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In Ontological Terror Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. Warren uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and Being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing. This nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence and force as well as that which whiteness defines itself against. Thus, the function of blackness as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. By pointing out how all humanism is based on investing blackness with nonbeing - a logic which reproduces antiblack violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks - Warren urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of ways of existing that are not predicated on a grounding in being.

Race --- Racism. --- Race awareness. --- Blacks --- Nihilism (Philosophy) --- Ontology. --- Political aspects. --- Race identity. --- Being --- Philosophy --- Metaphysics --- Necessity (Philosophy) --- Substance (Philosophy) --- Black identity --- Blackness (Race identity) --- Negritude --- Race identity of blacks --- Racial identity of blacks --- Ethnicity --- Race awareness --- Awareness --- Ethnopsychology --- Ethnic attitudes --- Bias, Racial --- Race bias --- Race prejudice --- Racial bias --- Prejudices --- Anti-racism --- Race relations --- Physical anthropology --- Critical race theory --- Race identity of Black people --- Racial identity of Black people --- Black persons --- Negroes --- Ethnology --- Black people --- awareness --- philosophy --- ontology --- race --- race identity --- racism --- political aspects --- nihilism --- blacks --- Free Negro --- Humanism --- Martin Heidegger --- Negro