Cornel West: A Critical Reader (Blackwell Critical Reader) [Paperback]

George Yancy (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0631222928 | ISBN-13: 978-0631222927 | Publication Date: August 30, 2001 | Edition: 1

This comprehensive text offers a systematic and thematic approach to West's philosophical work. It moves the reader through his distinctive form of prophetic pragmatism, his historicist and improvisational philosophy of religion, his socialist democratic and truncated Marxist political philosophy, and his reflections on a range of cultural issues.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Cornel West is a puzzle but one worth studying. An African American, he has risen to eminence first at Princeton and then at Harvard (where he is Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor and professor both of Afro-American studies and of the philosophy of religion). His long association with Afro-American studies does not exclude a global philosophical appetite; history, religion, culture, and philosophy are grist for his mill. His complexity necessitates a collection of essays like the 18 here. Still, readers must assemble their own pictures. There is a splendid essay by Hilary Putnam since the death of Quine arguably the greatest living American philosopher who has followed West since his undergraduate days. But Putnam's angle of vision is different from that of Josiah Ulysses Young III, who sees West as an American Emmanuel L vinas. In a telling "afterword," West calls himself a "Chekhovian Christian," but he would admit to being a L vinasian about human nature. He thinks of human beings as infinitely creative and able to rise above any limitations of culture and any system. He is also a Deweyite about social policies, arguing that we have to create a community based on mutual adjustment and the search for common interest. Every American intellectual ought to spend some time thinking about West, and every large library should give readers a chance by putting this book on their shelves. Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"There could be no more appropriate response to West's intellectual breadth than to assemble intellectuals and activists with diverse scholarly backgrounds and to ask them to engage critically with the full range of his work. The result is a book that can help us to assess West's achievement, while deepening our understanding of many of the questions raised in his extraordinary oeuvre. It also bears out the double-meaning in this book's title: for West is, indeed, one of the great critical readers of the American progressive tradition." Kwame Anthony Appiah, Harvard University

"Many of the contributions to this volume are written by members of a younger generation of scholars who have profited from West's pathbreaking writings. Their essays bring into sharp focus this question: is there anything that philosophers, theologians, or other intellectuals know, or anything they can do, that might help the black underclass in the US escape from what West calls 'a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness." Richard Rorty, Stanford University

"Every American intellectual ought to spend some time thinking about West, and every large library should give readers a chance by putting this book on their shelves". Library Journal

"Cornel West: a Critical Reader is worthwhile not only because it honors West, who is indeed worthy of our recognition, but also because it continues, and therefore lends credibility and possibility to, pragmatic philosophical discourse aimed at eliminating oppression through the expansion of democracy and improving our facility in the art of living." Ethics, Vol. 113, 2003

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; 1 edition (August 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631222928
• ISBN-13: 978-0631222927
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,203,694 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yancy's collection of "West" scholars is remarkable!, September 25, 2001

By 

M. PARADISO-MICHAU (Columbus, OH (USA)) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cornel West: A Critical Reader (Blackwell Critical Reader) (Paperback)

This is a Critical Reader devoted to a truly Critical, prophetic, and public intellectual -- Cornel West.

Yancy has edited another historic volume here (the first being AFRICAN-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS: 17 CONVERSATIONS), assembling and editing contributions by a venerable "Who's Who" among both young and more senior scholars. Lucius Outlaw, James Cone, Iris Marion Young, Lewis Gordon, Victor Anderson, Charles W. Mills, and many others have genorously shared with us their reflections on the work of Cornel West, one of (Black) America's most outspoken and intelligent souls.

Of particular interest is West's Afterword, "Philosophy and the Funk of Life," where he comments on his colleagues and critics' positions on his work.

This book truly opens up the dialogue concerning West and his interests (religion, African[a] studies, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, etc.) to a national level.