Cornel West Summary

An American philosopher, Cornel West (born 1953) quickly won recognition as a critic of culture, an interpreter of African American experience, an advocate of social justice, and an analyst of Post-Mo... Read more

In the following review, McCann offers a positive assessment of Prophesy Deliverance! In this brief programmatic sketch Cornel West has produced the most promising Afro-American liberation theology... Read more

In the following review, Jelks offers a positive assessment of Race Matters, though disapproves of West's humorlessness and the book's title. The eight essays in this collection exten... Read more

In the following review, Kulman offers a positive evaluation of Race Matters. The national discourse on race relations deteriorated into intellectual ambulance-chasing this past April while America... Read more

In the following essay, Goodheart discusses West's innovative stance concerning the usefulness of political debate and communication between individuals rather than artificially homogenous grou... Read more

In the following excerpt, Packer offers a tempered assessment of Keeping Faith, citing shortcomings in West's inaccessible scholarly allusions and indefinite promptings for change. Taken tog... Read more

In the following interview, West discusses his role as a public intellectual, his philosophical and religious perspectives, American culture, and art. When I first met Cornel West in 1979 or ȁ... Read more

In the following excerpt, Lamont offers a positive assessment of Race Matters. The three books reviewed here usefully canvas public debate within the African-American community, and between it and ... Read more

In the following review, Quirk offers a favorable evaluation of Keeping Faith, though finds that West fails to distinguish between secular and Christian pragmatism. In his pathbreaking The American... Read more

In the following essay, the critic refutes negative criticism leveled against West by Leon Wieseltier in The New Republic. Having profiled The Bell Curve and helped give national prominence to the ... Read more

In the following review, Gooding-Williams offers a tempered evaluation of Keeping Faith. This volume brings together a wide-ranging collection of seventeen essays, most of which were published else... Read more

In the following review, Bewaji offers a positive analysis of Keeping Faith. In more senses than one, West’s Keeping Faith is an essay in postmodernist and poststructuralist pragmatism shot ... Read more

In the following essay, Gooding-Williams examines West's concept of “prophetic pragmatism,” its associations with the pragmatist tradition, West's reading of W. E. B. DuBoi... Read more

In the following review, Brick offers a positive assessment of The American Evasion of Philosophy. The title of this book [The American Evasion of Philosophy] is laudatory, not pejorative. Here eva... Read more

In the following review, Loury offers an unfavorable evaluation of Race Matters. No one would likely dispute the claim that coming to grips with “race matters” is fundamental to under... Read more

Cornel West has been articulate, outspoken and politically engaged ever since he was a small child. West's mother, a schoolteacher, and father, an Air Force civil servant, brought their two sons a... Read more