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)

This essay describes a visionary philosophy of education at Morehouse College. The educational process at Morehouse, construed here as a form of pedagogical personalism, is personified in three luminaries of Morehouse College: Benjamin Elijah Mays, Howard Washington Thurman, and Martin Luther King. The educational process at Morehouse should be interpreted as an ambivalent response to segregation and discrimination in Jim Crow America. Like all black institutions in the South, Morehouse was subject to racist constraints; Morehouse was created and existed in (...) large part due to just such constraints. I attempt to more accurately describe in order to more sensitively appreciate not only how historically black colleges and universities helped to shape the spiritual or intellectual blueprint of the civil rights movement but also how they served—and continue to serve—as ongoing experiments in democratic education. By way of conclusion, I suggest that the pedagogical personalism espoused and practiced at Morehouse College during what has been called her golden age, i.e., 1940–1967, constitutes a significant contribution to the history of higher education in America. (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)

This manuscript provides a revisionist reading of Hegelâ (TM)s 1802 essay, Faith and Knowledge, in which he critiques the various reconciliations of faith and reason proposed by his immediate predecessors and contemporary faith philosophers â " namely, Kant, Jacobi, Schleiermacher and Fichte. Hegelâ (TM)s agonistic interpretation of these â oereflective philosophers of subjectivity, â who he reads as settling for a form of reason that is â oeno longer worthy of the nameâ and a version of faith that â oeno (...) longer seems worth the bother, â not only demonstrates his growing facility with the dialectical method for which he is best known but it also anticipates his own speculative reconciliation of faith and reason. To view Hegelâ (TM)s reading of his predecessors as a series of misreadings, which is not uncommon among scholars of 19th century German philosophy, misses the most instructive aspect of this early but formative essay: Hegel, who was viewed by others if not also by himself as a philosophical latecomer, appropriated the thought of his precursors with an eye toward overcoming them. (shrink)

The recent publication of Dewey's seminar lectures on Hegel's philosophy of spirit, which he delivered in Chicago in 1897, contributes significantly to the ongoing task of more accurately appreciating the confluence of historical influences that shaped the trajectory of classical American philosophy. Dewey's 1897 Hegel lectures are situated within their philosophical context by two seminal essays describing the relevance of recent scholarship to the philosophical or historical question of Dewey's ambivalent indebtedness to Hegel. In their essays, Shook and Good emphasize (...) the positive roles that certain Hegelian themes played in Dewey's mature thought—that is, in texts produced many years after Dewey's alleged .. (shrink)

The following essay aims at a revisionist reading of Hegel’s “Faith and Knowledge.” Whereas Kant found it necessary to limit [aufheben] reason in order to make room for faith, a principle adopted though significantly revised by Jacobi (and Schleiermacher) and Fichte, Hegel reverses this religious dictum. Ostensibly critical of the theological truce of the times, between a brand of reason no longer worthy of the name and a faith no longer worth the bother, Hegel’s 1802 essay constitutes his first sustained (...) effort to reflect himself out of—or beyond—the limits of reflectivity itself. (shrink)

This volume celebrates the remarkable career of Dr. Preston King, an African American political philosopher with an international reputation. King's first degree was from Fisk University (1956). He moved directly to the London School of Economics (LSE), completing his M.Sc. (Econ) in 1958 with a Mark of Distinction. He taught at LSE for the next two years. A scrap with Jim Crow America kept him in exile for the next 40 years. Major friends and influences at LSE were Professors Sir (...) Karl Popper, Michael Oakeshott, and Dr Bernard Crick. King took up subsequent lectureships at the Universities of Keele, Ghana, and Sheffield. He was Senior Research Assistant at the Acton Society Trust (London), then professor at the Universities of Nairobi, New South Wales (Sydney), Lancaster, returning at last to the USA as joint Woodruff Professor at Emory and Distinguished Professor at Morehouse. The essays comprising this volume are by internationally renowned figures. They creatively explore History, Toleration, and Friendship, as three seminal themes running through Preston King's sizeable oeuvre. This book's first third consists of essays on Time and History, with brilliant contributions by Professors Browning, Lawson, Moore, and Cherribi. The second third consists of essays on Time and Toleration, with memorable and penetrating analyses by Professors Jones, Read, Modood/Dobbernak, and Brown. The third part consists of essays on Time and Friendship, with offerings - both charming and insightful - by Professors Devere, Smith, and Coleman. The book concludes with a novel and captivating chapter by King himself, on the philosophy of time, which constitutes the substratum of so much of his work and reflection. (shrink)

From a certain philosophical perspective, one that is at least as old as Plato but which is addressed also by Aristotle and Kant, business ethics – to the extent that it is marketed as form of enlightened self-interest — constitutes a Thrasymachean compromise: to argue that it is to our advantage to conduct business ethically, perhaps even advantageous to the bottom-line, comes curiously close to endorsing what Plato called the 'shadow of virtue' — i.e., of becoming temperate for the sake (...) of illtemperance. And yet it also seems true that moralistic campaigns to achieve the impossible, e.g., pursuing justice for its own sake or eradicating egoism, often "detract from attaining really important things." This essay explores the need, in business ethics as well as elsewhere, to make — what Dewey and Niebuhr considered to be — painful if not principled philosophical compromises in order to secure is a society in which there would be "enough justice to avoid complete disaster.". (shrink)