Cornel West and Philosophy

Clarence Johnson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134727810
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie de la philosophie

Cornel West's reputation as a public and celebrity intellectual has overshadowed his important contributions to philosophy. Professor Clarence Shole Johnson provides a rectification of this situation in this benchmark, thought-provoking book. After a brief biographical sketch, Johnson leads us through a comprehensive examination of West's philosophy from his conceptions of pragmatism, existentialism, Marxism, and Prophetic Christianity to his persuasive writings on black-Jewish relations, affirmative action, and the role of black intellectuals. Special focus is given to West's writings on ethics and social justice, and how these inform his entire theoretical framework. Cornel West and Philosophy is a unique and indispensable guide to West's diverse philosophical writings.

Chapter One

Pragmatism and Existentialism

Introduction

Although Cornel West is generally acknowledged to be a pragmatist, in light of his own very identification with that position, very little attempt has been made thus far to relate his pragmatism to his existentialist preoccupations.¹ It is with this task that I shall be concerned in this chapter. In particular, I propose to elaborate how West draws upon his concept of prophetic pragmatism to address social concerns such as what he deems a nihilistic threat to Black America. To realize this goal, I will begin by giving a general but detailed overview of West’s philosophical orientation in order to situate him within the pragmatist tradition. I then will go on to elaborate his discussion of nihilism in Black America and to critique his philosophy of prophetic pragmatism as a viable strategy to resolve the nihilistic threat to Black America.

Situating West as Pragmatist

A useful starting point for my discussion is West’s own exemplary historical, if brief, account of the genealogy of pragmatism in The American Evasion of Philosophy (1989). In this work West delineates some of the most distinctive, perhaps even the defining, attributes of pragmatism. Essentially, he says, pragmatism, as a philosophical movement begun by Ralph Waldo Emerson, marked a radical departure in the United States from the dominant philosophy in Europe as reflected in the writings of the continental rationalists and the so-called British empiricists. The concern of rationalists and empiricists alike was epistemological; specifically, to subvert skepticism by providing a sound foundation for knowledge. The foundation was sought in the criterion of certainty. The point of deviance between these two competing schools, however, was over the method by which the purported certainty could be attained. For the rationalists it was through the employment of reason unaided by experience, whereas for the empiricists it was by means of sensation. What is significant is that this issue dogged philosophy with no sign of a resolution. Besides, there was also a metaphysical import to the whole enterprise in that the quest for certainty was a quest for apprehending (i.e., attaining knowledge of) the nature of reality. Thus, the issue between the rationalists and the empiricists was about the method by which knowledge of reality could be attained—whether through the employment of reason unaided by experience or through atomistic sensation.² According to West, this unresolvable issue that engaged the European philosophers provided, indeed constituted, the point of departure for pragmatism, the only authentic Western philosophy native to America. What then does pragmatism advocate?

Pragmatism, says West, in its historical evasion of epistemologically centered philosophy, is “a future-oriented instrumentalism that tries to deploy thought as a weapon to enable more effective action.” Or, better still, pragmatism advances “a conception of philosophy as a form of cultural criticism in which the meaning of America is put forward by intellectuals in response to distinct social and cultural crises” (1989, 5). It is this characteristic of pragmatism, namely, of its having as an end knowledge as it relates to action, that clearly distinguishes the doctrine from European philosophy, the latter of which was concerned either with knowledge as such or with being as an extrasensory phenomenon.

It is not my aim here to identify let alone discuss any of the crises in reaction to which pragmatism originated as response and/or tried to side-step. I mention this fact about the point of departure of pragmatism only to call attention to the following features of the position. First, pragmatism is action oriented. Second, it is concerned with consequences. And third, as a social and cultural critique, pragmatism is a dynamic (as opposed to a static) philosophical position. This last point is of the utmost significance because it brings out very clearly the relevance of pragmatism to the contemporary United States. As society undergoes change—social, economic, and cultural—pragmatisms come to bear on the ongoing discussion about the nature of the change. It is in this connection that one sees clearly the rationale for West’s identification of himself as a Deweyan, rather than a Piercean or Jamesian, pragmatist. As he tells us, “the thoroughgoing historical consciousness and emphasis on social and political matters found in John Dewey speaks more to my purpose than the preoccupations with logic in Pierce and the obsessions with individuality in James” (ibid., 6). This remark immediately begs a central question of the present study: “What is Cornel West’s purpose in his philosophy?” To answer this question I will have to answer yet another, even more fundamental, question: What, in West’s view, is the nature of Dewey’s pragmatism?

West characterizes Dewey as “the greatest of the American pragmatists” (ibid., 69) because, among other things, Dewey’s pragmatism expresses “a mode of historical consciousness that highlights the conditioned and circumstantial character of human existence in terms of changing societies, cultures, and communities” (69–70). West goes on to elaborate his meaning in a note explaining the difference between the pragmatism of William James and that of Dewey, saying that Dewey’s is concerned with “the social and historical forces that shape the creative individual” (ch. 3, note 1). The central causal agents of change that help shape the individual are the economic structures that had emerged in a nineteenth-century society undergoing rapid industrialization. Inversely proportionate to the rapid industrialization of society and the tremendous economic success of the industrial capitalist investors was a sharp decline in the living conditions of the new industrial working class that consisted largely of immigrants and African Americans. Put baldly, the industrial working class experienced economic poverty and social misery at a time when the capitalist investors and organizations were experiencing huge economic successes. West sums up the socioeconomic reality of the industrial underclass as “principally that of economic deprivation, cultural dislocation, and personal disorientation” (80). It is directly to this crisis of the human condition that Dewey’s pragmatism speaks. Thus, in a sense, Dewey’s pragmatism, in its bid to formulate strategies to ameliorate the predicament thus described, is a form of social activism.

West lists three ways in which Dewey attempted to address the socioeconomic crisis of nineteenth-century America. (1) Through journalism Dewey endeavored to popularize critical intelligence (or critical thinking) so as to be able to educate the masses. (2) Dewey affiliated himself with influential middle-class humanitarian organizations that worked with the underclass in a bid “to assimilate and acculturate immigrants into the American mainstream.” And (3) Dewey exercised leadership over a rapidly growing teaching profession both by practical examples and through his writing (ibid., 79–80).

It is arguable of course that Dewey succeeded in these ventures. For example, West points out that while Dewey’s commitment to cultivate critical intelligence, especially in children, led him to set up a laboratory school in Chicago, popularly known as the “Dewey School,” his endeavor to take philosophy to the people through the newspaper was scarcely helpful to his cause. Dewey outraged the mainstream media, which lampooned his idea, and he was unwilling to engage them in any manner whatsoever. True, Dewey was involved directly with humanitarian groups and organizations that were concerned about the social and economic condition of the industrial working class, as attested to by his participation in Hull House (founded by Jane Addams). According to Richard J. Bernstein, “Dewey mixed with workers, union organizers, and political radicals of all sorts.”³ Yet Dewey’s reluctance to engage the very core middle-class establishment from which his income and status as a professional originated seems to have cast a shadow on his social activism. Thus, although he believed that social and economic redemption for the underclass could be obtained through a democratization process facilitated by education, he was most unwilling to invest the hard capital, using his professional career as collateral, for this end.

West contrasts Dewey’s unwillingness to risk his professional career in support of his political beliefs with the willingness of his friend and former classmate Henry Carter Adams to do just that. Adams was dismissed from his teaching position at Cornell University because of his public support of the Knights of Labor. What is significant is that Adams had considerable difficulty securing a job because of his socialist beliefs (ibid., 80). Yet this difficulty in obtaining a job did not quell his desire to give expression to his political beliefs after he had landed a job. To be sure, Dewey did try to exercise leadership over his professional colleagues by even castigating them for their complacency, indolence, and ivory-tower mentality. As West puts it, “Dewey castigated the ivory-tower scholar frightened by the dirty world of politics and afraid of the consequences of active engagement” (82).⁴ But when one considers that Dewey just was not prepared to face the consequences of subscribing to a political belief, his criticism of his professional colleagues seems to ring hollow. Surprisingly, West describes as “quite understandable” (82) Dewey’s unwillingness to risk his career in promoting and defending his political beliefs against press criticism, especially his belief of taking philosophy to the masses. And continuing his apology for Dewey, West says that “Dewey practiced professional caution and political reticence. He remained deeply engaged in civic affairs, but shunned controversy” (83).⁵ No doubt all of this is true. Yet it remains an open question whether or not Dewey was prepared to confront and engage the real culprits, the causes of the problems he was presumably working to resolve, namely, the very middle-class institutions and establishments that supported his economic and social lifestyle.

To sum up the key points of the discussion thus far, West regards the following as central to Dewey’s pragmatism. First, it is action oriented in endeavoring to provide strategies through education for the amelioration of the dismal socioeconomic condition of the emergent underclass in nineteenth-century industrial America. Second, it utilized existing middle-class institutions, such as universities and humanitarian organizations, to sound a note of urgency in its critique of social and economic injustice that was meted out to the underclass. And third, for Dewey philosophy had an instrumental rather than an intrinsic worth; he felt that its value consists in its ability to be employed in the resolution of human problems rather than in its celebration of ideas as much, as the the European epistemologists believed. It is in this context that, for West, Dewey was as much a social reformer as he was a philosopher.

West’s Purpose in His Philosophy

Drawing upon the foregoing discussion, I now can attempt to answer the question raised earlier about West’s purpose in his philosophy. Essentially, and in a similar Deweyan spirit, West’s philosophy (or his pragmatism) is unquestionably a form of cultural criticism and social activism. His principal motivation in outlining his philosophical views in Evasion (1989) is, in his words, “my disenchantment with intellectual life in America and my own demoralization regarding the political and cultural state of the country.” In the intellectual sphere, West is disenchanted by what he describes as “the transformation of highly intelligent liberal intellectuals into tendentious neoconservatives owing to crude ethnic identity-based allegiances and vulgar neonationalist sentiments.” On the political sphere, West is concerned about and disappointed with “the professional incorporation of former New Left activists who now often thrive on a self-serving careerism while espousing rhetoric of oppositional politics of little serious integrity.” And on the cultural domain, he is “depressed about the concrete nihilism in working-class and underclass American communities—the pervasive drug addiction, suicides, alcoholism, male violence against women, white violence against black, yellow, and brown people, and the black criminality against others, especially other black people” (7–8).

There can be no doubt but that these concerns about the human predicament in contemporary America situate West squarely within the pragmatist tradition of Emerson and Dewey. Some parallelisms are certainly in order. For example, West’s avowed interest in the plight of the underclass parallels Dewey’s concern with the new industrial underclass in nineteenth-century United States. West’s declared disappointment with intellectual colleagues is but a reflection or a replay of Dewey’s indictment of Dewey’s own professional colleagues. And West’s membership in the Democratic Socialists of America is reminiscent of Dewey’s affiliation with unions and organized labor.

As with Dewey, West gives a practical use to philosophy by deploying it to resolving concrete issues that affect human beings in their day-to-day struggles. His aim in so doing is to effect change in society through a reconfiguration of the structures that delimit or exclude individuals from participating in its political and economic systems. He characterizes his philosophy as “prophetic pragmatism,” a position he elaborates in a variety of ways, of which the following is a succinct statement:

Prophetic pragmatism understands the Emersonian swerve from epistemology—and the American evasion of philosophy—not as a wholesale rejection of philosophy but rather as a reconception of philosophy as a form of cultural criticism that attempts to transform linguistic, social, cultural, and political traditions for the purposes of increasing the scope of individual development and democratic operations. Prophetic pragmatism conceives of philosophy as a historically circumscribed quest for wisdom that puts forward new interpretations of the world based on past traditions in order to promote existential sustenance and political relevance. Like Emerson and earlier pragmatists, it views truth as a species of the good, as that which enhances the flourishing of human progress. This does not mean that philosophy ignores the ugly facts and unpleasant realities of life and history. Rather, it highlights these facts and realities precisely because they provoke doubt, curiosity, outrage, or desperation that motivates efforts to overcome them. These efforts take the forms of critique and praxis, forms that attempt to change what is into a better what can be. (ibid., 230)⁶

West’s pragmatism is “prophetic” precisely because he draws upon his Christian background to articulate and engage the problems that confront the powerless in contemporary America with a view to their amelioration and as a spiritual vocation. Central to this vocation is an ethic of love of the kind expressed in the Bible requiring us to love our neighbors as (we do) ourselves. As I will demonstrate in the sections that follow, this concept of love will play an important role in West’s discussion of the problem of Black nihilism. But what I want to stress here is that West, as both proponent and practitioner of prophetic pragmatism, envisions himself a modernday prophet, comparable to the biblical prophets, advocating on behalf of “the wretched of the earth.”

In sum, then, West, like Dewey in the nineteenth-century United States, is concerned with the social, economic, cultural (in the broadest sense), and spiritual afflictions of the powerless in contemporary society. And like the biblical prophets, West sees himself as bringing urgency to the conditions of the powerless, advocating their amelioration with honesty and integrity. With this in mind, I shall characterize West’s prophetic pragmatism as a philosophical position concerned with cultural criticism, imbued with a moral content and anchored in West’s Christian background. This characterization draws support from West’s own very remark:

I hold a religious conception of pragmatism. I have dubbed it “prophetic” in that it harks back to the Jewish and Christian tradition of prophets who brought urgent and compassionate critique to bear on the evils of their day. The mark of the prophet is to speak the truth in love with courage—come what may. Prophetic pragmatism proceeds from this impulse. It neither requires a religious foundation nor entails a religious perspective, yet prophetic pragmatism is compatible with religious outlooks. (Evasion, 233)

It scarcely needs any argument to show that West’s primary object in Evasion is to contextualize prophetic pragmatism as an authentic variety of American pragmatism. He suggests as much in his concluding remarks in the introductory chapter of Evasion. “I began this work as an exercise in critical self-inventory, as a historical, social, and existential situating of my own work as an intellectual, activist, and human being. I wanted to make clear to myself my own contradictions and tensions, faults and foibles as one shaped by, in part, the tradition of American pragmatism.” Or again: “I have written this text convinced that a thorough examination of American pragmatism, stripping it of its myths, caricatures, and stereotypes and viewing it as a component of a new and novel form of indigenous American oppositional thought and action, may be a first step toward fundamental change and transformation in America and the world” (8). These remarks, taken in light of the preceding discussion, validate further the point that West’s philosophical concerns situate him squarely within the pragmatist tradition. I now will give an illustrative treatment of one specific issue about human existence that West interrogates from the perspective of an existentialist informed by the motivations of prophetic pragmatism. Specifically, I will consider his treatment of nihilism among African Americans in his book Race Matters.⁷

West and Black Nihilism

One existentialist concern that West raises in Race Matters (1994) is what he describes as the pervasive sense of utter meaninglessness, despondency, self-loathing and impotence that permeates Black America, especially its youth (1994, 22–23). It is this horrifying phenomenon that West characterizes as nihilism in Black America. Black nihilism, in short, is a life without hope that constitutes a severe threat to the very survival of Black America. And it is precisely because of the severe threat that nihilism poses for Black America that West says nihilism needs to be confronted.⁸

West identifies two main causes of this nihilism: (1) the preponderance of market morality in America and (2) the serious and deleterious crisis of leadership in the Black community. Concerning the first, the preponderance of market morality, West contends that the market forces promote, even advocate, an ethic of consumerism that subordinates, instrumentalizes, or objectifies others as a means of pleasure for one’s own profit. Another way of putting this point is to say that market morality commodifies human beings, thereby treating them as a means to an end, the end being profit, rather than (in Kant’s well-known terminology) ends in themselves.⁹ This morality construes bestial hedonism as a virtue, for it takes the end in life to be indulgence in the seductive transient pleasures of the body. Furthermore, and more importantly, this market morality is transmitted through the airwaves and dominates popular culture—radio, television, movies, and so on—thereby creating a form of environmental and psychological pollution for all who exposed to the American environment. It is in th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Cornel West’s Philosophical Writings and Social Justice
• 1. Pragmatism and Existentialism
• 2. Humanistic Scholarship and Praxis
• 3. Black Prophetic Christianity and Marxist Social Thought
• 4. Black-Jewish Conflict and Dialogue
• 5. Affirmative Action and Proto-Marxism
• 6. Modernity, Philosophy, and Race(ism)
• Postscript: West, Public Intellectualism, and the Harvard Controversy
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index