William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963) believed that his life acquired its only deep significance through its participation in what he called “the Negro problem,” or, later, “the race problem.” Whether that is true or not, it is difficult to think of anyone, at any time, who examined the race problem in its many aspects more profoundly, extensively, and subtly than W.E.B. Du Bois. Du Bois was an activist and a journalist, a historian and a sociologist, a novelist, a critic, and a philosopher—but it is the race problem that unifies his work in these many domains.
Du Bois contributes to our specifically philosophical understanding of race and the race problem, because he treats these themes as objects of philosophical consideration—indeed, it is largely through an engagement with Du Bois’s work that many contemporary philosophers have come to appreciate race and race-related concerns as fruitful topics of philosophical reflection. Through his work in social philosophy, political philosophy, and the philosophy of art, Du Bois, for all intents and purposes, invented the field of philosophy and race, thereby unsettling and revising our views of the proper scope and aims of philosophical inquiry.
