Cornel West Critical Essay | Critical Review by J. A. I. Bewaji

Critical Review by J. A. I. Bewaji

SOURCE: A review of Keeping Faith, in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 27, No. 2, June, 1997, pp. 212-8.

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 through with a commitment to the possibility of shaping the truth to the end of a futuristic good, a future and a good that are not neutral or ascetic. The work is a multidimensional gold mine of ideas on diverse issues; it is a culmination of years of consistent, persistent, and persevering toil in a not too clement academia, where there are benign and overt choke-spots to the unwary minority academic.

West provides a refreshing analysis of pragmatism often omitted by specialized texts. Its coverage is wide, its depth of understanding unreproachable, and its linkage of Dewey, Pierce, and Royce to...
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