Keeping Faith Philosophy and Race in America

In this powerful collection by one of today's leading African American intellectuals, Keeping Faith situates the current position of African Americans, tracing the geneology of the "Afro-American Rebellion" from Martin Luther King to the rise of black revolutionary leftists. In Cornel West's hands issues of race and freedom are inextricably tied to questions of philosophy and, above all, to a belief in the power of the human spirit.

Preface: The Difficulty of Keeping Faith, 1 The Cultural Politics of Difference, 2 Black Critics and the Pitfalls of Canon Formation, 3 A Note on Race and Architecture, 4 Horace Pippin's Challenge to Art Criticism, 5 The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual, Philosophy and Political Engagement, 6 Theory, Pragmatisms and Politics, 7 Pragmatism and the Sense of the Tragic, 8 The Historicist Turn in Philosophy of Religion, 9 The Limits of Neo-pragmatism, 10 On Georg Lukacs, 11 Fredric Jameson's American Marxism, Law and Culture, 12 Reassessing the Critical Legal Studies Movement, 13 Critical Legal Studies and a Liberal Critic, 14 Charles Taylor and the Critical Legal Studies Movement, 15 The Role of Law in Progressive Politics, Explaining Race, 17 The Paradox of the African American Rebellion.

Cornel West is Professor of Afro-American Studies and Religion at Harvard University. He lectures widely and appears frequently on television, including Conversations with Bill Moyers.