Cornel West

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Cornel West, 2008.

Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953 in Tulsa , Oklahoma ) is one of the leading intellectuals of African American origin. West is currently a full professor of theology and African American studies at Princeton University . West is influenced by New Historicism , by pragmatism , but also by undogmatic Marxism and Baptist theology.

biography

West, the grandson of a preacher, was spiritually and politically inspired by the American civil rights movement as a teenager. At the age of 17 he enrolled at Harvard University , where he heard, among others, John Rawls , later he studied at Princeton University , z. B. with the well-known neo-pragmatists Richard Rorty and Sheldon Wolin . In 1980 Cornel West received his doctorate with a thesis on ethical aspects of Marxism.

Subsequently assistant professor of theology in New York, he was also active at Yale University and at the Sorbonne before moving back to Princeton. There he worked with Toni Morrison , Nobel Prize winner for literature.

His collection of essays "Race Matters" from 1993, including an analysis of the riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King police scandal , became a bestseller. In the following years he took part in President Clinton's "National Conversation on Race". After another change of university, Cornel West was appointed university professor at Harvard in 1998. Internal university disputes about West's extra-university activities (e.g. the scholar played hip-hop albums) brought Cornel West back to Princeton University in 2002. In 2004 he got involved with the politician Al Sharpton . In 2007, West worked with the musician Prince and recorded a new version of his song Dear Mr. Man , which Prince originally released on his album Musicology in 2004.

West received u. A. the American Book Award . He is Honorary Chairman of the Democratic Socialists of America . In 1997 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society and in 1999 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Self-image and political positions

A central foundation for the thinking of Cornel West is the Christian faith. He sees himself "as a revolutionary Christian in Tolstoy mode, wrestling with his faith day after day". Cornel West can, partly covered by self- statements , be understood as an “ organic intellectual ” in the Gramsci's sense . As an inspiring role model, West u. A. Martin Luther King Jr. Purely academic activity is therefore not a matter for this scholar. The activities away from the campus, sometimes criticized by critics (West participated in Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions, for example ), his learned essays enriched with comments on black popular culture and current political developments, are part of West's self-image as a committed and partisan "cultural worker" . He not only criticizes racism in the white majority society, but also, for example, consumerism and the tendencies towards de-solidarity in the black middle class, as well as the weaknesses of the Afro-American elite. Cornel West supported Bernie Sanders in the fight for the 2016 Democratic nomination, and after Hilary Clinton's nomination, he supported Green Party candidate Jill Stein .

In an interview in December 2016, he described President Donald Trump as the face of the American variety of neo-fascism, after he had recently nominated former Goldman Sachs manager and hedge fund manager Steven Mnuchin as finance minister and hedge fund manager and billionaire Wilbur Ross as trade minister , but still polemicized against Goldman Sachs and other banks and financial investors during the election campaign, from whom he wanted to protect voters like Robin Hood, and polemicized against the presidential candidate Ted Cruz , because he was a puppet of Goldman Sachs after Trump. West identified the following characteristics of the new neo-fascism: action against unprotected minorities such as Mexican immigrants, global militarism, expansion of the surveillance state and state repression, and that, despite its exposed connection to the working class, it continues to cement the rule of big business and the top 1 percent . After the neoliberal era, which culminated in Trump's predecessor Obama, which West also criticized as a continuation of a policy of national security and surveillance that abused civil rights, with Trump a president who is narcissistic and psychologically out of control has ushered in the neo-fascist era . To support him, he had chosen “the furthest right-wing, reactionary zealots” , which led to “arbitrary dismantling of the rule of law” , which was the definition of neo-fascism, and “pursued the interests of large companies and banks and those who followed Outsiders would be stamped in the skin color, women, Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Mexicans and so on and so on. ” According to West, this was “ one of the most frightening moments in the history of this very fragile empire and this fragile republic. ”

reception

German philosophers receive Cornel West's philosophy primarily under the term “prophetic pragmatism”. His philosophy is not simply adopted, but applied specifically to contemporary problems in Western Europe. The political philosopher Jürgen Manemann uses Cornel West's philosophy to further develop the new political theology as a theology of hope.

Quotes

“We are in the middle of an argument, a cultural exchange of blows . It has to do with the fact that the legacy of the 1960s has put conservatives and reactionaries on the defensive. "

"The humanity of black people does not rest on deifying or demonizing others."

Selected Works

  • Black Theology and Marxist Thought (1979)
  • Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (1982)
  • Prophetic Fragments (1988)
  • The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (1989)
  • Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life (with bell hooks , 1991)
  • The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought (1991)
  • Beyond Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism (1993)
  • Race Matters (1993)
  • Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (1994)
  • Jews and Blacks: A Dialogue on Race, Religion, and Culture in America (with Michael Lerner , 1995)
  • Future of the Race (with Henry Louis Gates Jr. , 1996)
  • The War Against Parents: What We Can Do For America's Beleaguered Moms and Dads (with Sylvia Ann Hewlett, 1998)
  • The Future of American Progressivism (with Roberto Unger 1998)
  • The African-American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Century (with Henry Louis Gates Jr., 2000)
  • Cornel West: A Critical Reader (Editor: George Yancy 2001)
  • Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism (2004)
  • Cornel West & BMWMB: Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations (2007)
  • Commentary on The Matrix , Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions (with Ken Wilber , 2004)

Web links

Commons : Cornel West  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: Cornel West. American Philosophical Society, accessed February 11, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Tahir Chaudhry: Interview - “There is hatred in me too”. In: Friday. February 21, 2019, accessed February 23, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Bill Scher, A loser who can make a big difference, in: taz, Easter 2016, p. 12.
  4. ↑ Cornel West on Donald Trump: This is What Neo-Fascism Looks Like , Interview with Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now, December 1, 2016
  5. ↑ Quoting from the interview with Nermeeh Shaikh 2016: The most right-wing, reactionary zealots, which lead toward the arbitrary deployment of law, which is what neofascism is, but to reinforce corporate interest, big bank interest, and to keep track of those of us who are cast as other — peoples of color, women, Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Mexicans and so forth and so on. So this is one of the most frightening moments in the history of this very fragile empire and fragile republic.
  6. ^ Jürgen Manemann / Yoko Arisaka / Volker Drell / Anna Maria Hauk, Prophetischer Pragmatismus. An introduction to thinking by Cornel West , Munich 2nd edition 2013.
personal data
SURNAME West, Cornel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weat, Cornel Ronald (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American intellectual
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Tulsa , Oklahoma