Du Bois's Humanistic Philosophy of Human Sciences

Abstract

One of the many challenges W.E.B. Du Bois faced in the study of African Americans was the pervasive racism that affected how social scientists acquired data on people of African descent. Moreover, the historical reality in which such data were gathered was one in which there were indications of genocidal aims on the part of the dominant population. Du Bois needed to show that African Americans should receive rigorous study and that rigorous study was a part of the struggle for African American upliftment. In his effort to address both challenges, Du Bois, in effect, developed several bases for rigorous human study that included the importance of recognizing the humanity of the subjects under study. He touched upon several central concerns in the philosophy of the human sciences including the viability of studying metastable subjects; the relationship between epistemological and ontological categories in the cultural sphere; and the lived reality of action in the face of behavioral imposition.