Martin Luther King’s primary emphasis was upon ‘beloved community,’ a phrase he borrowed from Royce, but an idea that he shared with St. Augustine. Theories of the state tend to focus upon division, in which one stratum dominates another or others. King’s context is the US in the segregated South—a region whose internal divisions sharply instantiate the idea of the state as an unequal hierarchy of dominance. King’s appeal was less to end black subjugation than to end subjugation as such. (...) Hence King was called by some a ‘dreamer,’ given his background commitment to equality and community, ideals taking marginal precedence over his foreground commitment to liberty and autonomy. This article explores the notion of ‘beloved community’ broadly and then specifically in Martin Luther King along with related notions in Howard Thurman and in Josiah Royce. (shrink)

Although the influence of Royce on King’s conception of the beloved community is contested, scholars readily concede that Royce’s ideas exerted, as Rufus Burrow puts it, “at least an indirect influence on King’s socioethical thought.” The African American experience altered significantly if not decisively the socioethical trajectory of this trope – namely, “the beloved community” – within the history of philosophy and theology in America. Admittedly, Royce’s philosophical speculations on “the beloved community” and “loyalty to loyalty” can sometimes seem quite (...) remote from, e.g., Thurman’s work with the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco or King’s activist-advocacy work with the civil rights... (shrink)