| Abstrakt: |
This essay seeks to locate a means for counteracting the philosophical canon by re-reading Plato's allegory of the cave with three Black thinkers--W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Richard Wright. Rather than direct argumentation or strict historical analysis, my strategy attends to the images, allegories, and metaphors in Plato to unleash their conceptual force and meaning. Attuning to these nonargumentative elements of thinking is one of the great strengths of Black thought, one underappreciated by the discipline of philosophy. Doing this will generate three images: (1) Leisure or Crisis?, (2) The Examined Life, and (3) Twilight Philosophy. Next I place these images into Richard Wright's posthumously published The Man Who Lived Underground, and then conclude by clarifying my general strategy and finally reducing it into a simple argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
