Common Ground: A Comparison of the Ideas of Consciousness in the Writings of Howard Thurman and Huey Newton, (Africa World Press: 2015).
Photographs Courtesy of Gary Freedman/Camera Press and BU Photography.
"In the dialectics of struggle the road to freedom comes paved with multiple and sometimes disparate ideologies. Newton and Thurman make for great comparisons because they use different sources from different schools of thought, and yet—as Neal’s book teaches us—they both put forth ideas of community development based on a transformation of consciousness." Felipe Hinojosa, Texas A&M University
Photographs Courtesy of Gary Freedman/Camera Press and BU Photography.
"In the dialectics of struggle the road to freedom comes paved with multiple and sometimes disparate ideologies. Newton and Thurman make for great comparisons because they use different sources from different schools of thought, and yet—as Neal’s book teaches us—they both put forth ideas of community development based on a transformation of consciousness." Felipe Hinojosa, Texas A&M University
Howard Thurman’s Philosophical Mysticism: Love Against Fragmentation, (Lexington Press: 2019).
"In Howard Thurman's Philosophical Mysticism: Love against Fragmentation, Anthony Sean Neal convincingly makes the case for Howard Thurman being an unduly neglected African American philosopher who sought to improve the lived conditions of black people in the United States, as well as affirm their God-given worth during what Neal calls the “Modern Era of the African American Freedom Struggle” (1896–1975). Neal also explains how Thurman synthesized a vast array of personal, philosophical, and theological sources—ranging from his Grandma Nancy’s slave religiosity and the Negro Spirituals to black theology to poetics to Neoplatonism, intuitionism, and process thought into an eclectic yet coherent philosophical theology that makes sense of his own experiences as a black mystic philosopher, poet, and pastor living in a racially segregated United States. It is well worth reading!"
— Dwayne Tunstall, Grand Valley State University
"Anthony Neal has written the authoritative text on the meaning and substance of Howard Thurman’s philosophy. Anthony Neal did not simply write a careful exegesis of Howard Thurman’s pre-existing work, he wrote a book that leads the reader through an understanding of Black philosophy as active thinking—as a multi-leveled consciousness about the potential in the world, the obstacles to its more perfect end, and the mysticism that justifies the belief in the unrealized. Thurman often ended his books with a multi-titled designation of himself as a “Poet, Mystic, Philosopher, and Theologian.” The fineness of Neal’s writing about Thurman’s thought undoubtedly takes possession of those designations that Thurman once called his own."
— Tommy J. Curry, Texas A&M University
"In Howard Thurman's Philosophical Mysticism: Love against Fragmentation, Anthony Sean Neal convincingly makes the case for Howard Thurman being an unduly neglected African American philosopher who sought to improve the lived conditions of black people in the United States, as well as affirm their God-given worth during what Neal calls the “Modern Era of the African American Freedom Struggle” (1896–1975). Neal also explains how Thurman synthesized a vast array of personal, philosophical, and theological sources—ranging from his Grandma Nancy’s slave religiosity and the Negro Spirituals to black theology to poetics to Neoplatonism, intuitionism, and process thought into an eclectic yet coherent philosophical theology that makes sense of his own experiences as a black mystic philosopher, poet, and pastor living in a racially segregated United States. It is well worth reading!"
— Dwayne Tunstall, Grand Valley State University
"Anthony Neal has written the authoritative text on the meaning and substance of Howard Thurman’s philosophy. Anthony Neal did not simply write a careful exegesis of Howard Thurman’s pre-existing work, he wrote a book that leads the reader through an understanding of Black philosophy as active thinking—as a multi-leveled consciousness about the potential in the world, the obstacles to its more perfect end, and the mysticism that justifies the belief in the unrealized. Thurman often ended his books with a multi-titled designation of himself as a “Poet, Mystic, Philosopher, and Theologian.” The fineness of Neal’s writing about Thurman’s thought undoubtedly takes possession of those designations that Thurman once called his own."
— Tommy J. Curry, Texas A&M University
