IRAAS graduate Douglas
Ficek ’03 recently interviewed
Professor Robert GoodingWilliams, M. Moran Weston/
Black Alumni Council
Professor of African-American
Studies, Professor of
Philosophy
!Where are you from and how
did you become a
philosopher?
I am able to
think about a
few things that
answer why
philosophy
gripped me.
One is
adolescent
rebellion
against my
religious
upbringing.
My parents
weren’t particularly religious,
but I had any number of
relatives that were intensely
religious. As I grew up,
philosophy provided a way to
question religion and react to
the intensity of it.
My father also presented
himself, in a way, as a
frustrated philosopher. He was
fiction writer and I always
remember him saying “I would
have studied philosophy in
college, but I didn’t because I
couldn't see a way to make
money and support my
family.” I remember sitting at
the dining room table and
hearing my father and his
friends talk about Melville,
Ellison, Richard Wright,
Norman Mailer, Dostoevsky
and Nietzsche. As my father
and his friends spoke, I
became engaged with this
form of thinking.
These are the things that come
to mind when I think about
that question.
Yo