Diagne works across the history of logic, Islamic philosophy, and Africana philosophy. In "African Art as Philosophy," subtitled "Senghor, Bergson and the Idea of Negritude" (2011), he rereads Léopold Sédar Senghor's Négritude through Henri Bergson's philosophy of intuition and the élan vital, arguing that Senghor's claim about African art amounts to a genuine philosophical method rather than a merely sentimental or essentialist claim about racial temperament. His work on Muhammad Iqbal and Islamic philosophical reform, and his later writing on decolonial universalism, extend this concern with recovering underappreciated philosophical contributions from outside the European canon.
Intellectual setting
Diagne's career has moved between Senegal, France, and the United States, engaging the legacy of Négritude and the Senghor-Sartre-Fanon debates over Black identity and colonialism, the history of Islamic philosophy and logic, and contemporary debates over decolonizing the philosophical canon and curriculum. He is also the author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Négritude.
Key ideas
Négritude reread through Bergsonian intuition
Diagne argues that Senghor's Négritude is best understood as an application of Bergson's method of intuition and vitalist metaphysics, treating African art and modes of engaging the world as a distinctive philosophical contribution rather than an essentialist claim about racial temperament.
A plural, decolonized universalism
In works such as "In Search of Africa(s)," on universalism and decolonial thought, he argues for a dialogical universalism that neither cedes universal claims to purely particularist identity politics nor treats universality as the property of a single (European) philosophical tradition.
Legacy
One of the most prominent living Africana and Islamic philosophers, Diagne's Bergsonian rereading of Négritude has become a standard reference point in African philosophy, and his arguments for a plural, dialogical universalism continue to shape debates over decolonizing philosophy and its canon; he received the Edouard Glissant Prize and the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences' Dagnan-Bouveret prize for his work on Bergson and Senghor.