Penning Dissent: The Methodological and Historiographic Motivations behind the Writing of Another White Man's Burden

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Over the last decade, my interest in Josiah Royce has been motivated by a question: What is the relationship between historical and verifiable facts and philosophical interpretation or theory? This question is of tremendous consequence in philosophy since the discipline requires no empirical or archival evidence to substantiate the arguments that are made for or against a “specific philosopher” or thinker beyond the impression the philosopher and other philosophers have made about the “specific philosopher under scrutiny.” When it comes to the study of Black historical figures and the study of American racism, this question that motivated my interest in Josiah Royce and American Philosophy more generally became a methodological concern. I observed that among American philosophers there was no real need to understand the historical or scientific practices of nineteenth-century America. There remains a very real resistance to such periodization. What I observed was how Black thinkers (both past and present) were excoriated for theories of racism and arguments concerning the construction of the American empire that ran counter to the liberal ideology of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that held that American racism is no longer at the core of America itself.
Original languageEnglish
Article number3
Pages (from-to)10-21
Number of pages11
JournalThe Pluralist
Volume16
Issue number2
Publication statusPublished - 16 Jun 2021

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