Frederick Douglass and Philosophy
By Paul Richard Blum (Loyola
University Maryland)
Presented at
375 Years of African American Presence in Maryland
Abstract
Frederick Douglass’ Narrative was intended and has been read
as a first-hand document on slavery and the power of an individual to gain
freedom. It contains a wealth of information on the structure of American
slavery and the means to overcome it. For a philosopher, the first-person narrative
also contains valuable reflections and indications on what it means to be human
in spite of, and in the face of, systematic de-humanization. In the first
place, Douglass gives indications on what constitutes human dignity, which is
contextualized in religion and the self, body and mind, altruism and morality.
Being (potentially) sold and selling one’s physical labor turns into an
instrument of liberation. The famous master-slave dialectics is depicted in
Hegelian patterns in the fight with Covey. Resistance appears as a
quasi-natural feature of being human. Therefore, this document of a Maryland
slave and fugitive can be read as a document of far-reaching topics of
philosophy that merit to be generalized. Such a reading has the effect that the
reader cannot escape by way of historicism (‘that happened to that man back
then’) but can apply the fruits of Douglass’ reflections to the understanding
of humanity as such.[1]
The somewhat flippant title of my paper, Frederick
Douglass and Philosophy, can have two meanings, or even three. The first would
be: What was Douglass’ philosophy (if he had any)? The second would be: How
would philosophers situate Douglass’ writings and actions in the great network
of available philosophies? And this meaning may in part overlap with the first,
because Douglass did not produce any work that explicitly and intentionally was
meant to be a philosophical work; hence we would need to cast a net of known
philosophical methods and systems over his life and work and see what we find.
On the way we might even find particular philosophical sources that can be
highlighted as shaping his thinking and acting. This second approach to reading
Douglass philosophically has been exercised occasionally, for instance by Frank
Kirkland, Roderick Stewart, and Timothy Golden.[2]
Bringing philosophy and Douglass
together in this way helps one understand his role and his personal stature
and, at the same time, it puts philosophies to a test by measuring the
reasoning of an outstanding activist and witness of his times with
philosophical theories, and then probing those theories with one real
experience. Such a merger of human agency with theory is commonly called ‘practical
philosophy’ or ethics and political philosophy. Since Douglass was embedded in
the abolitionist movement,[3]
even before the Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass of 1845 and ever since, it is obvious that his
production was meant to be political and moral. This abolitionist movement was
inevitably educated by Christianity and the Enlightenment – whatever the
tensions between the two might be, otherwise. Consequently, Douglass and his
audience reveal those modes of argument, understanding, theory, and plausibility.
Finding Kantianism and Christianity in Frederick Douglass is therefore like
pressing murky water out of a sponge, while it is certainly more important to find
out what it was the sponge was meant to wipe. For instance, when Douglass said:
[i]f I do not misinterpret the
feelings and philosophy of my white fellow-countrymen generally, they wish us
to understand distinctly and fully that they have no other use for us whatever,
than to coin dollars out of our blood[,]
then it is obvious that he blames the slaveholder for
exploiting fellow-citizens with a mentality of alchemy, which mysteriously
turns liquid blood into malleable gold; and the abolitionist thus throws the
white citizens back into the prescientific darkness while claiming for himself
the “fundamental principles of the republic”, that is, the French-revolutionary
constitution of society.[4]
But the orator is not philosophizing; he is agitating against bigotry and
injustice. That is also expressly said in the second autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom, when Douglass
reflects on his intellectual growth since his liberation. Commenting on the
suggestion of a friend, “Give us the facts, … we take care of the philosophy,”
he retorts: “It did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing
them.”[5]
Narration was his originary goal and remained his method – agitation was now
his framework.
So, if I had to compile a book for
the book series “… and Philosophy” (like
The Hobbit and Philosophy), I
certainly would include chapters like “Was FD a Kantian?”, “FD against Hobbes,”
“The Douglass-Hegel Dialectic,”[6]
“What would Aristotle say about Slavery after Reading the Narrative?”, or “Fear and Trembling with Douglass,” and so on. But that is not what I am planning to do.
A third approach to philosophy and Frederick Douglass
Therefore, I suggest a third way of looking at “Douglass
and Philosophy”, and that is reading his and other slave narratives as
documents of humanity.
One might object that the notion of
a ‘slave narrative’ appears to enforce the claim that the authors were slaves
rather than free individuals; and the term appears to belittle the quality of
the documents.[7]
However, being or having been held as slaves and all the injury thereof is the very
theme of the documents in question; and ‘narrative’ is a generic term,
specifically adopted by Frederick Douglass, that covers any quality of literary
work by simply stating that the author is speaking from the first-person point
of view. In saying ‘documents,’ I mean they need to be taken as testimonies rather
than theories – that is, as primary sources for a potential philosophy of
humanity.
When telling of the sorrow and joy
contained and expressed in slave songs, Douglass remarks in his Narrative:
This they would sing, as a chorus,
to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless,
were full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere
hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible
character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the
subject could do.[8]
With an analogous method I hope to distill, not quite
a volume, but an essay of philosophy from his slave narrative, a philosophy
that does not supplant nor suppress the original intent of his writing but
makes his work philosophically understandable. But immediately one has to ask:
what is ‘philosophical’ and ‘understandable’? Here I suggest reducing the
philosophical question from the wide net of influences and traditions and from
the variety of philosophical disciplines and methods to that of philosophical
anthropology. The lead question is now: What does Douglass’ Narrative say about humanity? My weak
justification for that approach is the recurrence of the notion of “human
nature” in the later elaborations of his autobiography, when from the
comparatively terse narration of the major events of his life Douglass ventured
into didactic, propagandistic, and political aims of his view on his “Life and
Times”.[9]
In the prefatory letter to his second autobiography, My Bondage and My
Freedom of 1855, he states: “I
have never placed my opposition to slavery on a basis so narrow as my own
enslavement, but rather upon the indestructible and unchangeable laws of human
nature, every one of which is perpetually and flagrantly violated by the slave
system.”[10]
Most importantly, introducing the pivotal episode of the fight with the
slave-breaker Covey (more about it below), Douglass emphasizes its
anthropological significance: “the change in my condition was owing to causes
which may help the reader to a better understanding of human nature, when
subjected to the terrible extremities of slavery.”[11]
Again, concluding the report on this “turning point” he states:
I WAS A MAN NOW. It recalled to life
my crushed self-respect and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed
determination to be A FREEMAN. A man, without force, is without the essential
dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it
cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him; and
even this it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise.[12]
Later, in chapter 19, we read: “It is the interest and
business of slaveholders to study human nature, with a view to practical
results, and many of them attain astonishing proficiency in discerning the
thoughts and emotions of slaves.”[13]
Aristotle would have been pleased reading this, for he had established that the
interest of the master and that of the slave coincide: “the union of natural
ruler and natural subject [exist] for the sake of security （for
he that can foresee with his mind is naturally ruler and naturally master, and
he that can do these things with his body is subject and naturally a slave; so
that master and slave have the same
interest).”[14]
It would be worth considering whether or not Aristotle, too, was saying that
with irony.
In other words, when revisiting his
own life and story, Douglass became aware that human nature is the thread that
holds the events together and also that human nature ties the slave experience
in discordant unison together with both the slaveholders and his abolitionist
readers. If addressing humanity counts as a philosophical enterprise, then
philosophy may even be acknowledged as Douglass’s “authorial intention,”[15]
at least in his later works.
Slave narratives and philosophy
When I suggest reading the Narrative as a representative of the literary genre known as American
Slave Narrative philosophically, I am aware that this is not a philosophical
but a literary genre that comprises the following components: it reports in
first person the life of a slave in North America from around the Civil War (1861-1865) until the end of
the 19th century. Many of these slave narratives were put down in
writing not by the slaves themselves but by a helpful person, many of whom were
white Protestants. It is striking that many slave narratives have a woman as a
hero. All those stories were narrated and published with an abolitionist
agenda, that is to say, with the goal in mind to support abolition of slavery
in North America through exposing the cruelty and injustice of slavery with personal
examples. The first person perspective is therefore a crucial literary tool;
rhetorical tropes include vividness of storytelling, pathos, details, and also
exaggeration. The rhetorical outlook does not disparage the content; on the
contrary, the note takers of the narratives, if not the authors themselves,
thought it most compelling to have the people speak for themselves. They
intended to impress their audience for the sake of the cause of anti-slavery.
Nevertheless, we as readers who are no longer the target audience may well
profit from the first person perspective by taking seriously what the speakers
bring forward about their life and experience.
Some of the slave narratives are so
eloquent, most conspicuously that of Harriett Jacobs, that doubts of their
authenticity were raised.[16]
Also an early reaction to Frederick Douglass’s Narrative by one Mr. Thompson flatly denied that the former slave
could have “some knowledge of the rules of grammar, could write so correctly.”
However, faced with the factual existence of the book, the accuser surmises,
“to make the imposition at all creditable, the composer has labored to write it
in as plain a style as possible.” Whereas Douglass responds with a proud “Frederick
the Freeman is a very different person from Frederick the Slave,” we may ponder
the contortion made by the slanderer: an impostor pretending to be an
illiterate slave must have played to be a simpleton to the effect that any
factual inaccuracy will unmask the forgery. This is where Douglass places his
wedge: all alleged falsehoods are true, precisely because the events are
outrageous; hence the narrative is as authentic as its author.[17]
We should pay attention to the fact that Douglass does not bother explaining
how it was possible for him to write, and in an elaborate oratory at that, for
that is all in the Narrative; he rather emphasizes the very message
of the book that makes it a testimony of philosophical anthropology: “You have
seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”[18]
As a teacher I would say, Mr. Thompson, you haven’t done the reading! We should
also not forego another paradox in Mr. Thompson’s accusation in that he precisely
fulfilled the abolitionists’ expectation of the target audience in assuming
that a former slave cannot possibly have erudition. As Douglass’s friends
advised him: “Better have a little of
the plantation manner of speech than not; ‘tis not best that you seem too
learned.” Authenticity means the same both for friend and the foe of slavery;
but for Douglass, the slave narrator, it means his self: “I must speak just the
word that seemed to me the word to be
spoken by me.”[19]
Little or no ‘plantation,’ ‘plain’ or rhetorical – philosophy is a speech act.
With this observation we enter the
problem of the reliability of such slave narratives, both as to details and to
the general direction of the plot. These are questions that can only be addressed
for each specific text. But the general hermeneutical principles of reading
historical documents apply. To put it shortly: if something is unusual, it is
probably authentic and hence deserves special attention. On the other hand,
recurring motifs and themes indicate recurring experiences. For instance, if
many slave narratives state that the slave is ignorant of his or her date and
place of birth, then in an individual text this may be used in a tropical
manner; however, it has become a trope because, factually, most slaves do not
know their birth dates. In that sense, this trope is worth considering under a
particular perspective.
The perspective of my study of
American slave narratives is nevertheless that of philosophy. Regardless of the
specific body of sources, the philosophical question I am pursuing is that of
philosophical anthropology: what does it mean to be human? In ordinary
philosophical anthropology, the answer is derived from philosophical tenets
such as the body-soul compound (man is an animal with reason) and from
metaphysical hypostases (man is the intermediary level between pure spirits and
matter). Sometimes a philosophical anthropology is based on the life and
existence of humans and refers to their common way of behaving (man is a social
animal, humanity equals existence, etc.). However, it occurred to me that –
with the help of slave narratives – one could suspend the answer to the
question: “What does it mean to be human?” and observe humans asserting their
humanness.
Methodologically speaking, the task
is not to apply theoretical anthropology to a given group of human beings. For
instance, assuming that humans are social animals, one could find realizations
of social patterns in any kindergarten, or the emergence of solidarity in a coalmine.
Rather, since philosophical anthropology is philosophy in the first place, it
has to find its object of study first and then elevate it to the level of
abstraction at the extent of which the concepts build themselves on a level
that does not apply merely to the empirical object of study but to the essence
of it, that is, to the essential properties of being human.[20]
In our context that requires avoiding to project any known philosophical system
on Douglass and, rather, finding the philosophy he conveys in his writings. Slave
narratives are utterly contingent products of individual human beings. But
these human beings speak about their being human, even and preeminently when
they speak about pain, sex, hunger, or gratification. They speak to the
audience with the intent to assert their being humans and therefore their being
exempt of slavery. The latter part is to be taken for granted, today. The first
part, the assertion to be humans, is a possible source of philosophical
anthropology.
More radically speaking: I suggest approaching
philosophical anthropology from outside humanity, namely from a point of view
as though humanity were not something known. An account of philosophical
anthropology from outside humanity also entails to philosophize from outside
philosophical methods, provided we know of human nature predominantly from
philosophical definitions of humanness. The insistence of the autobiographer and
the zeal of the abolitionist show pathways to understanding humanity
philosophically from sources that are not intended to be philosophical; at the
same time, they show that humanity may be captured at those points where
humanity is questioned or outright denied.
Denial of humanity is, by all
standards, one common denominator of slavery; even the slaveholders do not deny
that. At times, to be human is denied explicitly, sometimes, performatively. Therefore,
it is appropriate for an abolitionist to quote the battle cry of slaves: “Am I
not a Man and a Brother?” as it had circulated in early 19th-century
England.[21]
But the easy answer from the slaveholder was: “No!” Therefore we need to find a
more complex response in the slave narratives. As a matter of fact, slaves like
the early Douglass rarely thematized their being humans, but they asserted it
in the actions they narrated. This is where philosophical interpretation
starts. As 20th-century philosophical anthropology teaches,[22]
to be human means to position oneself in the world with fellow humans. However,
that is only an elementary feature of humanness; it becomes philosophy only when
analyzed and interpreted philosophically. Every human assesses environment and
experience, but that turns into philosophy when it is interpreted as the peculiar
agency that characterizes a human being. We also can safely say that it is this
sort of anthropology that defines humans as essentially “eccentric,” as Helmuth
Plessner did. Consequently it also defines humanity as a non-given: the essence
of being human consists in questioning one’s own humanity. For assessing the
world and fellowship amounts to taking them as ‘given’ but not for granted – after
all, granted by which authority and to whom?
This is why I suggest reading
testimonies of humans who, by definition, were denied humanity. Obviously, the
first person (the I) is the starting point of any investigation into human
nature. This has been so at least since Augustine’s Confessions. In our case, the first person is the slave speaking of
himself or herself. While the narrative remains subjective, so to speak, the
message can be philosophically objectified insofar as I, the reader, am not the
subject of the story. However, as we will see in the case of Frederick
Douglass, the author of a slave narrative objectifies experience in search of
human dignity so that we as readers are factually invited to philosophize about
slave humanity. This is why the self-awareness that the narrator gains in a
narrative converges with understanding the philosophical nature of humanity.[23]
As I mentioned, of the three
versions of Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, the second and third turned into
elaborate books against the institution of slavery that increasingly departed
from the sheer telling of events in favor of readymade interpretations of how
the audience, the abolitionists, were to understand them. The author increasingly
‘processed’ his experiences. Nevertheless the brute facts that he tells of his
life as a slave give enough material to interpret philosophically.
While reading through Douglass and
many other narratives, a list of recurring themes builds itself. Here I may
mention just a few: naming, home, religion, sex, property, and resistance.
Whatever the slaves deemed worth telling can be taken to be essential for their
understanding of themselves. Other things surprise the reader with some literary
experience by their absence: slaves lack most early childhood memories (while
being aware of this as a grave deficiency); they also rarely express
consciousness of time in all forms: elapsing time, future, or history. The
changes of seasons are structuring elements of their lives, as are the changes
of their masters – however, as far as I see, without any temporal index.
In a nutshell, what emerges from
reading slave narratives that constitutes a philosophical anthropology? A
person is in search to affirm his/her identity with the help of names,
rudiments of family relations, masters, and those events that prove him/her an
agent. Religion, rarely within any denominational frame, is the immediate and
defining resource of meaning, consolation, hope, and justification. Home is
virulent through its absence; it is felt as a loss and a longing. Consequently,
to be ‘at home’ and to be ‘at peace with God’ converge. Religion is the virtual
home of humans. Family equally exerts an influence on the individual by way of endangerment
and as a virtual bond that overcomes the gritty reality. To be sold ‘down the
river’ does not only entail deterioration of work conditions, it is the
effective severance of human bonds. As unreal and ideal as the home is, so is
family that for which it is worth longing, fighting, or suffering. Childhood,
family bonds, and home constitute humanness by way of want. Sexual
relationships are worth mentioning only as sexual slavery, that is, the
exploitation by the slave owners. Any precariousness can be turned into a lever
of resistance; that is also true with sex. Harriet Jacobs, for instance,
deliberately accepts the courtship of a freeman, just to snub her master and to
frustrate his adulterous passes.
Frederick Douglass’s account of the
role of religion in slavery is exemplary, expressing the enlightened
perspective of an abolitionist. He commented upon the scarce permission for
slaves to observe the Christian holidays:
I believe them to be among the most
effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of
insurrection.[24]
He sees religious
feasts as “safety-valves”[25]
for the suppressed spirits of the slaves. On the other hand, the secret
meetings in which he discussed with fellow slaves the Scripture were at the
same time means of education and – within his narrative – the seed of
self-liberation. Many slave owners practiced religious apartheid: they
effectively segregated salvation. In showing such blatant inconsistency they
spurned the craving for the transcendent. From Douglass’ account it is obvious
that for the slave, critique of religion was not within reach; it appears to be
a post-liberation achievement, as is the case for Douglass himself. Upon
writing his autobiography he was able to observe that “after his conversion, [his
master] found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty.”[26]
As a slave he ran twice a Sabbath school for the fellow slaves to learn “to
read the will of God,” as he whimsically explains, and he was not ashamed of
ascribing the beginning of his self-liberation to the use of a magic root,
which he obtained from a wise friend.[27]
On the theme of naming as an
essentially negative experience Douglass reported:
The slave is a human being, divested
of all rights – reduced to the level of a brute – a mere “chattel” in the eye
of the law … – his name, which the “recording angel” may have enrolled in
heaven, among the blest, is impiously inserted in a master’s ledger, with horses, sheep, and swine.[28]
In this theoretical
statement, Douglass locates the function of name between property, law, and
heaven. He takes for granted that a human being has a name, that the
individuality of the person must have a guardian, for instance an angel, and
that a name goes beyond bookkeeping. Let us assume the slaveholder knows all
that. This means that the denial of a personal name denies humanity to a
chattel-slave – ergo, a name is what makes up a human being.
Without engaging in Aristotle’s
famous definition of slaves as ‘tools with a soul’, it is obvious that slaves
were a specific kind of property, closer to domesticated animals than to dead
tools. It happens, but mostly in jest, that modern people give utilities a name
(especially cars, or very important devices); but to name a slave entails the
paradox of denying and recognizing the humanity of a slave. So it is
intuitively clear that the denial of a proper name instrumentalizes the slave,
while imposing a name on him or her is a second rate acknowledgment of the
status of the slave, superior to any tool, but on par with a pet or livestock.
It is therefore possible to
speculate that African slaves, as they appeared in the life of farmers in
America, were immediately welcome as labor force, of course, but at the same
time perceived to be livestock. On livestock René Girard says: “The
domestication of animals requires that men keep them in their company and treat
them, not as wild animals, but as if they were capable of living near human
beings and leading a quasi-human existence.”[29]
A very similar structure occurred in American slavery: the Africans inevitably
lived close to their masters so that they could not possibly be treated just as
tools; rather, they had to be granted a quasi-human level of life. One move to
keep the difference indelible was to deny the ownership of a name. It is also
intuitively obvious that this paradox of closeness at a reinforced distance
made the slave prone to victimization in the Girardian sense; but that is not
at issue here.
We can glean here the importance of
names on the anthropological level. The first thing that should be noted is
that all slave narratives awkwardly refer to slaves not plainly by their names
(“there was Jack”, or “Jim”) but with the epithet “a slave named Jack.” It
seems to have been wired in the grammar of slave narrative that names are
always arbitrarily given and hence do not naturally and necessarily name one
unique individual. Jack as a person cannot be a slave; the topic of the story
is not Jack but the slave who happens to have that name.
Frederick Douglass changed his
names haphazardly, and eventually accepted one suggested incidentally by a
friend. Beyond the more sophisticated mechanisms of naming and necessity, we
may state that contingency and fortuitousness come to the forefront in slave
narratives. Interestingly, Frederick Douglass does not spend much time
explaining the first occasions when he changed his name; he simply states in a
footnote that at some point after his escape, he had changed his name from
Frederick Bailey to Johnson.[30]
He then explains that he had inherited the name Bailey from his parents, but he
dropped the additional middle names that were given to him by his mother. Immediately after his departure from
Baltimore, Frederick called himself Stanley – obviously a simple disguise. Then
he picked the name Johnson, which incidentally was also that of the couple that
received him in New Bedford. Since this name was all too common, he asked his
host to find him a new name, or rather, he “gave Mr. Johnson the privilege” to
do so:
Mr. Johnson had just been reading
the ‘Lady of the Lake’ [a poem by Sir Walter Scott], and at once suggested that
my name be ‘Douglass.’ From that time until now I have been called ‘Frederick
Douglass;’ and as I am more widely known by that name than by either of the
others, I shall continue to use it as my own.[31]
Douglass, as a
gifted writer, creates the punchline that emphasizes the claim that his name is
what he actively adopts rather than
being the object of adoption. A few lines earlier Douglass emphasizes that this
privilege of naming did not extend to his first name: “I must hold onto that
[first name], to preserve a sense of my identity.” It is surprising that
Douglass underlined the philosophical notion of personal identity that is secured
by a first name in the first autobiography only, whereas he emphasized the
heroic “virtues of the Douglas of Scotland” in the second and third
autobiographies.[32]
In this context, we may savor the
irony with which Douglass countered the criticism of an early reader, the
already mentioned Mr. A. C. C. Thompson, who doubted the narrative’s author’s
identity by stating he had known him as Frederick Bailey. Douglass retorted:
“You have completely tripped up the heels of your proslavery friends, and laid
them flat at my feet. You have done a piece of anti-slavery work, which no
anti-slavery man could do.” For the slanderer had unintentionally confirmed the
truthfulness of the narrative and the authority of the narrator.[33]
This response and counter-response shows in a nutshell the importance of
authorship for its impact on the audience. While the first name establishes the
self of the person during and beyond slavery, the inherited as well as the
‘given’/chosen penname corroborates the truth of the narrated facts.
The first name is the person.
Everything else may be an add-on. Speaking of pictures and exterior
qualifications, Douglass said in a lecture on pictures (3 December 1861) that the
Catholic Church uses “symbolical representations.” “Remove from the church of
Rome her cunning illusions […] and her magical and entrancing power over men
would disappear.” And as an example he mentions: “Take the cross from before
the name of the archbishop – and he is James or John like the rest of us.”[34]
For a former slave, to be ‘like the rest of us’ means all the world; that’s
what is in a name. Although it might lead astray from the main purpose of this
essay, a brief thought on Douglass’s portraits is in order. As the editors of
the book of portraits state, he was the most photographed man of 19th-century
America. The easy explanation for this is given in the just-quoted lecture in
which Douglass says with a hint of irony, “if an author’s face can possibly be
other than fine looking, the picture must be in the book, or the book be
considered incomplete.” (Let us be reminded that at his time, an African face
was certainly not ‘fine looking’ to everyone.) He even adds, just to complete
the self-mockery, a quotation from Lord Byron saying that “a man always looks
dead when his Biography is written” and adds: “The same is even more true when
his picture is taken.”[35]
But that would not explain the effort of publishing one’s autobiography. In a
similar lecture on pictures (ca. 1865), Douglass declares with authority:
Again the books that we write and
the speeches that we make – what are they but extensions, amplifications and
shadows of ourselves, the peculiar elements of our individual manhood?
He summarizes his theory that human speech is the very
humanity and personality of the speaker: “whatever may be the text, man is sure
to be the sermon.”[36]
Thus, I hope, the digression on self-portraits comes full circle: having and
defending a personal name converges with first-person testimony – and with the
mere possibility to reach the audience.
Frederick Douglass, with a keen eye
for human nature, has written a monument to slave resistance in the description
of his standoff with his master. Let us remind ourselves that for Douglass’s
fellow slaves it was “considered as being bad enough to be a slave ; but to be a poor man’s slave
was deemed a disgrace indeed,” because slaves were trained to see themselves ‘transferring’
the personal value of their master upon themselves.[37]
To become conscious of the derivative nature of the self was an important step
towards inner emancipation. Hence, to despise a slave owner could of itself be
an act of rebellion long before any attempt at violence or evasion could only be
envisioned. This is the background against which we should read Douglass’s
brawl with Mr. Covey, as narrated in the tenth chapter.[38]
He alerts his reader about the importance of the event: “You have seen how a
man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”[39]
Of course, it was the individual slave Frederick who was ‘made a man’, and
there may be implications regarding slave masculinity, but the event is also
symbolic as it depicts an essential feature of being a man in the sense of
being human. Later, as I quoted above, he extended the meaning of this fight to
the nature of humanity. Still, I am not claiming to offer an exhaustive
interpretation; rather, this event that has been recognized by a vast
literature as emblematic is just a sample of how philosophy can be drawn from a
narrative.
As Mr. Covey, the slave-breaker,
tried to whip Douglass, “[h]e held on to me, and I to him.” The slave manages
to get at the master’s throat “causing the blood to run”. (71) This standoff, I
think, is crucial. The first slave who happened to pass by tried to help his
master, but was kicked off by Douglass, which had the almost comical effect
that Covey’s “courage quailed” and he asked the slave if he “meant to persist
in his resistance”.[40]
What a question! The next slave flatly refused to interfere, using the argument
that he was not hired “to help whip” another slave. So we have the violent
defeat of one slave and the legalistic opposition of another surrounding the
stalemate. This is the point at which the slave breaker gives up “saying that
if I had not resisted, he would not have whipped me half so much.” Douglass
adds immediately that Covey had not whipped him at all. Covey becomes
ridiculous through his childish after-threat of tormenting only “half so much”
leaving it open what the other half would have looked like.[41]
What Covey must have realized
without understanding was the definite turn of superiority. In Douglass’s
words: “he had drawn no blood from me, but I had from him.”[42]
The brawl made it physically visible that the master was a coward and the slave
‘a man’. We should notice that Douglass did not beat his master; the standoff
was all he needed to assert his position: when two people get even they may
return to their natural humanity. As Lewis Gordon observed: “The physical struggle dragged Covey into a
moment of equilibrium; it was a point at which the only way for any of them to
survive was by moving upward.”[43]
That is, the impasse opened the way back to humanity. The slave-breaker’s fault
was not violence as such but the inherent cowardice that consists in denying a
fellow human a chance to be human. Therefore it was sufficient for the slave to
exert as much violence as needed to show equality on the level of physical
competition. Once again, what broke Covey’s ability to subdue Douglass was the
confluence of three types of resistance: the non-fatal violent back fighting,
the physical defeat of one slave by another, and the rational verbal defiance
of another slave. These might be the major components of all and any resistance
and rebellion. We should not be surprised seeing Douglass summarize the meaning
of this moment in a hymnal religious tone: “I felt as I never felt before. It
was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of
freedom.”[44]
The restoration of the human essence is expressed, if not caused, by the act of
resistance.
Later, Douglass concluded that
resistance as such might also persuade slaveholders to renounce on slavery by
appealing to their conscience when they learn to perceive slaves as not
voluntarily submitting to their control, thus breaking the vicious circle in
which slaves admit to being inferior through being submissive.[45]
However, I think this is not a moral appeal but one that is rooted in the
structure of self-assertion. “I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that
the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing
me.” This concluding remark to the Covey episode[46]
may be read as a challenge, but it actually says that slavery (being whipped)
is the negation of humanity (being killed). Hence resistance may be just, may
be moral, may be a psychological urge, a habit, a duty, or a last resort – in
the anthropological sense it is the feature of being non-denied to exist. In Douglass’s terms it is a resurrection
before death.
This brings us to general
conclusions. Religion, onomastic identity, and resistance take on very strange
forms on the level of slavery; and it is this we can learn from the slave
narratives and the facts they convey. As we saw, critique of religion requires
religious freedom. We may also state that onomastic identity is an absolute
requirement of being human, so much that it does de facto not depend on a legitimate name-giver. Ultimately humans
are baptized as wanderers on this earth. And resistance and rebellion? In slave
narratives we see that morality is not a condition of being human; it comes
only after humanity ceases being questioned.
Reading Frederick Douglass’
autobiography as a non-disciplinary philosophical text yields philosophical
insights that are not standard but that are in search for philosophical
categories that create a frame of understanding. Even if authors of slave
narratives had had an academic education in philosophy, they would have set
priorities very much at odds with the top ranking philosophical questions in
the schools. Since they had been factually prevented from academic instruction,
they also were exonerated from rebelling against the mainstream. Their
rebellion was existentially human – and in that sense it was practical
philosophy.
Anadolu-Okur, Nilgün. Dismantling Slavery:
Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Formation of the Abolitionist
Discourse, 1841-1851. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2016.
Andrews, William L. To Tell a Free Story: The First
Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1988.
Boxill, Bernard R. “Douglass Against the
Emigrationists.” In Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader, edited by
Bill E. Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland, 21–49. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell
Publishers, 1999.
———. “The Fight with Covey.” In Existence in Black:
An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, edited by Lewis R. Gordon,
273–90. New York: Routledge, 1997.
———. “Two Traditions in African American
Political Philosophy”, The Philosophical Forum 24, no. 1-3, Fall-Spring
1992-93, 119-135.
Brotz, Howard, ed. African-American Social and
Political Thought, 1850-1920. New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers,
1992.
Carter, J. Kameron. “Race, Religion, and the
Contradictions of Identity: A Theological Engagement with Douglass’s 1845 Narrative.”
Modern Theology 21, no. 1 (2005): 37–65.
Douglass, Frederick. Autobiographies. The
Library of America: 68. New York: Library of America, 1994.
———. “Lecture on Pictures.” In Picturing Frederick
Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most
Photographed American: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s
Most Photographed American, edited by John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd, and
Celeste-Marie Bernier, 126–41. New York: Norton, 2015.
———. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.
Hartford, Conn.: Park Pub., 1884.
———. “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass Written by
Himself.” In Autobiographies, 453–1045. The Library of America: 68. New
York: Library of America, 1994.
———. “My Bondage and My Freedom.” In Autobiographies,
103–452. The Library of America: 68. New York: Library of America, 1994.
———. My Bondage and My Freedom: Part I - Life as a
Slave, Part II - Life as a Freeman. New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan,
1855.
———. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,
an American Slave. Boston: Anti-slavery Office, 1845.
———. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave, Written by Himself.” In Autobiographies, 1–102. The
Library of America: 68. New York: Library of America, 1994.
———. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass:
Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism. Edited by William L. Andrews and
William S. McFeely. New York: Norton, 1996.
———. “Pictures and Progress.” In Picturing
Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most
Photographed American: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s
Most Photographed American, edited by John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd, and
Celeste-Marie Bernier, 161–73. New York: Norton, 2015.
———. The Frederick Douglass Papers. Edited by
John W. Blassingame et al. Series 1-3. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University
Press, 1999.
———. The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series Two:
Autobiographical Writings. Edited by John W. Blassingame, John R.
McKivigan, and Peter P. Hinks. Vol. 1: Narrative. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale
University Press, 1999.
Kirkland, Frank M. “Enslavement, Moral Suasion, and
Struggles for Recognition: Frederick Douglass’s Answer to the Question - ‘What
Is Enlightenment?’” In Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader, edited by
Bill E. Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland, 243–310. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell
Publishers, 1999.
Girard, René. Things Hidden since the Foundation of
the World. Translated by Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1987.
Golden, Timothy J. “From Epistemology to Ethics:
Theoretical and Practical Reason in Kant and Douglass.” Journal of Religious
Ethics 40, no. 4 (2012): 603–628.
Gordon, Lewis R. Existentia Africana: Understanding
Africana Existential Thought. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Grene, Marjorie. “Positionality in the Philosophy of
Helmuth Plessner.” The Review of Metaphysics 20, no. 2 (1966): 250–77.
Griffiths, Julia, ed. Autographs for Freedom.
Vol. [2]. Auburn; Rochester: Alden, Beardsley; Wanzer, Beardsley, 1854.
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl: Written by Herself. Edited by Jean Fagan Yellin. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1987.
Kohn, Margaret. “Frederick Douglass’s
Master-Slave Dialectic”, The Journal of Politics, 67, No. 2 (May, 2005),
497-514.
Levine, Robert S. “Identity in the Autobiographies.”
In The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass, edited by Maurice S.
Lee, 31–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
McGary, Howard, and Bill E. Lawson. Between Slavery
and Freedom: Philosophy and American Slavery. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1992.
Plessner, Helmuth. Die Stufen des Organischen und
der Mensch: Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie. Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1928.
Robertson, Teresa, and Philip Atkins. “Essential vs.
Accidental Properties.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2016., 2016.
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/essential-accidental/.
Scheler, Max. Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos.
Darmstadt: Reichl, 1928.
———. The Human Place in the Cosmos. Translated
by Manfred S. Frings. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 2009.
Stauffer, John. “Douglass’s Self-Making and the
Culture of Abolitionism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass,
edited by Maurice S. Lee, 12–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Stepto, Robert B. “Narration, Authentication, and
Authorial Control in Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of 1845.” In Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism,
edited by William L. Andrews and William S. McFeely, 146–57. New York: Norton,
1996.
Stewart, Roderick M. “The Claims of Frederick Douglass
Philosophically Considered.” In Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader,
edited by Bill E. Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland, 145–72. Malden, Mass.:
Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Stuckey, Sterling. “‘My Burden Lightened’: Frederick
Douglass, the Bible, and Slave Culture.” In African Americans and The Bible.
Sacred Texts and Social Textures, edited by Vincent L. Wimbush, 251–65. New
York: Continuum, 2000.
Truth, Sojourner. Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A
Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in
1828. Edited by Olive Garrison Gilbert. Boston: Printed for the author [J.
B. Yerrinton and Son], 1850.
Whyte, Iain. Scotland and the Abolition of Black
Slavery, 1756-1838. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
Willett, Cynthia. “The Master-Slave Dialectic: Hegel
vs. Douglass.” In Subjugation and Bondage: Critical Essays on Slavery and
Social Philosophy, edited by Tommy Lee Lott, 151–70. Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 1998.
Williamson, Scott C. The Narrative Life: The Moral
and Religious Thought of Frederick Douglass. Macon, Ga: Mercer University
Press, 2002.
Yellin, Jean Fagan. “Written By Herself: Harriet
Jacobs’ Slave Narrative.” American Literature 53, no. 3 (November 1981):
479–86.
[1]
This study is a result of research funded by the Czech Science Foundation as
the project GA ČR 14-37038G «Between Renaissance and Baroque: Philosophy and
Knowledge in the Czech Lands within the Wider European Context»
[2]
Timothy J. Golden, “From Epistemology to Ethics: Theoretical and Practical
Reason in Kant and Douglass,” Journal of Religious Ethics 40, no. 4
(2012): 603–628; Frank M. Kirkland, “Enslavement, Moral Suasion, and Struggles
for Recognition: Frederick Douglass’s Answer to the Question - ‘What Is
Enlightenment?,’” in Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader, ed. Bill E.
Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1999),
243–310; Roderick M. Stewart, “The Claims of Frederick Douglass Philosophically
Considered,” in Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader, ed. Bill E.
Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1999),
145–72 (with methodical observations, 145-148). Cf. also the “Introduction” to
this volume by Lawson and Kirkland, pp. 1-17, and Howard McGary and Bill E.
Lawson, Between Slavery and Freedom: Philosophy and American Slavery
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992)..
[3]
Nilgün Anadolu-Okur, Dismantling Slavery: Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd
Garrison, and Formation of the Abolitionist Discourse, 1841-1851
(Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2016). Testimonies are available
in the many volumes of Frederick Douglass, The Frederick Douglass Papers,
ed. John W. Blassingame et al., Series 1-3 (New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University
Press, 1999). Cf. John Stauffer, “Douglass’s Self-Making and the Culture of
Abolitionism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass, ed.
Maurice S. Lee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 12–30.
[4]
Frederick Douglass, “Excerpt” of a speech May 1853, in Julia Griffiths, ed., Autographs
for Freedom, vol. [2] (Auburn; Rochester: Alden, Beardsley; Wanzer,
Beardsley, 1854), 251–255; 252f. Also as “A Nation in the Midst of a Nation: An
Address delivered in New York (11 may 1853)” in Douglass, The Frederick
Douglass Papers, Series 1, vol. 2, pp. 423-440, quotation on p. 425 .
[5]
Frederick Douglass, “My Bondage and My Freedom,” in Autobiographies, The
Library of America: 68 (New York: Library of America, 1994), chap. XXIII, 367.
[6]
Actually, this title is already taken: Cynthia Willett, “The Master-Slave
Dialectic: Hegel vs. Douglass,” in Subjugation and Bondage: Critical Essays
on Slavery and Social Philosophy, ed. Tommy Lee Lott (Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 1998), 151–70.
[7]
So Nilgün Anadolu-Okur in her presentation at this conference; she suggested to
call these works ‘autobiographies.’ Structural observations in Robert B.
Stepto, “Narration, Authentication, and Authorial Control in Frederick
Douglass’ Narrative of 1845,” in Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism, ed. William L. Andrews
and William S. McFeely (New York: Norton, 1996), 146–57; William L. Andrews, To
Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), chap. 1, 1–31:"The First Century
of Afro-American Autobiography: Notes towards a Definition of a Genre; chapt.
4, 97-166: “The Performance of Slave Narrative in the 1840s.”
[8]
Frederick Douglass, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave, Written by Himself,” in Autobiographies, The Library of America:
68 (New York: Library of America, 1994), chap. II, 23 f. – I will quote the
three autobiographies from this edition with citation of chapters so that
quotations may be found in any other edition.
[9]
These were the first editions of the three autobiographies: Frederick Douglass,
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Boston:
Anti-slavery Office, 1845); Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom:
Part I - Life as a Slave, Part II - Life as a Freeman (New York: Miller,
Orton & Mulligan, 1855); Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick
Douglass (Hartford, Conn.: Park Pub., 1884).
[10]
Douglass, “Bondage,” 105.
[11]
Douglass, chap. XVI, 270; cf. Frederick Douglass, “Life and Times of Frederick
Douglass Written by Himself,” in Autobiographies, The Library of
America: 68 (New York: Library of America, 1994), chap. XVI, 575.
[12]
Douglass, “Bondage,” chap. XVII, 286.
[13]
Douglass, chap. XIX, 307.
[14]
Aristotle, Politics I, 1252a, translated
by H. Rackham (http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0086.tlg035.perseus-eng1:1.1252a);
more literally: “… the same [thing] benefits the master and the slave”.
[15]
Stewart, “The Claims of Frederick Douglass Philosophically Considered”, 148.
[16]
Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself,
ed. Jean Fagan Yellin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987); Jean
Fagan Yellin, “Written By Herself: Harriet Jacobs’ Slave Narrative,” American
Literature 53, no. 3 (November 1981): 479–86.
[17]
Frederick Douglass, The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series Two:
Autobiographical Writings, ed. John W. Blassingame, John R. McKivigan, and
Peter P. Hinks, vol. 1: Narrative (New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press,
1999), 154 f. and 158; the exchange is also in Frederick Douglass, Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism,
ed. William L. Andrews and William S. McFeely (New York: Norton, 1996), 88–96.
[18]
Douglass, “Narrative,” chap. X, 60.
[19]
Douglass, “Bondage,” chap. XXIII, 367. The context is the same as in “we will
take care of the philosophy,” quoted above.
[20]
On the problems of this terminology, which is not topical here, see Teresa
Robertson and Philip Atkins, “Essential vs. Accidental Properties,” in The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2016,
2016, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/essential-accidental/.
[21]
The divulged image of a slave exclaiming “Am I not a Man and a Brother” was
designed by Josiah Wedgwood in the late 18th century in Scotland;
see Iain Whyte, Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756-1838
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 75f.
[22]
Max Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos. (Darmstadt: Reichl, 1928);
English: Max Scheler, The Human Place in the Cosmos, trans. Manfred S.
Frings (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 2009); Helmuth Plessner, Die
Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch: Einleitung in die philosophische
Anthropologie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1928); there is no English translation;
a summary in Marjorie Grene, “Positionality in the Philosophy of Helmuth
Plessner,” The Review of Metaphysics 20, no. 2 (1966): 250–77.
[23]
Cf. Andrews, To Tell a Free Story, 23, 103.
[24]
Douglass, “Narrative,” chap. IX, 66. Interestingly, this is also quoted in Sojourner
Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, Emancipated from
Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in 1828, ed. Olive Garrison
Gilbert (Boston: Printed for the author [J. B. Yerrinton and Son], 1850), 64.
[25]
Douglass, “Narrative,” chap. IX, 66.
[26]
Douglass, chap. IX, 52. The author felt compelled to justify his critical
remarks in the Appendix of the book, pp. 97-102. On religion in Douglass see Scott
C. Williamson, The Narrative Life: The Moral and Religious Thought of
Frederick Douglass (Macon, Ga: Mercer University Press, 2002).
[27]
Douglass, “Narrative,” chap. IX, 53, X,
70-72 (Sabbath School); X, 63 (root). On the Sabbath school see Sterling
Stuckey, “‘My Burden Lightened’: Frederick Douglass, the Bible, and Slave
Culture,” in African Americans and The Bible. Sacred Texts and Social
Textures, ed. Vincent L. Wimbush (New York: Continuum, 2000), 251–65.
[28]
Frederick Douglass, “The Nature of Slavery”, in Howard Brotz, ed., African-American
Social and Political Thought, 1850-1920 (New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction
Publishers, 1992), 216.
[29]
René Girard, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, trans.
Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987),
69.
[30]
Douglass, “Narrative,” chap. XI, 91.
[31]
Douglass, chap. XI, 92.
[32]
Frederick Douglass, Autobiographies, The Library of America: 68 (New
York: Library of America, 1994), 651, cf. 354. – Just to avoid
misunderstandings that may come with the term ‘identity’: “A is identical with
A,” says nothing about A; and yet, it entails a reflective act of identifying.
In present-day social language, ‘identity’ may mean “Who or what a person or
thing is; ... a set of characteristics
or a description that distinguishes a person or thing from others” (Oxford English Dictionary) and,
consequently, the belonging of a person to a group of people definable by
properties or shared values. The latter sense dominates in Robert S. Levine,
“Identity in the Autobiographies,” in The Cambridge Companion to Frederick
Douglass, ed. Maurice S. Lee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009),
31–45; J. Kameron Carter, “Race, Religion, and the Contradictions of Identity:
A Theological Engagement with Douglass’s 1845 Narrative,” Modern
Theology 21, no. 1 (2005): 37–65; 37: “identity—who we take ourselves to be
and how we orient ourselves to others.” In Douglass’s text, ‘to preserve the
identity’ asserts the reflective sameness of the author, which is the theme of
the autobiography.
[33]
Douglass, The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series Two, 1:
Narrative:154–160; 157. On irony in Douglass see Stewart, “The Claims of
Frederick Douglass Philosophically Considered”, passim.
[34]
Frederick Douglass, “Lecture on Pictures,” in Picturing Frederick Douglass:
An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed
American: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most
Photographed American, ed. John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie
Bernier (New York: Norton, 2015), 126–41; 133. The text is also in Douglass, The
Frederick Douglass Papers, series 1, vol. 3, 452-473; 455. Here with the
title “Pictures and Progress.”
[35]
Douglass, “Lecture on Pictures”, 128.
[36]
Frederick Douglass, “Pictures and Progress,” in Picturing Frederick
Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most
Photographed American: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s
Most Photographed American, ed. John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie
Bernier (New York: Norton, 2015), 161–73; 163, 166. A summary of this in Douglass,
The Frederick Douglass Papers, series 1, vol. 3, 620.
[37]
Douglass, “Narrative,” chap. III, 28.
[38]
Margaret Kohn, “Frederick Douglass’s Master-Slave Dialectic”, The Journal of Politics, 67, No. 2 (May,
2005), 497-514, says correctly (500), “Although the fight with Covey did bring
about a cessation to the brutal beatings he had endured, the emancipatory
consequences were primarily psychological in nature.” However, the
anthropological meaning goes beyond the personal psychological effect. Kohn has
the further relevant literature on the case.
[39]
Douglass, “Narrative,” chap. X, 60.
[40]
Douglass, chap. X, 64.
[41]
Douglass, chap. X, 65.
[42]
Douglass, chap. X, 65.
[43]
Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential
Thought (New York: Routledge, 2000), 61. (Italics in the original.)
[44]
Douglass, “Narrative,” chap. X, 65.
[45]
Bernard Boxill, “Two Traditions in African American Political Philosophy”, The Philosophical Forum 24, no. 1-3,
Fall-Spring 1992-93, 119-135; pp. 129 f. Further considerations, derived from
Douglass’s later political stances in Bernard R. Boxill, “The Fight with
Covey,” in Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy,
ed. Lewis R. Gordon (New York: Routledge, 1997), 273–90. Cf. Bernard R. Boxill,
“Douglass Against the Emigrationists,” in Frederick Douglass: A Critical
Reader, ed. Bill E. Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell
Publishers, 1999), 21–49; 38-41; “Frederick Douglass as an Existentialist” in
Gordon, Existentia Africana, 41–61.
[46]
Douglass, “Narrative,” chap. X, 65.
