Lewis Gordon’s closing keynote address at the 2013 Philosophy Born of Struggle Society meeting at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

The society was founded 21 years ago in celebration of growing research in African American philosophy. The title is based on Leonard Harris’s canonical anthology: Philosophy Born of Struggle: Afro-American Philosophy since 1917, ed. Leonard Harris (Dubuque, IW: Kendall/Hunt, 1983). This closing lecture explores the importance of intellectual work and its relationship to freedom and questions of political struggle.