Baldwin and Wittgenstein on White Supremacism and Religion

Display on James Baldwin at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC

My article, “Baldwin and Wittgenstein on White Supremacism and Religion,” has just been published on the JAAR website; I’m not sure when it will be assigned to an issue, but I guess it will be within one of the (somewhat delayed) issues of 2023.

The article is an exploration of the relevance of Wittgenstein’s remarks on forms of knowledge and certainty in On Certainty (1969) to understanding the intertwining of white supremacism and religion in the United States, especially as understood by James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time (1963). In so doing, the article also lays out some possibilities for the relevance of Baldwin to philosophy of religion.

Here is the abstract:

This article contends that James Baldwin’s exploration of racism and resistance to it in The Fire Next Time may be put into conversation with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s consideration of fundamental epistemic commitments in On Certainty. Out of this constructive engagement, I argue that white supremacism in the United States may be interpreted as being like a Wittgensteinian grounding or “hinge” commitment and that this viewpoint illuminates some of the ways in which white supremacism may interact with various kinds of religious commitments. This combined analysis depicts, first, the extent to which fundamental commitments about race deeply affect people, including the formation of their ethical and civic values, existential and religious commitments, and range of empathetic capacity and, second, similarities between Baldwin and Wittgenstein when it comes to their contentions that there is ethical value in the clarification of language and work on oneself.

Wittgenstein’s grave at Ascension Parish Burial Ground, Cambridge, U.K.

To a significant extent, the article orbits around two quotations, one from Baldwin and one from Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein’s remark from the Investigations conveys a picture of philosophical problems and their origins that I have long found illuminating. Philosophical problems are not simply given or classic; they arise out of particular circumstances that lead to “not knowing one’s way about.” Baldwin’s remark from The Fire Next Time draws out both his robust sense of moral faith—in the possibility of becoming “a truly moral human being,” one who is “larger, freer, and more loving”—as well as his stringent, prophetic critique of Christianity, especially in the ways it has embraced white supremacy or otherwise been indifferent to white supremacy (particularly but not exclusively in the United States).

This article has been in the works for a good while. I wrote the preliminary version in 2021, a pivotal year in American society, and added a few revisions the following year. The re-emergence in the last decade or so of right-wing populism in the U.S. and elsewhere and the related appeals to racism and white supremacism have left me feeling perplexed and dispirited. While ideas relating to what would become the paper have been with me for some time, the paper took this form because it was the paper I needed to write, in striving to imagine what it might be to find “one’s way about” in times of crisis.

Two sources of inspiration for the paper I’d like to mention are a discussion that took place on Duncan Richter’s blog Language Goes on Holiday in 2020 titled “Absolute Guilt” and an interview with Eddie Glaude on The Religious Studies Project podcast in 2021.

References

Baldwin, James. 1998. James Baldwin Collected Essays. Edited by Toni Morrison. New York: The Library of America. 

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2009. Philosophical Investigations. 4th ed. Revised edition by P. M. S. Hacker and J. Schulte. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and J. Schulte. London: Blackwell Publishers.