Abstract

Philosophy Born of Struggle is an ambitious undertaking. It is explicitly conceived, the editor explains, as “a guide to the ideas of modern Afro‐American philosophers,” and “a historical resource directory for their works.”1 An anthology of texts with bibliographical apparatus, the volume has an implicit hortatory purpose as well. In representing Afro‐American philosophy as a “unidimensional text of divergent components”—concerned with the meaning of democracy and the human costs of “capitalism, colonial domination, and ontological designation by race”—the editor dignifies Afro‐American philosophy conceptually, as a subject in its own right, calling in effect for its sustained historical treatment as such.2