Responsibility from Below: Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments

Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Topete, Iziah
- Graduate Program:
- Philosophy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 12, 2024
- Committee Members:
- Sarah Miller, Program Head/Chair
John Christman, Major Field Member
Daniel Purdy, Outside Unit & Field Member
Sarah Miller, Major Field Member
Robert Bernasconi, Chair & Dissertation Advisor - Keywords:
- Cugoano
Justice
Natural Rights
Slavery
African Philosophy
Enlightenment - Abstract:
- Quobna Ottobah Cugoano (c.1757–c.1791) is gaining recognition as an important African philosopher in the history of philosophy. In July 1787, Cugoano posited social and political conditions necessary to establish a free laboring community. He defended liberation from transatlantic slavery either through the enfranchisement of all Afro-diasporic laborers or through colonial overthrow. The title of Cugoano’s 1787 text, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, is deceptive regarding the scope of the critique. His concerns went beyond enslaved Africans, encompassing diasporic African laborers, poor European laborers, and Britons from all social positions. The text critiques different kinds of injustices. It focuses on the toleration of chattel slavery and its consequences for the transatlantic social fabric. It is a text that is at once political and theological, using Biblical scripture for the purposes of abolitionism. Philosophers are now appreciating Thoughts and Sentiments despite its historical neglect. A modern philosophy anthology contains passages from Cugoano’s abridged 1791 text. The dissertation reconstructs arguments from Thoughts and Sentiments vis-à-vis the abolitionist political tradition. Cugoano’s arguments, while assuming a theological foundation for natural rights, represent a distinct strand of Enlightenment critique centered on sociability, standing alongside the accounts from other abolitionist philosophes. The study positions Thoughts and Sentiments within the liberal natural rights tradition, while simultaneously arguing that the text’s central problems and insights foreshadow key ideas that would later emerge in early 19th century socialist thought. The structure of the study revolves around four key concepts in Thoughts and Sentiments: slavery, liberty, responsibility, and sociability. The author argues that the originality of Cugoano’s arguments on these conceptual axes warrants the recognition of Thoughts and Sentiments in the modern philosophical canon: a conception of slavery as existential insecurity; a social conception of liberty; a judgment conception of responsibility for others; and the conditions required for sociability, including the requirement of abolishing racial and class-based labor parasitism. Thoughts and Sentiments exemplifies philosophy born in response to the African diaspora.