Frederick Douglass and the Philosophy of Religion

Frederick Douglass and the Philosophy of Religion: An Interpretation of Narrative, Art, and Politics addresses Douglass's narrative method and the reformed epistemology of analytic theism within the context of incarnational theology. Timothy J. Golden argues that in this context, Douglass's use of narrative maintains a robust moral, social, and political engagement—and thus a closer connection to an authentic Christian theology—in a way that analytic theism does not. To show this contrast, Golden presents existential and phenomenological interpretations of Douglass, reading him with Kierkegaard, Kafka, and Levinas. Golden also interprets Douglass's use of moral suasion with Kant's moments of aesthetic judgment and his account of judgment as a mediating faculty between the understanding and reason. Golden concludes the book with reflection on how Douglass’s incarnational theology connects to his future philosophical and theological work, work that understands consciousness (subjectivity) as saturated in time understood as history. The resulting understanding of consciousness provides tools to overcome abstraction not only in social and political philosophy, Christianity, and philosophical theology, but also in gender studies.