PHILOSOPHY AND COMMUNITY RESPONSIBILITY
Today there is but one rivalry between culture and vocation,
college training and trade and professional training, and
that is the rivalry of Time. Some day every human being
will have college training. Today some must stop with the
grades, and some with high school, and only a few reach
college. It is of the utmost importance, then, and the
essential condition of our survival and advance that those
chosen for college be our best and not simply our richest
or most idle. (Du Bois 1973, 79)
Philosophy's Community Connections
In the past few years the department has embarked on a
program of linking its activities to the communities that
make Howard University possible. With help from the offices
of the Academic Vice-President and President, the department
has sponsored national conferences on bioethics and university
responsibility to community.
The students in the philosophy club are starting a program
to take philosophy into the upper and lower schools in
the District of Columbia. African American philosophers
Leonard Harris and Albert Mosley set up a prototype program
for philosophy in the schools years ago and faculty and
students in the department are hoping to commence their
work again.
The department tries to discharge its commitment to community
not only in these extra mural activities, but also in the
structure of its curriculum. The departmental curriculum
will receive its strongest justification if it makes possible
strong links between individual and community.
If students see how their philosophy courses are vital
not only to their own interests but also to those of the
communities to which they are responsible as leaders, then
they will have even stronger motives for pursuing excellence
in their studies. Hence the departmental spirit reinforces
student participation in community volunteer programs,
internships in public interest organizations, and outreach
programs in university activities for the surrounding communities
with special emphasis on continuing education.
If the distinctive Howard student is oriented to the theoretical
groundwork that makes possible the solution of concrete
problems, then part of this orientation must address the
development of the students' sensibilities--students must
identify with problems before they will be moved to address
them. Herein lies part of the department's rationale for
curricula with a distinctive African-American orientation.
Student Responsibility for Curriculum Input
Only sustained criticism can make the departmental curriculum
permanently viable. Because of the difficulty of carrying
out this project, we encourage our students to help us.
The students come to us with great virtues. Many bring
extraordinary passion for self-knowledge and social justice.
All our students pursue a wide range of disciplines in
ways that most of us as faculty have not done since our
own student days. And students, laboring under burdens
of time and money, are greatly concerned about the utility
of what they do in required curricula.
Given the wide range of their studies and their intense
motivation, students have a chance to make connections
that we as faculty cannot, because our disciplinary interests
are often necessarily narrow and our justifications for
what we do are too obvious and hence long since buried.
Philosophy's Interest In African Amerian and African
Philosophy
"...the American Negro problem is and must be the
center of the Negro university. It has got to be. You are
teaching Negroes. There is no use pretending that you are
teaching Chinese or that you are teaching white Americans
or that you are teaching citizens of the world. You are
teaching American Negroes in 1933, and they are the subjects
of a caste system in the Republic of the United States
of America and their life problem is primarily this problem
of caste." (Du Bois 1973, 92)
In the tradition of Alain Locke, the department aims at
reducing strife among social cultures by stressing the
commonalties of cultures and the cross-cultural origins
of philosophy. The department pays special attention to
African philosophies in part to correct racist impressions
that whole groups of people might be cut off from philosophical
activity. By giving comparative reviews of philosophyacross
cultures, the department tries to show how cultural exchange
ha s helped overcome ignorance about ways of gaining and
interpreting experience. This kind of awareness makes possible
an unprecedented sensitivity to the power of culture over
critical decisions about how we should live.
Because of the department's place in an historically Black
university, the department has a responsibility to focus
on philosophy in African American communities. Faculty
pay attention not only to the pioneering social philosophy
of such figures as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois,
and Alain Locke, but to increasing numbers of works by
contemporary African American philosophers like Cornel
West, Anita Allen, Frank Kirkland, and Adrian Piper. (See
appendix II for a representative bibliography.) Faculty
also pay attention to popular African American movements
like Afrocentricity.
But the department also has an interest in tracing African
American philosophies to their points of origin in Africa
wherever that may be possible. In their research and classes
some faculty members look for the roots of American Afrocentricity
in the writings of Cheikh Anta Diop and other members of
the Nile Valley school. Faculty have written on the philosophies
of the Akan and Yoruba traditions in modern Ghana and Nigeria.
The growing corpus of African and African American writings
makes it possible for the department to offer a strong
M.A. program in these areas. The department looks forward
to the time when it may offer a Ph.D. program as well.
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