Caribbean Philosophy

A brief overview to some of the main Caribbean philosophers

Afro-Caribbean philosophical consist within the wider framework of African, European, and Afro-American philosophical traditions. There were different languages in the history of Caribbean philosophy; English, French and Spanish. The following paper tries to give a Brief summary of the most influential authors.

Eric Eustace Williams (1911 вЂ" 1981) was prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago from 1961 until his death. Prior to entering politics, he was professor of political and social science at Howard University. He was educated at Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain, where he excelled at academics and football. He won an island scholarship in 1932 which allowed him to attend Oxford University where he received his doctorate in 1938. Williams was in part inspired by C.L.R. James and his doctoral thesis, owed much to the influence of James's The Black Jacobins (1938)

One of the most important works of Williams is the book “Capitalism and slavery” where he explains how the triangular trade between Britain, British America, and Africa was fundamental in the structure of British economy in the eighteenth century. It assisted in the accumulation of capital for the industrial revolution. Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. According to him, ' the capitalists first encouraged West Indian slavery, and then helped to destroy it’. He is not content with this. As an economic determinist he relates the abolition of slavery to the economic change he has noted. He holds, that the importance of the humanitarians ' has been seriously misunderstood and grossly exaggerated by men who have sacrificed scholarship to sentimentality”

Walter Rodney (March 23, 1942 вЂ" June 13, 1980) was a prominent Guyanese historian and political figure. Born to a working class family, was a Guyanese graduate of the University o the West Indies, Jamaica. In 1963, he entered the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, and in 1966 he was awarded his PhD for his research focused on the slave trade on the upper Guinea coast. He also traveled widely and became very well known around the world as an activist and scholar. He was tragically killed during the summer of 1980 amidst political turmoil in Guyana

In his major work “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, Rodney examines how Africa, the second largest continent on earth, is among the least developed. He explains the European and African past, showing how the present came into being, and what the trends are for the near future. He tries to give an overview of this in his second chapter: "It has been shown that, using comparative standards, Africa today is underdeveloped in relation to Western Europe and a few other parts of the world; and that the present position has been arrived at, not by the separate evolution of Africa on the one hand and Europe on the other, but by exploitation. To set the record straight",

In Rodney's view underdevelopment is expressed as a particular relationship of exploitation Ð'¬ the exploitation of one country by another. According to him all the countries named as 'underdeveloped' are exploited by others; and the underdevelopment with which the world is now pre-occupied is a product of capitalist, imperialist and colonialist exploitation.

C.L.R. James was born in Trinidad and Tobago. He was an historian, political activist, journalist, and a writer on art, literature and cricket. Two of its major currents, Marxism and Pan-Africanism, defined the substance of James’s work. His own active participation in cricket, combined with an intensive study of its evolution and development, led James to see cricket as a metaphor for society. He was writing fiction which celebrated the vitality of ordinary men and women living in the urban slums or вЂ?barrack yards’. They grew out of the material available to him as a writer in Trinidad. Barrack yard life, vibrant and unexplored, was a creative source and a form of life native to the Caribbean. Through its discovery, James began to break the hold of the English tradition over the subject matter of colonial writing. He established an independent Marxist position based on the work of Lenin. The writing of “Beyond A Boundary” became his other major intellectual project. In the context of the New World, James had moved beyond the European tradition with its separation of politics and culture, art and entertainment, intellectuals and the common people. James never retreated from this vision, from his belief in the creativity and capacity of the Caribbean people. In the final phase of his life, 1967-89, James traveled widely, and wrote essays and lectured to audiences in Europe, America, Africa and the Caribbean.

Frantz Fanon was born on the French Caribbean island of Martinique. Fanon's psychiatric practice is legendary. He implemented a system of humanistic therapy, the success of which his fellow physicians attributed to his energy and charisma. Fanon completed three books in his lifetime. His first, Peau noire, masques blancs (Black skin, white masks, 1952) offers his theory of racial identity and oppression. This theory foregrounds contemporary theories of the role of society in the development of racial identity and prejudices.L'an v de la rÐ"©volution algÐ"©rienne. Fanon's second book defends his view that colonized people must seize their freedom. His main point is that fighting for national independence awakens new ways of living in the world of colonized people. The theme of seizing freedom returns in Fanon's most famous work, The Wretched of the Earth. He is arguing for the therapeutic value of violence. He also criticizes third world elites for propping themselves up as mediators with the old regimes and creating a neocolonial condition in which they become its new pillagers rather than building up their nation. Finally, he wrote a collection of essays that includes his very prescient "Racism and Culture”. The field of postcolonial studies has benefited significantly from his critique of colonialism, and his discussion of race and colonialism in the Caribbean

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