The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Wisconsin Project on American Writers)

One of my favorite works of contemporary philosophy. Dr West has provided a comprehensive, thorough and elegantly written survey of a branch of philosophy that remains underserved. West’s own concept of “prophetic pragmatism” is a compelling philosophical model as well as an effective ethical model. Like any serious philosophical work, this is not for everyone. However, I think general readers will find the writing style approachable, albeit quite dense.For readers of Dr West’s popular social/political works (e.g. Race Matters), this is a great way to dig deeper into the thinking behind those ideas.Dr West is simply a national treasure and this is a uniquely American perspective on a uniquely American philosophical history.

I like Dr. Cornel west. He is the most philosopher and a published writer in the African American community. My book came in on time.

good as it gets.

Excellent reading! Easy to read & understand- worth the money!

West certainly has a project in mind when he writes this book: to deepen and sharpen the insights of the pragmatist tradition in light of the crisis of Marxist theory and the political and social ailments suffered, disproportionately, by marginalized communities. By themselves, projects don't preclude scholarly rigor - and neither does West's; though they may, as some reviewers have pointed out, give the reader grounds for approaching the text with caution. Fair enough. Only, Cornel West, in this book anyhow, seems ill-chosen as a target - if the critique is, as some have intimated, that his agenda forecloses critical scrutiny. Quite the contrary. Not only does his approach to philosophy - and, arguably, Pragmatism's, too - invite the reader to adopt a critical attitude toward inquiry generally (and "projects" specifically), but he also writes this early work with keen awareness of one pragmatism's basic tenets: namely, that every approach to inquiry and truth-seeking is the product of human creativity and agency and, as such, historical in its origin and fallible by definition. The charges, then, that West is simply dogmatic are not only false, but also misleading; they either betray a very poor reading of the pragmatist project - or suggest that the tradition generally, and West specifically, are not true to their historicist commitments.If anything, The American Evasion of Philosophy is one book where West is both open about his commitments and also quite thorough when it comes to tracing their origins. Not only does he identify the tradition he wants his brand of prophetic pragmatism to belong to, but by providing a clear, well-researched genealogy of that tradition (from Emerson until the present), he gives his readers the space to better understand not only where he fits into it, but why his prophetic pragmatism might, in light of the tradition's political shortcomings, also be necessary.To speak briefly to that intervention, prophetic pragmatism is ushered in by West's belief that pragmatists have, among other things, suffered from a failure to strike a balance between a rich sense of the tragedy of lived experience and a belief in human agency and social progress. As he sketches its history in America, he shows why first one major theorist, then another, has fallen short of grasping one - or both - of these positions. As he puts it, "The tradition of pragmatism - the most influential stream in American thought - is in need of an explicit political mode of cultural criticism that refines and revises Emerson's concerns with power, provocation, and personality in light of Dewey's stress on historical consciousness and Du Bois' focus on the plight of the wretched of the earth. This political mode of cultural criticism must recapture Emerson's sense of vision...yet re-channel it through Dewey's conception of creative democracy and Du Bois' social structural analysis of the limits of capitalist democracy." (p.212) If West's prophetic pragmatism succeeds where other pragmatist's have fallen short, then it's because it manages to "temper its utopian impulse with a profound sense of the tragic character of life and history." (228) And because "[t]ragic thought is not confined solely to the plight of the individual; it also applies to social experiences of resistance, revolution, and societal reconstruction." (228) The distinctive hallmarks of West's prophetic pragmatism, then, is "a universal consciousness that promotes and all-embracing democratic and libertarian moral vision, a historical consciousness that acknowledges human finitude and conditionedness, and a critical consciousness which encourages relentless critique and self-criticism for the aims of social change and personal humility." (232)In sum, beginning with Emerson and making his way through Thoreau, Peirce, Dewey, Du Bois, Rorty (and many others, besides), West tries to show that the pragmatist tradition in American letters, driven by a strong motivation to move beyond (or evade) several strands of European philosophy (those strands, in particular, that have been associated with broadly Cartesian accounts of epistemology), gives us the tools to develop a creative, socially- and politically-minded critique of modern academism and commercialism. Although this tradition, in West's estimation, ultimately fails to properly portray, realistically assess, and adequately strategize around the power relations that not only function in, but ultimately blunt, the force of critical intelligence, he tries to show why there is still reason to believe that the best insights of the pragmatist tradition in America continue to be relevant now. By taking the proper stock of power relations, pragmatism, West believes, can still inspire "progressive and prophetic social motion." Taken this way, West's book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the intellectual history of the United States, pragmatism as an intellectual and social force, or simply wants to find a hopeful but pragmatic alternative to the dominant social theories today.

Cornell West is a respected public intellectual. His academic career was based on soiid achievement. This work is considered by philosophers a good review of the Pragmatist tradition. It is referred to in major studies. The reviewer Rice is anti West, and has no knowledge of the book.

This is an excellent, highly subtle book. It is interesting and persuasive on the American pragmatists, there are especially interesting comments on Dewey and Peirce, who are new to me, but equally perceptive judgments and assessments of such major thinkers as Roberto Unger and Michel Foucault.As with anything written by Professor West, the vibes in the prose are powerful and mixed: the rythms of jazz and subtle tones of Harvard-accented English (yes, there is such a thing!), blend smoothly with more familiar idioms to render the scholarly assessments, at least for me, MORE and NOT LESS vital and organic.The passion for empowered democracy comes through here, as it always does with West, and so does the Christian sentiment. I would say that there is in this excellent book a bit of the Christian Romanticism that Professor West attributes to Unger.Fine book, let us hope for more from Professor West.

Beyond expectations.