Reason, Imagination, and Sentiment: Frederick Douglass’s Constitutional Textualism as Black Natural Law and Political Activism

Frederick Douglass’s constitutional textualism can be interpreted from within the Black Natural Law Tradition (BNLT) in two ways. First, the BNLT has a more complex anthropology than the Classical Natural Law Tradition (CNLT), and it is in and through this anthropology that the work of Douglass political theorists Vincent Lloyd and Bill E. Lawson enables a new interpretation of Douglass’s constitutional textualism informed by imagination, time, and aesthetics. Second, the BNLT’s corollary of political activism in pursuit of racial justice enables an interpretation of Douglass constructively using abstraction, as he does with his trope of “any man outside of America.” It is this trope that provides Douglass a point of departure for his race-conscious constitutional textualism. I contrast Douglass’s constructive use of abstraction with a more destructive use of abstraction for theoretical purposes, which can be politically and morally harmful, despite the best intentions, as in John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice .