Interview with Professor Paul C. Taylor

Abstract

Good heavens: what a broad question. I say a fair bit about this in an essay I wrote for one of George Yancy’s early edited volumes, The Philosophical I. Here’s the short version: in something like the way Lou Outlaw puts it in On Race and Philosophy, I’m someone who made the mistake of thinking that the world should make sense, and of noticing that it routinely and stubbornly didn’t do so when it came to black folk in the US. And then I made the mistake of thinking philosophy was uniquely positioned to help. (It might help, but so might lots of other things, like good literature, bad movies, and fine whiskey; and it takes a lot of work on philosophy to make it fit for working on other things.) But by the time I realized these were mistakes, the die was cast.