Cornel West

Cornel West is an American philosopher, theologian and public intellectual who has taught at Princeton, Harvard and Union Theological Seminary. In The American Evasion of Philosophy he traces American pragmatism from Emerson through William James, John Dewey and W. E. B. Du Bois to Richard Rorty, presenting it as a turn away from the search for certain foundations of knowledge towards cultural criticism. He calls his own position prophetic pragmatism, joining pragmatism with Christian and Marxist concerns for justice. Race Matters made him widely known.

Key ideas

• American pragmatism evades epistemology-centred philosophy, turning from the quest for certainty to cultural and political criticism.
• Prophetic pragmatism joins the pragmatist focus on consequences with a prophetic Christian concern for the suffering and oppressed.
• Philosophy should engage public life and the struggles of ordinary people.
• Black America faces a threat of nihilism, a loss of hope and meaning, that politics must address.
• Democracy requires criticism, compassion and a tragicomic sense of hope.

Major works

• The American Evasion of Philosophy (1989)
• Prophesy Deliverance! (1982)
• Race Matters (1993)
• Democracy Matters (2004)

In the Book corner

• The American Evasion of Philosophy 1989 · Advanced
  A history of American pragmatism, subtitled A Genealogy of Pragmatism, by the American philosopher and public intellectual Cornel West. West argues that…

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