A Dealer of Old Clothes: Philosophical Conversations with David Walker

A Dealer of Old Clothes: Philosophical Conversations With David Walker showcases the philosophical endeavors of David Walker, an abolitionist and intellectual who was situated in the midst of America’s turbulent period of unrest just prior to the Civil War. In this text, Scriven treats Walker as a philosophical sage of sorts. He poses philosophical questions regarding race, resistance, and the problems of evil and solicits answers via Walker’s text. The book contains five main chapters with three appendices containing the three respective self-edited versions of Walker’s appeal, material that has never appeared together in one volume. This piece contributes to the growing body of African-American philosophy housed with the American philosophical tradition and is the first book-length philosophical treatment in Walker scholarship.