Frederick Douglass

Bill E. Lawson is Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. His area of research is African-American Social and Political Philosophy and the theory of social contract. He has published numerous articles as well as two books, The Underclass Question, an anthology of writings by African-American philosophers on the issue of the "urban underclass", and Between Slavery and Freedom (with Howard McGary), an examination of ethical issues in the American slavery experience. Frank M. Kirkland is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and at the Graduate Centre, both of the City University of New York. He has published a variety of scholarly articles on Kant, Hegel, and Husserl, as well as on the urban underclass and the relation of modernity to African American life. He has also edited a collection of essays entitled Phenomenology, East and West. He is currently completing a scholarly monograph, Hegel and Husserl: Idealist Meditations.

"Frederick Douglass and his writings shine as beacons of freedom and hope. Bill Lawson and Frank Kirkland have put us in their debt for commissioning - from the best minds practicing philosophy in the African-American traditions - powerful essays on the philosophical significance of Douglass's work. The book will invigorate Douglass scholarship and philosophy, and fan the embers of our love of freedom and hope." Emmanuel Eze, Bucknell University

• List of Contributors ixPreface xiiiAcknowledgments xvIntroduction 1Part I: Racial Assimilation And Emigration 19Part II: Natural Law And American's Founding Documents 83Part III: Enlightenment And Enslavement 143Part IV: Moral Suasion And Rebellion 205Part V: Incarcerating And Lynching Black Bodies 311Part VI: Douglass (1818-95): One Hundred Years Later 363Selected Bibliography 392Index 395