38 Facts About Lewis Gordon

Lewis Ricardo Gordon was born on May 12,1962 and is an American philosopher at the University of Connecticut who works in the areas of Africana philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, social and political theory, postcolonial thought, theories of race and racism, philosophies of liberation, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of religion.

Lewis Gordon completed his Master of Arts and Master of Philosophy degrees in philosophy in 1991 at Yale University, and received his Doctor of Philosophy degree with distinction from the same university in 1993.

Lewis Gordon is Visiting Euro philosophy Professor at Toulouse University, France, and Nelson Mandela Visiting professor in Political and International Studies at Rhodes University in South Africa.

At Temple, Lewis Gordon was director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought, which is devoted to research on the complexity and social dimensions of race and racism.

Lewis Gordon was Executive Editor of volumes I-V of Radical Philosophy Review: Journal of the Radical Philosophy Association and co-editor of the Routledge book series on Africana philosophy.

Lewis Gordon is the founder of the center for Afro-Jewish Studies, the only such research center, which focuses on developing and providing reliable sources of information on African and African Diasporic Jewish or Hebrew-descended populations.

Lewis Gordon founded the Second Chance Program at Lehman High School in the Bronx, New York.

Lewis Gordon is considered among the leading scholars in black existentialism.

Lewis Gordon first came to prominence in this subject because of his first book, Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism, which was an existential phenomenological study of anti-black racism, and his anthology Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy.

Bad faith, as Lewis Gordon reads it, is a coextensive phenomenon reflective of the metastability of the human condition.

Lewis Gordon rejects notions of disembodied consciousness and articulates a theory of the body-in-bad-faith.

Lewis Gordon sees them as trapped in expectations of sincerity, which is a form of bad faith.

Lewis Gordon proposes, instead, critical good faith, which he argues requires respect for evidence and accountability in the social world, a world of intersubjective relations.

Racism, Lewis Gordon argues, requires the rejection of another human being's humanity.

Lewis Gordon argues that since people could only "appear" if embodied, then racism is an attack on embodied realities.

Racism is a form of the spirit of seriousness, by which Lewis Gordon means the treatment of values as material features of the world instead of expressions of human freedom and responsibility.

Lewis Gordon rejects, in other words, theories that regard racism as a function of bad emotions or passions.

Lewis Gordon argues that the ethical issue against anti-black racism is not one of seeing the similarity between blacks and whites but of being able, simply, to respect and see the ethical importance of blacks as blacks.

Lewis Gordon argues that black existentialism addresses many of the same themes of European existentialism but with some key differences.

Lewis Gordon argues that black existential philosophy is an area of thought, which means that contributions to its development can come from anyone who understands its problematics.

Lewis Gordon's chapter in the book focuses on the problem of black invisibility, which he points out is paradoxical since it is a function of black people being hyper-visible.

Lewis Gordon is known as the founder of postcolonial phenomenology and the leading proponent of Africana phenomenology which has enabled him to make a mark in Fanon Studies.

Lewis Gordon was able to develop postcolonial phenomenology, which he sometimes refers to as Africana phenomenology or de-colonial phenomenology, through making a series of important innovations to Husserlian and Sartrian phenomenologies.

Lewis Gordon's interest is primarily concerned with errors that occur from inappropriate ontological assertions.

Lewis Gordon is concerned with metaphysics, which he, unlike many contemporary thinkers, does not reject.

Lewis Gordon wants to talk about the social world and the meanings constructed by it without reducing it to a physicalist ontology.

Lewis Gordon preferred to call his work "radical thought," which for him meant being willing to go to the roots of reality in a critical way.

Lewis Gordon introduced a new stage in Fanon studies by announcing that he was not interested in writing on Fanon but instead working with Fanon on the advancement of his own intellectual project.

Lewis Gordon has made an important contribution to the understanding around the work of Steve Biko by way of a new introduction to Biko's classic text I Write What I Like.

Lewis Gordon argues that although human beings are incomplete, are without laws of nature, it does not follow that they cannot be studied and understood with reasonable accuracy.

Lewis Gordon argues that racism and colonialism are everyday phenomena and, as such, are lived as "normal" aspects of modern life.

Lewis Gordon's writings have continued expansion of his and related philosophical approaches and lexicon.

Lewis Gordon argues that a genuinely emancipatory society creates spaces for the ordinary celebration of everyday pleasure.

Lewis Gordon's co-edited books with Jane Anna Gordon, Not Only the Master's Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice and A Companion to African-American Studies, offer some important new concepts in the ongoing development of his thought.

Lewis Gordon considers all of his works to be part of a humanist tradition.

Lewis Gordon's work has been characterized as a form of existential sociology.

Lewis Gordon describes what he is attempting to do as a teleological suspension of disciplinarity.

Lewis Gordon has produced approximately 400 articles, book chapters, and reviews.