This series invites seasoned philosophers to share critical reflections on emergent and institutionalised shapes of and encounters within philosophy. The series collects experience-based explorations of philosophy’s personal, institutional, and disciplinary evolution that will also help young academics and students navigate philosophy today.
In the past, philosophy entered an inflection point in which it was forced to consider new ideas, to incorporate new methods, and to include new participants. An example of such an occurrence was the expansion of what is now considered Continental philosophy. This occurred after a decrease in influence of the Catholic Church resulting from many factors, such as the translation of Aristotle into Latin by Arabic–speaking Muslim philosophers. I believe philosophy is currently in another inflection point, which began a number of years ago, but has persisted because certain participants in philosophy have been extremely resistant. Just as humans are, at times, metaphorically referred to as worms through time, philosophy can also be considered in much the same way. Generally speaking, this can be understood as meaning that philosophy has a past, currently exists in the present, and is oriented to the future. This type of existence can bring about certain perennial questions which require answers from each generation. No generation can assume it has inherited all that can be said of what philosophy is or that can be known of how philosophy exists in the current moment. In a favorite book of mine, Irrational Man, philosopher and author William Barrett posed the question as such: “How does philosophy itself exist at the present time?”
To consider this question in a more particular fashion, I must rephrase it as, “how does philosophy exist for me at the current time?” Studying Philosophy has provided me with the tools and intellectual experience to think critically about past notions of human existence, particularly those pertaining to freedom. It also provides me with competing views with which I can wrestle and contend in order to determine an approximated version of reality while also making normative claims about the future. Institutional philosophy did not, however, provide me the space to perform these tasks. I was willing and forced to struggle to create that space.
For clarity, I shall have to say something about my intellectual project. I have focused much of my intellectual attention on defining and doing African–American philosophy. The window through which I entered this space is known more narrowly as philosophy of the Black Experience. To perform this work through my writings, it was necessary to be broad in terms of my fundamental areas of consideration. I have spoken to epistemic issues and developed theories of value, while also exploring metaphysical and ontological concerns. This work has required that I make my responses inhabit a framework bound by three main questions: What does it mean to be human?; What does it mean to be blacked?; What does it mean to be free?
I take these questions to encapsulate the search for much of what counts as the human experience. The ability to fully understand the human experience is hindered when these questions go unconsidered, regardless of whatever others are considered. That statement requires justification, which, in earnest, can be a paper of its own. For this essay, I want to describe only one of the qualities which arises in the experience of being blacked—to exist in a state of blackness by law or custom. I wish to describe the quality of alterity or otherness. I also suggest that alterity can inherently be experienced by any group, particularly if another group has the power to oppress, persecute, or exploit. When one group has the ability to demonstrate power in this fashion, group antagonisms occur. Alterity, or otherness, is normally understood by philosophers to describe the condition of that group which is other than the group taken to be standard, or, I add, to the condition of that group which is not empowered. Alterity is especially necessary to the performance of group antagonisms.
So, when I earlier referenced an inflection point and making my own space in philosophy, I was addressing the idea that the voices of those who have been blacked by law or custom have not traditionally received any encouragement to add their own voices to the chorus of philosophers. I cannot truly say that the situation is changing much, but there are brave souls besides myself also willing to make their own space. Along with these voices, cultural studies programs such as Gender Studies, Black Studies (in all its iterations), and Latinx Studies, have received support. They have provided positive epistemic friction that has both challenged and sometimes countered the epistemic injustice found within traditional philosophy departments. Doing philosophy with these programs clearly in view has kept me focused on the experience upon which I have attempted to throw light.
From time to time, I have asked myself how I can assist those who are being crushed under the weight of blackness and other forms of oppression. This question becomes particularly wearisome when there are notices of death involving unarmed persons as a result of the experience of blackness or any other form of oppression. This experience has made clear to me that the practice of any reductionist endeavor is a clear waste of time. It is the strangeness of being blacked by law and custom that has attuned my ability to see how oppression prevents the whole of humanity from attaining its best possible ends. What I endeavor to clarify is the knowledge of reality, but I do not reduce what counts as knowledge or reality to the vehicle of language, although it does certainly impinge upon knowledge and reality. Language is not the fundamental essence of reality or knowledge. The experience of blackness has exposed the need to broaden my aim. Precise language even against oppression does not correlate with unoppressive or anti-oppressive action.
When all is said and done, I would like to have thoroughly thought through blackness (by way of writing), or the experience of being blacked, such that people understand that skin color is not the problem. Anyone can be blacked. Blackening stems from the desire to oppress for gain. The abstraction of value in the form of capital makes it so much easier to oppress! I think that only continued vigilance toward freedom, ‘freedom gazing’ as I have termed it, can solve this problem of humanity. I have found that philosophy aids in providing perspective and a sense of direction in our constant need to justify our ideas to ourselves and others. In response to this need, I have become more and more committed to being a good philosophy professor. However, I find it necessary to subordinate this commitment to my desire to become a good philosopher. If I am a good philosophy professor but not a good philosopher, I cheapen the tradition to which I take myself to be connected and I do any student or mentee a disservice. Being a good philosophy professor, I think, has much to do with teaching and all other campus service. This must also be a priority! I connect the need of being a good philosopher to the commitment I have of inspiring others to become devoted to seeing reality as it is. Reality is not stagnant and it is constantly becoming. In light of this becoming, students must be invested with tools that make them able to perform an inquiry of their time, space, and experiential moment, always with a view towards transformation.
Going forth in my philosophical path, I plan to increase my commitment to international friendships with other philosophers and scholars. American philosophers are, in general, too localized. I have, in the past, spent large amounts in Africa, but I must expand this. I must also have broader conversations with those in Africa, Asia, and Europe, and from the Inter-American tradition. The experience from which I descend richly provides moments open to philosophical inquiry. I have found collaboration through conversation to be extremely beneficial and fecund. Philosophers don’t have to be voices crying in the wilderness. We can and do form a tribe of sorts, but we diminish our power when we believe perfect agreement to be our aim. As I stated earlier, reality is becoming, and so must our understanding of it be. To this end, we must understand that philosophical experiences occur in time and space, just as we do. If I can understand in this way, along with others, then flourishing, authentically human lives will be possible.
By way of a final word, it seems to me that certain philosophical schools of thought don’t allow for true diversity due to the limited sources of experiences they take to be philosophically rich for examination. Myriad contradictions exist today, which hinder a flourishing life. Yet, many take these contradictions to be experiences of which they must be silent. As humans, we are constantly analyzing, interpreting, and performing syntheses. We cannot help ourselves. This is how we must make our way in the world. If we as philosophers shirk our responsibility on these matters and no longer concern ourselves with the manner in which humans currently exist, then our importance as a discipline of study and our ability to exist as departments within universities will continue to be questioned. Philosophers exist today in manifold ways; however, we cannot pretend to be the only ones that question our function and how well we function. How shall we proceed? History may be a judge, but it is not the only judge.
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Anthony Neal
Anthony Sean Neal is at Mississippi State University. He is currently in the Department of Philosophy and Religion and a Faculty Fellow in the Shackouls Honors College of Mississippi State University. He also has an affiliation with the department of African American Studies. He is a 2019 inductee into the Morehouse College Collegium of Scholars and a Fellow with the American Institute for Philosophical and Cultural Thought. Dr. Neal has also been selected as 2022-2023 APA Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities. He was also selected as a Visiting Research Fellow for the Warburg Institute, a unit of the School for Advanced Studies at the University of London. Dr. Neal received his doctorate in Humanities from Clark Atlanta University. He also received his Masters degree from Mercer University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehouse College. Dr. Neal is the author of three books: Common Ground: A Comparison of the Idea of Consciousness in the Writings of Howard Thurman and Huey Newton (Africa World Press, 2015); Howard Thurman’s Philosophical Mysticism: Love Against Fragmentation (Lexington, 2019); and Philosophy and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle: A Freedom Gaze (Lexington Press, 2022). He now serves on the editorial board of The Acorn: Philosophical Studies in Pacifism and Nonviolence, and the APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience.
