9 - The Place of W. E. B. Du Bois in American and European Intellectual History

Summary

A protean figure such as W. E. B. Du Bois is difficult to place according to almost any criterion one can think of. Having been advised by his Harvard mentor William James to avoid philosophy because one could not make a living at it, Du Bois still felt the need to apply what he had learned as a student of philosophy to social problems. Knowledge without application, theory without practice or policy implications, or, for that matter, art for art's sake made no sense to him. In this, he was clearly in the American grain, expressed in the overlap of pragmatic and Enlightenment traditions of thought, particularly of the progressive variety. Yet, Du Bois became less sanguine about the efficacy of knowledge in correcting social ills over the years. Not all prejudice responded to greater enlightenment. In this respect, he knew what Michel Foucault later emphasized - the inseparability of knowledge and power.

Because of his protean intellectual engagements, Du Bois is a rich but difficult subject for the intellectual historian. His extensive political journalism as editor of Crisis might be seen as a waste of his (intellectual) time, but it was a way for him to remain engaged with the everyday life of African Americans and their problems. His efforts on behalf, for instance, of Pan-Africanism and much of his writing about Africa lacked the intellectual complexity of first-rate philosophical or historical work. He was one of the “producer-directors” of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s rather than one of its major creative spirits. Not quite “theoretical” enough to be classified a social and cultural theorist, his work as an historian ranged from the iconoclastic to special pleading, while his literary style could be florid and unmodified by irony or self-criticism. Yet Du Bois was perhaps the best judge of how best to use his talents, and in the long run he may have done what was best for them.