Co-Workers in the Kingdom of Culture: Classics and Cosmopolitanism in the Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois

Co-Workers in the Kingdom of Culture: Classics and Cosmopolitanism in the Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois
ISBN-10
0197579582
ISBN-13
9780197579589
Category
Biography & Autobiography
Pages
256
Language
English
Published
2022
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Author
David Withun

Description

"The education of W. E. B. Du Bois was similar to that of many of his educated white contemporaries in its focus on knowledge of classical languages and literatures. As was common at the time, the classics were central to Du Bois's education beginning with his high school education in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and continuing through his undergraduate and graduate education at Fisk University, Harvard University, and the University of Berlin (then Friedrich Wilhelm University). The impression of his education in the classics on Du Bois's intellectual and moral formation would continue to mark his thought and work throughout his life. The education of W. E. B. Du Bois marks the beginning of an intellectual life steeped in and informed by classical thought-especially that of Cicero and Plato-as well as classical mythology and rhetorical forms. While influences on Du Bois's thought include a number of sources that depart in significant ways from classical thought, Du Bois often adapted these influences in such a way that they became compatible with the classical foundations of his most firm ideological commitments. While at Harvard, for example, Du Bois was able to incorporate elements of William James's pragmatist philosophy into his essentially Platonic metaphysics with the assistance of the simultaneous influence of George Santayana. However, Du Bois's classical education also presented him with the challenge that would later form the basis of much of his treatment of classical literature-and Western canonical literature more generally-in his later writing, namely, that he had discovered a passion for the tradition of received canonical texts and thought, but simultaneously found himself excluded from full participation in it because of the racist ideas of his contemporaries. In spite of the persistent classical foundations of Du Bois's ideas, his life and thought were also marked by an awareness of the profound injustice of racial and class discrimination at the heart of the culture which claimed this classical heritage as its own"--

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