Black Enlightenment

The Negro Renaissance occurred in the twenties and thirties. The Black Theology movement emerged in the seventies. The historical contexts of these movements imposed certain limitations. Reflection on the present situation leads to the argument that the time has now come for the deliberate development of a black cultural enlightenment. Western thought and religion have tended to offer supernatural and/or ontological solutions to the empirical problems of oppressed groups. It may be that the dominant methodologies of Western thought are technically incompatible with the welfare of black people—or of any group seeking empirical transformation. This observation compels black thinkers to focus on methodology, particularly the issues of verification, realities and priorities. Several methodological assertions are operative behind the main argument of this paper. (1) Much of the causality for racism and other social ills is located in our cultural guidance systems (2) Theology is a type of guidance system and is decisive for many apparently secular guidance systems. (3) All religious developments are, in one sense, parochial cultural responses. And, the theology which arises from black culture is equal in authenticity to other such responses. (4) Philosophy, understood not as “ontological” content, but as an ongoing activity of critical inquiry, is one indispensable instrument for cultural enlightenment. (5) In its technical apparatus, a black enlightenment requires a continuous and critical correlation of empirical elements of reality with nonempirical elements of reality. It is undeniable that the great white theological systems and movements have been decisively affected by cultural developments and by philosophical systems. One has only to contemplate the syntheses and revolutions of Aquinas, Boehme, Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel and Tillich. Black culture has not yet had an “enlightenment” in the sense of an intellectual awakening that would enable it to conduct a systematic critique of the postulates which undergird the major guidance systems of Western culture. Therefore, blacks do not possess a sophisticated evaluation of the causality which produces their oppressed status. A critical philosophy of religion is needed as a prolegomenon for a liberating black theology. Without a critical black philosophy, black culture and its theology will proceed at an extreme disadvantage in relation to white culture Blacks would remain victims of cultural and academic imperialisms inflicted by the majority culture. Therefore, there must be a black enlightenment–employing critical philosophy as it major instrument.

Argument (complex analysis) · Empirical research · Enlightenment · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Pluralism (philosophy) · Sociology · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society

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