ABSTRACT
Phillis Wheatley was an important historical agent at a crucial juncture in American and British history, a literary celebrity, an “Afric muse,” a household slave stolen from Africa, a uniquely situated and insightful thinker, a deeply-believing Christian, and much more. Here, I provide a brief overview of Wheatley’s life and works, and then I describe some of her intellectual, moral, cultural, and human commitments as presented in her poems. Wheatley’s self-constitution through poetry allowed her to frame issues that regard the wrongness of, and suffering wrought by, slavery, in unique and poignant ways – ways that were generally invisible to philosophers as a result of their assumptions about philosophy as well as resulting from their frameworks. Including Wheatley in how we think about early modern philosophy points out the restrictions philosophers and historians of philosophy create by engaging only with those officially recognized as bona fide philosophers and central philosophical themes.
