The Cornel West Reader Book

	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