African-American Epistemology

I have reflected on the traditional analysis of knowledge and more recent developments of how epistemologists retrieve knowledge from our environment and ultimately, the universe. An African-American epistemology is indeed interdisciplinary, social, narrative and traditional. African-Americans are not a monolithic group of persons, so there can be no one supreme African-American epistemology. My approach understanding an African-American epistemology is acknowledging a foundation of phenomenological experiences, a narrative of our experiences (values, self-discovery, you-I relationships) and spiritual/religious affirmations. This foundation has a discourse in post-modern philosophical ideas and some subjective thinking of Kant’s rational practical postulates. In the thirty years of my being a health care practitioner, I have been able to observe behaviors, attitudes and perceptions of African-Americans that shed light on how we might perceive our health care and the system in which produces it. Good health care is important and fundamental for the person, community, culture, nation and the world.

Our historical, religious, spiritual, existential journey is a unique and awesome experiment in survival and success. The election of Barack Obama is a testimony to all of the former. As a health care provider for 30 years, I have been able to reflect on the attitudes and behaviors of patients and customers from every social-economic rung with a special with African-Americans in every possible pharmacy setting. I tap into the minds and writings of truly great philosophers who had no intent to consider minority groups, but I have been able to derive ideas that are pertinent to an African-American epistemology. Retrospectively, one can envision an African-American epistemology developing, historically, during and since slavery.

Perception has been identified by the traditional analysis as a primary source of knowledge and phenomenology is the philosophical discipline that investigates perceptions. African-Americans have perceptions of how we are in the world, our bouts with racism in a White supremacist society; and the list is almost inexhaustible. White America will never understand these perceptions unless we explain to them our unique experience in the world. The experience is of utmost importance and one can only share it, effectively communicating with the listener who is willing to receive the knowledge and information without prejudice. Storytelling is a wonderful of passing on knowledge and various minority groups are adept at it. My mother, now 81, tells of stories when she was a little girl and what her grandmother did and told her. These stories are ingrained in the minds and hearts of her offspring. When she starts telling the same ole story for the one-millionth time, we all just sigh, moan and groan. It is interesting that she knows that we have heard these stories any number of times. But she just ignores all of our unwillingness to hear the story and continues to give details by details and blow by blow of whatever she wants to relate. She tells the story as if it is the most important story that you will ever hear. She, literally, has hundreds of these stories. In fact, she knows that she is really telling a moral story with invaluable information and knowledge. She wants to make sure that what she is saying becomes seared in our brains and that we understand the value in her story. This is probably the simplest form of an African-American epistemology.

Such perspectives are acknowledged by phenomenology. An African-American ethical perspective in health care provides discourse within phenomenology. Phenomenological natural and transcendental egos can be appropriated as a tool for discourses that engender tolerance and support diversity that are necessary endeavors for a human good. There is an aspect of the universality of being that is held in high regard as phenomenology unveils that each person (ego) intentions an object in the world. Each person perceives an aspect, side, perspective, etc of that object with a partial disclosure, notwithstanding that this partial disclosure is valid for a particular ego and gives a better insight, view or understanding of the object that is intended. Each person has a natural and transcendental ego that is operative, though one may not always recognize when he has entered the transcendental mode. The academic discipline of philosophy has historically been of such an esoteric and intellectual pursuit that only those of higher rational, intellectual,

analytical and logical abilities have been able to read the literature with some degree of difficulty and participate in the dialogue. Plato and other aristocratic philosophers believed that philosophy was only given to those of the elitist class. Then and now,  the dialogues are so replete with complex and often contradictory theories, yet the literature and dialogues are in reference to being in the world, objects in the world and the world itself. As phenomenology addresses diversity in perspectives and African-Americans have different perspectives on many issues that affect our lives, I infer that phenomenology would be one of the philosophical disciplines that would lend itself to an African-American epistemology,

Heidegger’s Being and Time, resonates very strongly with Black theology and the sermons and teachings that one hears in the Black; even though his approach or interpretation of the many of themes is quite secular. Being, one of the most enigmatic manifestations of life, is also and perhaps the most certain. Being in the world has never been easy for African-Americans and there is uniqueness for every being, however, African-Americans as a racial and social group have a distinct history that is highlighted with primary goals of struggle and survival and a priority of values that support our struggle. Our journey is colorful and has been colored. Slavery, racism, discrimination, the non-recognition of African-Americans, as moral agents, have all contributed to our way of being in the world.

Dasein is concerned with its own “Being”, its possibilities, for we are the “Being” for whom our own Being” is always an issue. Dasein does not express essence, but rather “Being there”, to which the term existence applies exclusively to it. In the phenomenological reduction, Heidegger attempts to overcome the attitude of subjectivity in his analyses. Dasein, sometimes understood as human life, differs ontologically from all things that are not Dasein in essential respects. The universal question thrives again

with what is meant by “Being”. For Heidegger, “Being” is obscure and not definable; nevertheless, it is an evident concept. It is rather different from how we have understood being in the world with respect to persons and things. He understands “Dasein” phenomenologically and ontologically and gives an analysis of the existentialia and existentialistic meanings of human “Dasein”. There is a lexicon of German terminology that he utilizes to explain “Dasein” or “Being in the world”. Vorhanden are objects that we focus as objects “present at hand”, there by nature. Heidegger tries to retrieve this understanding of being as we have forgotten their nature of Being in the world. Zuhanden. (close at hand) are utensils made by hand and at our disposal. Vorhanden often is used to refer to all that are not human “Dasein”.

African-Americans would never have a problem in believing that there is both natural and spiritual knowledge. In many contexts, the historical Black church is, in full, African-American Epistemology. It represented and represents our rock. The Black church is powerful. White supremacist America could never come in one of the rocking Sunday morning services and attempt to conquer and divide as they have done in all other walks of life. If one ever tried, he would be assertively guided to the altar by the deacons and trustees, anointed with holy Pompeian virgin olive oil and placed in the center of a circle surrounded by the spiritual mothers of the church until he surrendered. What a magnificent institution where all types of knowledge was transmitted and where many slaves learned to read against the law.

Without question, knowledge that comes from Christian Moral Theology is a definitive part of any African-American epistemology. In fact, let’s call it African-American Christian Moral Theology. It is a distinct ideology that many African-Americans have internalized made a part of their spiritual component, even if they don’t live by it.

This ideology, i.e., body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class or culture would have at its core, spirituality and the knowledge that we gain from being spiritual. Other constructs that form this ideology are faith, religion, hyper values, the image of the church and what it represents, testimony, etc. Sunday morning is still the more racist time in American, a setting that represents core values. Martin Luther King Jr. made this statement during the Civil Rights Movement and it is still true today. Is it racism or because something reeally different is taking place.

Feldman lists religion as one of the standard categories of things that we know, i.e., God exists and He loves me, even though, we may doubt the knowledge that we have about religion. Faith is similar to science in that one may see it as a combination of testimony and witness, but in fact, faith (as defined in the Scriptures) is a probable primary source of knowledge. There is a direct correlation between faith and religion. Religion is universal, thereby making faith universal. All religious belief is mediated by faith. Faith is contrary to skepticism in every sense and no need challenge faith in the skeptical view of knowledge. Many Christians would have testimony that faith has resulted in empirical evidence, but debatable within the naturalistic view. There may be a place for faith in the relativistic view based on the concept of diversity, attitudes and different points of view about a wide range of issues. However, faith is not necessarily excluded from the naturalistic view. The traditional analysis of knowledge states that the two conditions for knowledge are truth and belief. Very good reasons and a reliable basis are needed for knowledge. Justification is the third condition, but can be quite controversial. Christians, adherents of the major religion in the world, believe that faith is a source of knowledge. To believe something is to accept it as true. Whether faith is a true belief raises an objection. Feldman overcomes the truth as necessary by stating that it is true if you believe it at the time that if you believe that it is true. Faith tells Christians that there is eternal life and God will eventually reign in the end. The correspondence theory of truth states “a proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to the fact, i.e., the world is the way the proposition says it is”. For Christians, there are overwhelming truths for humanity that are facts found in the bible and accepted by faith. CT also states that truth is subjective and that the world is external to us and we can never know what is true. Some Christians would love to claim absolute truth in faith to believe the Scriptures. Justification, the third condition of the traditional analysis of knowledge, comes in degrees. What is required is that knowledge be reasonable and believable. Justification may differ from one person to another and especially in their private lives

Faith is compelling as a source of knowledge because men Christians believe that they should live their lives through religious documents. For Christianity and Judaism, the Ten commandments serve as a type of moral law. For Christians, faith is the evidence of things not seen and without faith, it is impossible to please God. The Apostle Paul says that we are justified by faith. Men and women throughout the centuries have died for their religious faith. Few other causes are as compelling as faith. Without over generalization, African-Americans live by faith. Faith, as a source of knowledge, is in many ways, related to political philosophy, political anthropology and epistemology. Philosophers have neglected race in their discussions to ethics, political philosophy, epistemology and moral psychology. Philosophy has an obligation to critical race theory. There needs to be re-conceptualization of political philosophy that theorizes race as the major organizing principle of a global white supremacy. Political philosophy recognizes the major ideologies as feminism, anarchism, conservatism, liberalism, Marxism and socialism. Many Black scholars note that White females are the true beneficiaries of the Civil Rights Act, even though a black female who was imprisoned for refusing to give her seat on the bus for a White male began the movement. The very way of looking at the world is corrupted by the exclusion of the experiences and concerns of African-Americans. African-Americans have historically used faith as a source of knowledge and belief that we could overcome and we have succeeded. This is not an experience of white America and perhaps does not even make epistemological sense. This is just another experience that has merit, but denied by orthodox political philosophers and epistemologists.

Kant, in his metaphysical stance, intends to prove the existence of God. African-Americans have a different perspective for believing. If Kant’s postulates of God, the will and freedom are practical, then it is feasible to interpret them also from a cultural perspective. These postulates have a very special meaning for African-Americans in the sense that we have needed to believe in them for our survival against all odds. In fact, they are not just rational thoughts, but also a necessary and essential part of our being in the world to achieve identity, selfhood and moral standing.

The belief in the practical postulates of Kant, i.e. God, the will and freedom requires an existential leap of faith even though Kant insists that the rational mind is necessary from the a priori and requiring the necessity of rationality to make this knowledge apparent to the moral being. For the African-American slave, the necessity for belief in freedom from slavery, evil and mis-treatment from slave owners was more than a rational, but a response of being in the world from emotion, gut and a true belief that a supreme being that had greater powers than that of the slave masters who created freedom for everyone

African-Americans are at a different starting point than rational theology, but perhaps at the same starting point as Kant with his religious upbringing in pietism

It is necessary to understand the upbringing of Kant and his background to see how he was able to bring together rational theology and pietism to postulate the existence of God, immortality and freedom. Guyer provides us with a simplification of this journey and it becomes clearer how the practical postulates came into existence.

Guyer, in, The Cambridge Companion to Kant, describes Kant’s background as having him been reared in a pietist family with a pietist education, both at home and in school. He was taught that the Christian faith was a living relationship with God and not a set of doctrinal propositions. One might predict early on that he understood that religion is external to the body and a relationship with God is internal. Pietism was hostile to Christianity and stressed God’s grace as a transforming power in the lives of men. Pietism stressed the believer’s transformation of emotions reflected in outward behavior.

Theoretical inquiry was secondary to the cultivation of piety and morality in life. It was similar to Lutheran orthodoxy because scriptural authority has primacy over natural reason and intellectual victories. Because of the importance of the invisible church and the priesthood of all believers, including the whole of humanity, one could theorize that Kant appreciated this notion of inclusiveness of humanity when he begins to think about the practical postulates

Charles Taylor, “The Inescapable Frameworks and Politics of Recognition” (1989) gives us a rather detailed presentation of a journey in personhood and the narrative of our lives. The development of African-American personhood and the narration of our lives are distinct, historical and unique. This is African-American epistemology. The philosophical and ethical discourse of Charles Taylor brings an understanding of an ethical perspective that extends itself to each rational being and implications for how we respond to health care. He lays out a foundation for reasons that African-Americans have a perspective that is a result of their experiences and existence. African-Americans have struggled historically with moral identity. The contribution of the Black church and need for redemption have been a moral force. Long before Liberation Theology became a movement, African-American ministers were preaching liberation. A prototypical Sunday morning sermon could easily be the exodus of Israel from bondage and the rule of the Egyptian Pharaoh. As African-Americans relate so well to this historical event, the congregation is aroused to emotional ecstasy especially when the sermon is delivered by a traditional singsong preacher.

Charles Taylor 

One of the major themes of Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self (1989) is “Inescapable Frameworks”. I have responded to the theme with an immediate reaction and recognition of the framework within which I exist; and which I believe exists for many African-Americans. It is the Judaic-Christian theological tradition which is based upon faith, reason and replete with social and moral doctrines. Ironically, within the context of frameworks, one imagines boundaries. Within the particular framework of which Taylor speaks, there are moral demands that encourage and acknowledge limitless love, mercy, forgiveness, respect for others and complimentary virtues. One example of a framework that he utilizes in his discussion is the framework of the naturalists who believe that we create meaning in our own lives, that spiritual experiences are a function of brain states or processes, .i.e., spirituality without faith. They also believe that religion and truths are derived from natural causes, not revelation and that science is the basis for knowing (Taylor, 89, pg. 30-32). We know that the phenomena that we observe through empiricism and the senses often cause reactions that are instinctual or learned behavior. These gut reactions and instinctual responses are “normal” and have always been

observed an over extended period of time. Though African-Americans have always had to create meaning in our lives, we tend also to believe that revelation is a way of knowing and that God is continuing to reveal himself to us in our daily affairs.