A Philosophy of Struggle

The Leonard Harris Reader

Leonard Harris, Lee A. McBride III

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781350084193
• eBook ISBN: 9781350084223
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Collating, for the first time, the key writings of Leonard Harris, this volume introduces readers to a leading figure in African-American and liberatory thought. Harris' writings on honor, insurrectionist ethics, tradition, and his work on Alain Locke have established him as a leading figure in critical philosophy. His timely and urgent responses to structural racism and structural violence mark him out as a bold cultural commentator and a deft theoretician. The wealth and depth of Harris' writings are brought to the fore in this collection and the incisive introduction by Lee McBride serves to orient, contextualize, and frame an oeuvre that spans four decades. In his prolegomenon, Harris eschews the classical meaning of "philosophy, " supplanting it with an idiosyncratic conception of philosophy- philosophia nata ex conatu -that features an avowedly value-laden dimension. As well as serving as an introduction to Harris' philosophy, A Philosophy of Struggle provides new insights into how we ought conceptualize philosophy, race, tradition, and insurrection in the 21st century.

PART I

PROLEGOMENON

CHAPTER 1

WHAT, THEN, IS “PHILOSOPHY BORN OF STRUGGLE”?: PHILOSOPHIA NATA EX CONATU:(PHILOSOPHY AS, AND SOURCED BY, STRIFE, TENACIOUSNESS, ORGANISMS STRIVING)

In “What, then, is ‘Philosophy Born of Struggle’? Philosophia nata ex conatu,” Harris articulatses a distinctively Harrisian conception of philosophy. Harris begins with an account of humanity’s future in the universe, defining philosophy as a philosophia nata ex conatu—an organic striving for survival, which forefronts life experiences, a pluralverse of voices always underpinned by values. Harris rejects the classical tradition of metaphysical and theocratic definitions of philosophy from Vasubandhu of Purusapura in Gandhara, Priscianus of Lydia, Aristotle of Stagira, and Averroes the Andalusian, whose orientations rely on misconceptions of the self, simultaneity, unity of universality and particularity, and what Harris terms “monsters”—categorically impossible beings. He also rejects the definitions of philosophy offered by more contemporary thinkers: Martin Heidegger, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Friedrich Nietzsche, Giorgio Agamben, Paulin Hountondji, V. F. Dordova, and Enrique Dussel. This philosophy born of struggle requires an avowed normative dimension—it emphasizes the negation of necro-being (life as a living death) and reasoning methods warranted as critically pragmatic, contra reasoning methods as sacrosanct tools for pursing abstract universal truth. Harris posits an amoral universe—no arc trending towards justice, no grand narrative, no assured redemption for the tragic, no single teleology for humanity. However, there is an inspiring future. Philosophy, of this Harrisian bent, is inspired by such thinkers as Frederick Douglass, Lydia M. Child, and Alain L. Locke; it recognizes the plurality of peoples, knowledges, and traditions. We can create philosophies and value traditions without monsters fostered by classical traditions.

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. …

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. …

If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.

Frederick Douglass, “If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress” (1857)¹

Prior to 150 million years from 2019, humanity will have to leave the earth because el Sol (the sun) will deteriorate and make the earth’s atmosphere and temperature uninhabitable for humans. Alpha Centauri is the nearest star after the sun to the earth in the Milky Way. It lies roughly 4.37 light-years away. It may take approximately 30,000–100,000 years traveling in a conventional spacecraft at average speeds of current spacecrafts to reach a planet around Alpha Centauri. Traveling 30,000 years or more on a spacecraft will mean the travelers have only themselves to evolve and could at best receive continually antiquated messages from the earth. If two separate populations traveled to different planets near the same star on different spacecrafts, given altered genes, random mutations, unpredictable mating habits, and environmental influences on the separate spacecrafts, they will become radically atypical from the population they left behind and from one another, let alone any traveling populations heading toward other stars.

It will take approximately 2.5 million years traveling near the speed of light to reach Andromeda, the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way. At least 2.5 million years of normal human history will be absolutely lost to the travelers. Because of time dilation, time slows for the travels. At best, the travelers will age only a few years and humanity on the earth will have aged for 2.5 million years when the travelers reach Andromeda, receiving, at best, antiqued messages from populations left behind. If different populations travel at near the speed of light to different regions of the universe, escaping both the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, they will evolve in radically different ways with no substantive shared history.

Herein sits the problem: Traveling at near the speed of light or conventional speeds, different populations will always develop and be fundamentally different and not in substantive communications. Humanity’s best effort to escape termination, whether traveling near the speed of light or conventional speeds, results in atypical separated generations of travelers always entrapped in their provincialism and radical differences.² No conjoined communities, single telos, common species being, or evolutionary tract. Amoebas were not destined to become dinosaurs, let alone one sort of dinosaur. Their history prior to the emergence of dinosaurs from them was no predictor pointing to the future existence of dinosaurs. Provincialism and difference are inescapable; a pluralverse.³ Historicism is wrong. This is where I begin to philosophize: facing eternal provincialism, given that historicism is wrong, pleased with the challenge of starting anew, and hoping for well-being and continuity. “When we ask, ‘What is philosophy?’ then we are speaking about philosophy. By asking in this way we are obviously taking a stand above and, therefore, outside of philosophy. But the aim of our question is to enter into philosophy, to tarry in it, to conduct ourselves in its manner, that is, to ‘philosophize.’”⁴

Let me begin to tarry by not “taking a stand above and, therefore, outside of philosophy,” as if “philosophy” has a meaning as a noun bespeaking a way of life represented by persons who love or pursue wisdom, or as an adjective defined by a depiction of a soul or what is predicated of the self, namely, knower of true knowledge, but tarry. Philosophy, defined as the pursuit of wisdom and wisdom defined by knowledge of grand abstractions, is misguided. Universal forms and structures will not tell us what we need to know about sentient beings; there is no derivation manual from knowing the structure of a contradiction to knowing that kale is better than spinach. The precondition for the possibility of knowledge, and a necessity for well-being, is health. Without health, nothing follows. In a pluralverse it is not the discovery of absolute truth, objective categories, abstract principles, laws, or pristine methods of reasoning, but a making that is the hallmark of philosophies. Philosophies born of struggle, I contend, should include corporeality of health and avowed valuations. Thus, as a constitutive feature of what it is to do philosophy, necro-being (that which makes living a kind of death and the unheralded sorrow of the unborn, necro-tragedy) is taken into account. ⁵ The very structure of philosophy should provide tools, poetry, imagery, evidential reasoning, and openness about its deep structural values and norms.

I will begin the discussion by describing a definition of philosophy offered by Priscianus of Lydia, a refugee from Athens, Greece (530 CE). His definition provides a conceptual map of how philosophy has been defined across a broad range of languages, cultures and religions. I then distance my view from the type of definition offered by Priscianus of Lydia. The intent is to both philosophize philosophy born of struggle and philosophize an account worthy of its name as a noun token.

I

Priscianus of Lydia was a guest at the Sāsānian court at Seleucia-Ctesiphon of Khosrow II, Khosrow Parvīz—Khosrow the Victorious, King of Persia (reigned 590–628 CE). Priscianus of Lydia was one of seven non-Christians fleeing the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I (527–565 CE) who initiated a purge of non-Christian religions and philosophies. The court was, as Ganeri put it, the “Crossroads Court of Chosroes.”⁶ The Sāsānian-controlled empire stretched from what is now Syria, across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Croatia, Egypt, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. At a now historic court meeting, Priscianus answers the question allegedly posed by Chosroes, “What is philosophy?” Solutionum ad Chosroes? (“Answers to the Questions of the Persian King Chosroes”). Priscianus of Lydia was thus on the run from the Christians, promoting a way of thinking that was not itself a religion and being sagacious at a royal court before Zoroastrian clergy.

The Solutionum ad Chosroem is divided into ten chapters. The first chapter concerns the soul, io ipso, philosophy. It begins with an argument in favor of the immortality of the soul, the manner by which the soul is connected to the body, and a claim that the soul is separable from the body but internal to itself. Philosophy is “to lead a pure life without contamination by matter and, at the same time, to acquire insight, without error, into true being.”⁷ “The point of departure for the demonstration [in the Solutionum ad Chosroem] is a definition of philosophy.”⁸ Philosophical activity is operatio.

That which knows itself, however, must be incorporeal, for self-knowledge means that the object is directed towards itself and, as it were, coincides with itself in the act of knowing. Such an activity is impossible for a corporal being because the body consists always of parts alongside of and outside of each other. Therefore, it can never coincide with itself.⁹

The soul, if it knows itself, must be incorporeal.

The agent that knows, namely, the “self,” is going to be ideally ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Also Available from Bloomsbury
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Source Acknowledgments
• Editor’s Introduction
• Part I PROLEGOMENON
• Part II IMMISERATION AND RACISM (OPPRESSION AS NECRO-BEING)
• Part III HONOR AND DIGNITY (REASON AND EFFICACIOUS AGENCY)
• Part IV AN ETHICS OF INSURRECTION; OR, LEAVING THE ASYLUM (VIRTUES OF TENACITY)
• Part V BRIDGES TO FUTURE TRADITIONS
• Index
• Copyright Page