Frederick Douglass was unquestionably the foremost black American
of the nineteenth century. The extraordinary life of this former
slave turned abolitionist orator, newspaper editor, social
reformer, race leader, and Republican party advocate has inspired
many biographies over the years. This, however, is the first
full-scale study of the origins, contours, development, and
significance of Douglass's thought. Brilliant and to a large degree
self-taught, Douglass personified intellectual activism; he
possessed a sincere concern for the uses and consequences of ideas.
Both his people's struggle for liberation and his individual
experiences, which he envisioned as symbolizing that struggle,
provided the basis and structure for his intellectual maturation.
As a representative American, he internalized and, thus, reflected
major currents in the contemporary American mind. As a
representative Afro-American, he revealed in his thinking the
deep-seated influence of race on Euro-American, Afro-American, or,
broadly conceived, American consciousness. He sought to resolve in
his thinking the dynamic tension between his identities as a black
and as an American. Martin assesses not only how Douglass dealt
with this enduring conflict, but also the extent of his success. An
inveterate belief in a universal and egalitarian humanism unified
Douglass's thought. This grand organizing principle reflected his
intellectual roots in the three major traditions of
mid-nineteenth-century American thought: Protestant Christianity,
the Enlightenment, and romanticism. Together, these influences
buttressed his characteristic optimism. Although nineteenth-century
Afro-American intellectual history derived its central premises and
outlook from concurrent American intellectual history, it offered a
searching critique of the latter and its ramifications. How to
square America's rhetoric of freedom, equality, and justice with
the reality of slavery and racial prejudice was the difficulty that
confronted such Afro-American thinkers as Douglass. |Frederick
Douglass was unquestionably the foremost black American of the
nineteenth century. The extraordinary life of this former slave
turned abolitionist orator, newspaper editor, social reformer, race
leader, and Republican party advocate has inspired many biographies
over the years. This, however, is the first full-scale study of the
origins, contours, development, and significance of Douglass's
thought.
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