Cornel West: Kierkegaard and the Construction of a “Blues Philosophy”

Abstract

African-American philosopher-activist Cornel Ronald West (b. 1953) is one of the most prominent intellectuals in the United States today.1 Early on, his now classic works, Prophesy Deliverance!: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (1982) and Prophetic Fragments (1988), offered a fresh interpretation of the black liberation movement, and established him as a religious and political thinker of note. The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (1989), his most important philosophical study to date, situated his new interpretation of the black liberation struggle-a Christian existentialism, humanism, and progressive1 Since 1982, West has authored or edited nearly thirty books and countless articles, alone or with others (such as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Bell Hooks, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, John Rajchman, and Sylvia Ann Hewlett). See bibliography for a selection of his work. He has taught at Union Theological Seminary (New York City), Yale Divinity School, the University of Paris VIII, Harvard University, and Princeton University. He has been the subject of several readers and monographs, including The Cornel West Reader (1999), an edited anthology of his writings compiled by himself; George Yancy’s edited volume, Cornel West: A Critical Reader (2001); Mark David Wood’s Cornel West and the Politics of Prophetic Pragmatism (2000); Clarence Shole Johnson’s Cornel West and Philosophy (2003); Rosemary Cowan’s Cornel West: The Politics of Redemption (2003); and Keith Gilyard’s Composition and Cornel West: Notes Toward a Deep Democracy (2008). West has also been the subject of numerous interviews, conducted by intellectuals, religious leaders, and professional journalists such as Eva Corredor, Anders Stephanson, Michael Lerner, Bill Moyers, Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley, and Anand Naidoo (Al Jazeera), and along with his constant lecturing around the nation and the world, has become a regular commentator on Tavis Smiley’s National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service programs. West has served as a columnist, reviewer, and correspondent for Christianity and Crisis and Le Monde Diplomatique. He has also served on the National Parenting Organization’s Task Force on Parent Empowerment (as co-chair), the Democratic Socialists of America (as a long-term member and now honorary chair), President Clinton’s National Conversation on Race, Al Sharpton’s presidential exploratory committee, and Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign’s Black Advisory Council. Finally, West has become an actor and recording artist, who has starred in two popular Hollywood films incorporating his ideas, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, and who hasMarxism-within the pragmatist tradition of John Dewey (1859-1952) and Richard Rorty (1931-2007), and created a new form of American philosophical culture criticism: “prophetic pragmatism.” And his bestseller Race Matters (1993) broadened his stature by making his brand of pragmatism a regular part of public conversations on race, politics, economics, religion, and democracy.