Abstract
The existential demands of race speak to the necessity of conceptualizing what race is in conjunction with what it means to be human. Both meanings intersect epistemologically and phenomenologically, such that what race is informs what it means to be human as much as what it means to be human informs what race is. In this way, “blackness” becomes both the concept and the embodiment of what race is and what it means to be human. Theological anthropology presents a framework by which “what race is” as a concept can be distinguished from “what it means to be human” as an embodiment. This distinction is calibrated through a theologizing about God from the meaningfulness of “what it means to be human” beyond “what race is.” More importantly, this differentiation is respectively between “what race is” in theory and “what race is” in praxis as what it means to be human, to the extent that what becomes specifically existential in the meaningfulness of race is translated by what becomes generally existential in the meaningfulness of human embodiment.
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Notes
This is based on the assertion of David Tracy that the purpose of human beings is to pursue a common good through an understanding of common interests, which is demonstrated by a dedication to the highest form of critical inquiry, as well as a commitment to conversation with the other, the one different from the self.
George A. Lindbeck uses this term to describe an existential self-understanding that results from being taught and exposed to a religious dynamic introduced from outside the individual.
Here, what Hopkins points to is how feminist scholars construe an understanding of the human person that intentionally features the particularity of woman’s experiences while embracing the authenticity of man’s reality.
This comes from diverse movements of liberation theologies among people of color in the USA, such as Black perspectives, Womanist perspectives, Hispanic/Latino perspectives, Mujerista perspectives, Asian-American perspectives, and Native-American perspectives .
The emergence of culture from human energy, creativity, and struggle exerted by the human person in relation to nature and in relation to various human beings occupying definite societal positions.
The aesthetic or beauty in culture coexists with and accompanies moral attributes, and thus the community offers a norm to ferret out beautiful and non-beautiful character in the human being or the individual self.
Discussions about spirit refer to the creativity that unfolds in culture, a creativity that animates both human labor and the aesthetic.
This is based on the belief that the human is not defined by frozen notions of memory, will, soul, or rationality but, rather, the self becomes a self through the introduction into the selves.
The idea of communal defines the historical trajectory and contemporary substance and helps guarantee the conditions for the possibility of the self’s and selves’ perpetual flourishing.
Gender hierarchy, as Hopkins asserts, subverts the affirmation of community, common values, and common good in as much as it denotes the concept of equality, which rewards the overall community when the male gender and the female gender are allowed to play in their unique individuality.
To be clear, Frege’s relationship is between sense and reference.
Here, I am referencing Heidegger’s assertion that language is the house of being, in On the Way to Language (1959).
This is an adaptation of Socrates’ argument about the nature of knowledge in Plato’s Theaetetus.
I am thinking about this in the strict philosophical sense of “being,” without ascribing any ethics to Heidegger’s argument. Strictly speaking, Heidegger provides a framework to discuss “what being is,” even if we must, unfortunately, omit the complicated ethics and racialization from that discussion.
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Woodson, H. The Existential Demands of Race: Dialogues in Theological Anthropology. J Afr Am St 24, 223–237 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-020-09476-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-020-09476-5