Martin Luther King Jr.'s Philosophical Debt to Hegel Explored in Open Culture Essay
In 2015, an article by Josh Jones revisited Martin Luther King Jr.'s engagement with the philosophies of thinkers like Hegel, Kant, and Marx, which influenced his nonviolent resistance strategies against segregation. King's studies in the mid-1950s included seminars at Harvard and Boston University, where he wrote six essays on Hegel, including a notable examination of his logic. During a January 1956 interview, King cited Hegel as his preferred philosopher. Furthermore, he incorporated Hegel’s concepts in his speeches at the First Annual Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change that same year. The piece also highlights contributions from W.E.B. Du Bois and Susan Buck-Morss.
Key facts
- Martin Luther King Jr. studied Hegel at Boston University and Harvard in the mid-1950s.
- King took a yearlong seminar on Hegel with advisor Edgar Brightman at Boston University.
- King wrote six essays on Hegel, including 'An Exposition of the First Triad of Categories of the Hegelian Logic—Being, Non-Being, Becoming.'
- In a January 19, 1956 interview with The Montgomery Advertiser, King called Hegel his favorite philosopher.
- King's nonviolent resistance was described as a Hegelian synthesis of acquiescence and violence.
- W.E.B. Du Bois applied Hegelian logic to racial consciousness after studying in Berlin.
- Scholar Susan Buck-Morss argues the Haitian Revolution inspired Hegel's master-slave dialectic.
- The essay was written by Josh Jones and originally published by Open Culture in 2015.
Entities
Artists
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Karl Marx
- Friedrich Engels
- Malcolm X
- Angela Davis
- Huey Newton
- Edgar Brightman
- Immanuel Kant
- Baruch Spinoza
- Søren Kierkegaard
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- David Hume
- Heraclitus
- W.E.B. Du Bois
- Susan Buck-Morss
- Nolen Gertz
- John Ansbro
- Ralph Dumain
- Rebecca Cooper
- Josh Jones
- Dick DeMarsico
Institutions
- Open Culture
- Boston University
- Harvard University
- The Montgomery Advertiser
- First Annual Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change
- Wikimedia Commons
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Marxists Internet Archive
- Critical Theory
- JSTOR
Locations
- United States
- Europe
- India
- Berlin
- Germany
- Durham
- North Carolina