him as an Africana philosopher. But in this essay, I would like to explore how Tunstall’s philosophical corpus is thematically representative of the Africana tradition. Although Tunstall is a prolific author with a myriad of publications to his name, for these purposes, I will limit myself to an examination of his two monographs, which more than suffice to demonstrate the point.
Tunstall’s first monograph, Yes But Not Quite: Encountering Josiah Royce’s Ethico-Religious Insight (2014), began its life as Tunstall’s master’s thesis. In a very moving description, he relates its origins in a reflection on a Michael Jackson lyric during a long, lonely ride. What does a human life mean, he wondered, if there were no one to understand or remember it? The salience to antiblack racism is clear, as the ideal of many racist societies is to produce black lives that are regarded as not mattering and hence as not being worthy of attention or understanding. Indeed, the dynamics of antiblack racist societies are often geared toward denying possible avenues of love and care by asserting that black people’s thoughts are non-existent or unintelligible, that what they have to say about their lives is insignificant.
Where such avenues are denied, Tunstall reasoned, what is left is God. God is that perspective to whom one’s life always retains meaning, that perspective attentive to all that may be obscured to one’s fellow mortals. In encountering the work of Josiah Royce, Tunstall found a conception of God, as well as an ethical and religious schema, compatible with this insight.
Out of this realization, one direction forward would have been to write a simple study of Royce’s views on ethics and/or religion, territory trod by many others but not without room for further studies to reexamine and refine. But Tunstall’s work goes further. One commonplace in Royce scholarship, he notes, is to examine Royce’s metaphysics through a study of his work in logic and epistemology. For Tunstall, though, such a framework misses the key ideas that portend the greater value of Royce’s work. It is Royce’s ethico-religious insight (a phrase Tunstall draws from the works of Father Frank M. Oppenheim), he contends, that drives Royce’s philosophical project. Hence, Tunstall takes up the project of articulating a Roycean metaphysics that begins with the ethico-religious.
A consequence is that this approach runs counter to what Tunstall finds to be a prevailing tendency in Royce scholarship: to read Royce in a secularized fashion. There are, of course, philosophical insights in Royce that may be discovered through reading his work as if it were secular. But this tendency, Tunstall demonstrates, passes over crucial dimensions of the idealist and personalist metaphysics that becomes evident once one takes the religious dimensions of Royce seriously.
By taking the religious Royce seriously, Tunstall is able to elucidate a turn in Royce’s thought away from an earlier absolutist idealism to a mature idealism grounded in personalist commitments. The early work of Royce, Tunstall finds, was a form of idealism grounded in the notion of the Absolute, though not quite the Hegelian Absolute, since the Absolute of early Royce by contrast preserves a diversity of uniquenesses and particularities. This absolutist idealism found a critic in the philosopher George Holmes Howison, whose earlier enthusiasm for Hegel had waned and led him to develop what he termed “personal idealism.” Royce and Howison engaged in a debate in 1895, with the latter issuing a critique of the former’s conception of God. Tunstall demonstrates that Howison’s criticisms ultimately depended on a misinterpretation of Royce’s position, yet Royce was moved nonetheless, “haunted” by Howison’s critique.
This haunting, Tunstall argues, pushed Royce into the direction of personalism. The “will to interpret” becomes, at this stage, essential to Royce’s conception of the human person and the divine Self. God, then, figures as a form of omniscience, a perspective from which all is significant, which, by extension, means God represents an ideal that human persons—whose understanding of all that is meaningful is limited—strive toward, if ever incompletely. An ethical implication of this is the pursuit of a “Community of Interpretation,” in which a will to interpret the experiences of one’s fellows builds a body of shared significations that bind a community and facilitate a social world in which empathy becomes a typical feature of mundane life.
Tunstall compares this Roycean conception to Martin Luther King’s articulation of agape or the Beloved Community. He notes that there is a tension in King’s conception of agape between the belief that it can only be manifest through human action and the belief that it is an inevitability due to the power of God’s will—that is, there is a tension between agape as an ethical ideal that we may fail to fulfill and agape as a religious belief in an eschatological destination. Here Tunstall finds that Royce’s metaphysics can resolve this tension by conceptualizing agape as that which God calls for but that which can only ever be partially fulfilled through human striving toward the divine ideal.
That Tunstall relates Royce to the work of King here would, for many, constitute the point at which Yes, But Not Quite moves from a work in American pragmatist philosophy to a work with relevance to the Africana tradition. But given the thematic interpretation of Africana thought above, this would be a mistake. For the deeper argument of the text can be construed in this fashion: it stems from a concern with any metaphysics in which tendencies toward depersonalization and dehumanization may predominate. In Royce’s metaphysics, Tunstall discerns a possible antidote.
A critical implication of this can be found in Tunstall’s claim that Royce scholarship tends toward a secularized reading that privileges logic as the locus of Roycean philosophy and metaphysics. Whatever may be said to have initiated Royce’s own philosophical project, we may note that Tunstall’s interest in it begins with his concerns about a depersonalizing world in which a life can be lived in neglect and be forgotten. A rationalistic interpretation of Roycean metaphysics, then, is insufficient because it occludes the crucial function of the divine in retaining the meaningfulness of human experience.
A consequence is that Tunstall is not satisfied with Royce’s own metaphysics—it is, as the title suggests, not quite sufficient to combat depersonalization. Tunstall advances this argument through a comparison of the foundations of Roycean ethics to those established in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. Royce, he finds, grounded his ethical insight in a rationalism common to most of Euromodern moral philosophy. It is limited, then, in its ability to generate care and concern for the infinite significance of flesh and blood human beings. It must thus be radicalized to move beyond its rationalist foundations.
But nor is Tunstall sure that this revision suffices, for in the book’s conclusion, he raises the question of whether Royce’s antiblack racism—overlooked or perhaps even praised by many contemporary scholars because of its rejection of biological essentialism—is in conflict with a Roycean metaphysics or is, rather, a demonstration of its remaining limitations. For Tunstall, then, it remains an open question whether a philosophical revision of Royce’s metaphysics is sufficient for a “yes” or would still amount to a “not quite” in the search for a metaphysics adequate to combat modern forms of dehumanization.
These concerns, in turn, point to the questions at the heart of Tunstall’s second monograph, Doing Philosophy Personally: Thinking about Metaphysics, Theism, and Antiblack Racism. This text, which began its life as Tunstall’s doctoral dissertation, works primarily through the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. This alone suggests continuity with Yes, But Not Quite insofar as Royce’s most noteworthy reader and critic in European philosophy was Marcel. More to the point, though, it is the thematic underlying the former text’s reading of Royce that remains as the stimulus to the latter text’s reading of Marcel.
A problem with much modern metaphysics, Tunstall maintains, is that it is grounded in the examination of, in Kantian terms, the phenomenal as opposed to the noumenal. Philosophy undertaken with these metaphysical commitments in place is thus tasked with examining reality as, in effect, an array of natural objects, subject to exhaustive and universal formulations of natural law. The problem, though, is that in such a framework there is much that cannot appear—most crucially, human freedom and the divine. A consequence is that philosophy undertaken within such a metaphysics may fail to reckon with modern forms of depersonalization and, indeed, may even play a role in facilitating them. It is, in brief, a philosophy in which objects may appear but persons as such may not.
For an alternative, Tunstall turns to the reflective method articulated by Marcel. A bedrock of this method is Marcel’s conception of a person, which, unsurprisingly, shares many features of a Roycean metaphysics. A person in this sense is characterized by a narrative self-identity, with the implication that the person is a bearer of meanings—personhood is, to use a term coined by Peter Caws, signiferous.
What Marcel terms primary reflection is a method of inquiry that can apprehend objects. Primary reflection reduces what it examines to an “agglomeration of functions” which can be known empirically and understood in terms of their nature. Secondary reflection, by contrast, examines those dimensions of meaning only evident beyond the natural world of objects. In secondary reflection, reflection on the personhood of the inquirer becomes essential, and we are led into examination of “who we are, and not what we are.”
Secondary reflection, then, is necessary for philosophical inquiry to transcend the limitations of a depersonalizing metaphysics. Yet this would appear to pose a problem insofar as secondary reflection may not be only philosophical. That is to say, fidelity to what secondary reflection demands would imply attentiveness to Being for which reason alone may be insufficient and aesthetic experiences, such as those encountered in drama, music, and poetry, would be requisite.
Here, Tunstall turns to the work of Lewis Gordon to suggest that Marcelian secondary reflection invites what Gordon terms a teleological suspension of philosophy. In other words, while there is much work for philosophy to undertake in order to combat modern forms of depersonalization, some of this work requires philosophers to go beyond the scope of philosophy. The tasks that a rigorous philosophical treatment of the problems at hand would demand must ultimately include more than merely philosophical reflection.
This argument fleshes out Tunstall’s suggestion that Doing Philosophy Personally (2013) can be read as advancing a position wherein axiology serves as first philosophy. This move suggests an explicit fusion of the two thematic concerns of Africana philosophy outlined above in terms of dehumanization and the metacritique of reason. A problem in Euromodern thought—and, indeed, in modern thought in general due to the former’s efforts toward epistemic colonization—is that it draws a false equivalence wherein European Man is regarded as the sole agent or inheritor of reason. This false equivalence works arm in arm with a racist philosophical anthropology.
As Sylvia Wynter argues, building on the work of Gordon, a historical consequence of this is that whereas the episteme of Christendom was grounded in theodicean presuppositions (that is, presuppositions that assert the omnibenevolence of an omnipotent God against any logical or empirical evidence to the contrary), these presuppositions become “biodicean” in Euromodernity—they assert the intrinsic goodness of European Man, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. European Man functions as an axiological absolute. But the false equivalence between European Man and reason suggests that reason, within such a schema, may be regarded as an axiological absolute as well, engendering presuppositions that I term logodicean.
This suggests, then, that much Euromodern thought may bear a problematic and unexamined axiological commitment. If reason functions as an axiological absolute, then there are certain philosophical possibilities that fall off the table, and the teleological suspension of philosophy would ultimately be regarded as intrinsically lacking in value. In other words, the value of philosophy is presupposed rather than examined. This problem may be compounded where the notion of reason at hand is one that is also saturated with the presumptions of a racist philosophical anthropology, such that not only is “reason” regarded as an axiological absolute, but it is a notion of “reason” that has been distorted in advance by racist commitments.
Examining such a situation through a Marcelian lens, we may say that reason becomes an object and that much philosophy proceeds on the basis of an apprehension of reason through primary reflection. But this would be to prevent the appearance of those phenomenological dimensions of reason that emerge through secondary reflection. Those dimensions would, in turn, make evident axiological dimensions of reason not evident from primary reflection. This is because primary reflection’s ontological reduction of the world to objects is also an axiological reduction insofar as it permits the appearance of merely functional value. Objects have value only through their function; intrinsic forms of value, in contrast, may only be evident once one engages in secondary reflection for which persons may appear. Much Euromodern metaphysics and metaphilosophy, then, engage in an implicit axiological deferral by committing in advance to forms of reason which cannot transcend the limits of primary reflection.
For Tunstall, though, this Marcelian move remains insufficient. This is so for much the same reason that Royce’s personalistic metaphysics remained a not quite, drawing upon a very similar clue. Marcel claimed that he was driven by the need to combat racism: racism was, ultimately, a reduction of the human existent to the status of objecthood. Yet, as Tunstall demonstrates, Marcel never extended his philosophical project to any examination of antiblack racism, a foundational mode of modern racism. Indeed, Marcel’s thoughts seemed to have been shaped by antiblack racism, as is evident in his ideas on colonialism.
Hence, for Tunstall, the Marcelian project is incomplete without taking on the philosophical task of understanding antiblack racism. Here Tunstall turns to the existential phenomenology of Gordon to demonstrate the limitations of Marcel’s reflective method. Insofar as this requires a move beyond mere philosophical reflection to an empirical examination of modern forms of racism, it could be termed a teleological suspension of philosophy. But so, too, does it suggest a shortcoming of secondary reflection as the philosophical method undertaken for an analysis of racism. Primary reflection reduces persons to objects; secondary reflection combats depersonalization by making personhood evident. But if, as Gordon contends, antiblack racism is a form of bad faith, then the problem is not only one of personhood failing to appear. Antiblack racism is one that “sees” the personhood of black people but disavows it. Hence, if secondary reflection could demonstrate the humanity of black people, it would be insufficient to undermine antiblack racism since this is a racism which has already learned how to evade demonstrated humanity.
In short, a philosophical method in which the mechanisms through which antiblack racism works requires more than secondary reflection. It would require, in effect, demonstrating the functional elements of the lives of antiblack racists. This suggests the need for some form of return to primary reflection, since racists are meaningful as objects of analysis. But nor would it mean that racists could be treated as merely objects, as would perhaps be the conclusion of many who take seriously concepts like Gayatri Spivak’s “strategic essentialism.” This is because to understand racism does not mean to abandon the personhood that is evident through secondary reflection. Hence, Gordon’s existential phenomenology is one in which one can examine persons as objects of consciousness without reducing them to objects.
Tunstall concludes Doing Philosophy Personally, then, by returning to the axiological question to explore those commitments that could ground this existential phenomenological examination. For, given the concerns illustrated above, it would be insufficient to state that one is merely drawn to the question of racism because it was one object of analysis out of many that one could seek to conquer through reason. This question returns the text to the concern with the divine central to Yes, But Not Quite as well as the third thematic of Africana Philosophy, liberation. Marcel’s reflective method, Tunstall is concerned, may remain a “not quite” even once Gordonian existential phenomenology is introduced because it continues to depend on a Christian foundation. Marcel’s religious existentialism faces the challenge that it may be grounded in Christian beliefs elaborated in order to fulfill the projects of Euromodern domination and antiblack racism.
Tunstall here turns to the late William R. Jones, who explored the limitations of black liberation theology through a variety of works, including his classic Is God a White Racist? The problem with black liberation theology, Jones demonstrated, was that it could not escape theodicean presuppositions. Fidelity to God functions as an axiological absolute despite evidence to the contrary. But a turn to humanism as an alternative suggests the same problem: on what grounds can the human being serve as an axiological absolute? The virtue of theism lies in the fact that it suggests God as an ideal toward which we ever-incompletely strive; we do not need to find the highest value in what humanity already is or even in some eschatological belief about what a fully evolved humanity will eventually become. The folly of those types of humanism is already evident in Euromodern thought, where, as we have seen, they become biodicean.
Tunstall thus closes by holding out hope for a humanistic theism that would transcend theodicean and biodicean logics but whose philosophical development has yet to come. This suggests that his axiological conclusion is one he is willing to apply to his own work: that it is a striving toward higher ideals in spite of a recognition that the fulfilment of those ideas lies beyond the possibilities of any given human act or human life. Doing philosophy personally, in that sense, means not only to understand the person that becomes evident through Marcelian secondary reflection, but to also do philosophy as a person, which means that one encounters responsibility for pursuing ideals whose fulfillment must remain incomplete. Philosophy is a human activity that seeks to attain greater heights but that cannot attain the status of the absolute.
To conclude, then, we may say that Tunstall’s work demonstrates characteristic features of Africana philosophy. It is moved by problems of oppression and the apparently unlikely prospects for liberation to develop a more rigorous understanding of what it means to be human and of the peculiar responsibilities confronting reason. An implication of this, in turn, may be that both Tunstall’s work in particular and Africana philosophy demonstrate a fundamental truth about philosophy: that it is always done personally, with the implication that its “yesses” are always “not quite.” But the value and beauty of a “not quite” is such that it does not lose its significance for us: a not quite is a yes!
Thomas Meagher is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Political Science at Quinnipiac University. His research is in Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, and philosophy of race and gender. He recently completed his doctorate at the University of Connecticut, where he wrote his dissertation, “Maturity in a Human World: A Philosophical Study.”
