Authors: Cornel West
ISBN-13: 9780465091102, ISBN-10: 0465091105
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Basic Books
Date Published: August 2000
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Educator and philosopher Cornel West is the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University. Known as one of America’s most gifted, provocative, and important public intellectuals, he is the author of the contemporary classic Race Matters, which changed the course of America’s dialogue on race and justice, and the New York Times bestseller Democracy Matters. He is the recipient of the American Book Award and more than 20 honorary degrees.
An anthology of the best work of an always compelling, often controversial, and absolutely essential philosopher of the modern American Experience.
The grandson of a Baptist minister, West is a professor at Harvard University who has adeptly combined the introspective strengths of the academic philosopher-theologian with the activist and humanist elements of the African-American religious tradition and black nationalist thought. This mammoth collection of social commentary, interviews, essays and memoir details his evolution as a social analyst and public figure, gathering some of his finest work from his previous books (Keeping Faith; Prophetic Fragments; Race Matters, etc.) as well as from a wide range of academic sources. Calling himself "a Chekhovian Christian," West is deeply concerned with the corruption of the dignity of the everyday citizen and the betrayal of the ideals of American democracy through its embrace of racist and sexist beliefs. While the range of his philosophical sermons can occasionally be overwhelming, his eclectic interests and original observations are quite rewarding. Whether he is discussing Marxist theory, slavery, architecture, black sexuality, black-Jewish relations or bebop and rap, his often complex statements yield a continual flood of surprising insights. West is at his most accessible in his interviews with philosopher George Yancy, TV host Bill Moyers and African-American feminist writer bell hooks. This collection amply attests that West's reputation as a brilliant, humane voice in American intellectual discourse is richly deserved. (Nov.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Preface | xiii | |
Introduction: To Be Human, Modern and American | xv | |
I | Autobiographical Prelude | |
1 | The Making of an American Radical Democrat of African Descent | 3 |
2 | On My Intellectual Vocation | 19 |
3 | Sing a Song | 34 |
II | Modernity and Its Discontents | |
4 | The Ignoble Paradox of Modernity | 51 |
5 | Race and Modernity | 55 |
6 | Black Strivings in a Twilight Civilization | 87 |
7 | The New Cultural Politics of Difference | 119 |
III | American Pragmatism | |
8 | Why Pragmatism? | 143 |
9 | On Prophetic Pragmatism | 149 |
10 | Pragmatism and the Sense of the Tragic | 174 |
11 | The Limits of Neopragmatism | 183 |
12 | Nietzsche's Prefiguration of Postmodern American Philosophy | 188 |
IV | Progressive Marxist Theory | |
13 | The Indispensability Yet Insufficiency of Marxist Theory | 213 |
14 | Fredric Jameson's American Marxism | 231 |
15 | Race and Social Theory | 251 |
V | Radical Democratic Politics | |
16 | The Role of Law in Progressive Politics | 269 |
17 | The Political Intellectual | 278 |
18 | A World of Ideas | 294 |
19 | The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual | 302 |
20 | American Progressivism Reoriented | 316 |
21 | Parents and National Survival | 333 |
22 | On the 1980s | 344 |
23 | Michael Harrington, Democratic Socialist | 348 |
VI | Prophetic Christian Thought | |
24 | The Crisis in Contemporary American Religion | 357 |
25 | The Historicist Turn in Philosophy of Religion | 360 |
26 | Religion and the Left | 372 |
27 | On Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's In Memory of Her | 380 |
28 | On Leszek Kolakowski | 387 |
29 | On Liberation Theology: Segundo and Hinkelammert | 393 |
30 | Christian Love and Heterosexism | 401 |
31 | A Philosophical View of Easter | 415 |
32 | On Gibson Winter's Ecological Ecumenism | 421 |
33 | Prophetic Christian as Organic Intellectual: Martin Luther King, Jr. | 425 |
34 | Subversive Joy and Revolutionary Patience in Black Christianity | 435 |
VII | The Arts | |
35 | Critical Reflections on Art | 443 |
36 | Horace Pippin's Challenge to Art Criticism | 447 |
37 | Race and Architecture | 456 |
38 | The Spirituals as Lyrical Poetry | 463 |
39 | In Memory of Marvin Gaye | 471 |
40 | On Afro-American Music: From Bebop to Rap | 474 |
41 | On Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror | 485 |
42 | On Walt Whitman | 489 |
VIII | Race and Difference | |
43 | On Affirmative Action | 495 |
44 | On Black-Brown Relations | 499 |
45 | On Black Sexuality | 514 |
46 | On Black Nationalism | 521 |
47 | Tensions with Jewish Friends and Foes | 530 |
48 | On Jackie Robinson | 536 |
49 | On Julianne Malveaux | 539 |
50 | Conversation with bell hooks | 541 |
IX | Postscript | |
51 | Chekhov, Coltrane and Democracy | 551 |
Notes | 565 | |
Index | 593 |