The Cornel West reader
(Book)

Introduction : To be human, modern and American -- I. Autobiographical prelude. The making of an American radical democrat of African descent -- On my intellectual vocation -- Sing a song -- II. Modernity and its discontents. The ignoble paradox of modernity -- Race and modernity -- Black strivings in a twilight civilization -- The new cultural politics of difference -- III. American pragmatism. Why pragmatism? -- On prophetic pragmatism -- Pragmatism and the sense of the tragic -- The limits of neopragmatism -- Nietzsche's prefiguration of postmodern American philosophy -- IV. Progressive Marxist theory. The indispensability yet insufficiency of Marxist theory -- Fredric Jameson's American Marxism -- Race and social theory -- V. Radical democratic politics. The role of law in progressive politics -- The political intellectual -- A world of ideas -- The dilemma of the black intellectual -- American progressivism reoriented -- Parents and national survival -- On the 1980s -- Michael Harrington, democratic socialist --

VI. Prophetic Christian thought. The crisis in contemporary American religion

The historicist turn in philosophy of religion

Religion and the left

On Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's In memory of her

On Leszek Kolakowski

On liberation theology : Segundo and Hinkelammert

Christian love and heterosexism

A philosophical view of Easter

On Gibson Winter's ecological ecumenism

Prophetic Christian as organic intellectual : Martin Luther King, Jr.

Subversive joy and revolutionary patience in black Christianity

VII. The arts. Critical reflections on art

Horace Pippin's challenge to art criticism

Race and architecture

The spirituals as lyrical poetry

In memory of Marvin Gaye

On Afro-American music : from bebop to rap

On Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the mirror

On Walt Whitman

VIII. Race and difference. On affirmative action

On black-brown relations

On black sexuality

On black nationalism

Tensions with Jewish friends and foes

On Jackie Robinson

On Julianne Malveaux

Conversation with bell hooks

IX. Postscript. Chekhov, Coltrane and democracy.