Cornel West
Cornel West
Cornel Ronald Westis an American philosopher, academic, social activist, author, public intellectual, and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The son of a Baptist minister, West received his undergraduate education from Harvard University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1973, and received a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1980, becoming the first African American to graduate from Princeton with a Ph.D. in philosophy. He taught at Harvard in 2001 before leaving the school after a highly publicized dispute...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth2 June 1953
CountryUnited States of America
Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.
Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.
To be human, at the most profound level, is to encounter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, yet muster the courage to struggle compassionately for our own unique individualities and for more democratic and free societies.
We have to be militants for kindness, subversive for sweetness and radicals for tenderness.
To get up in the morning & do the monumental tasks that face us, our labor is best fueled by love.
Nihilism is a natural consequence of a culture (or civilization) ruled and regulated by categories that mask manipulation, mastery and domination of peoples and nature.
Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.
I don't draw any distinctions between forms of bigotry or forms of ideology that lose sight of the humanity of people. I can't stand white supremacy. I can't stand male supremacy. I can't stand imperial subjugation. I can't stand homophobia.
For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.
I loathe nationalism. It is a form of tribalism--the idolatry of the 20th century.
When you say that [Martin Luther] King was a prophet, you don't say that he predicted anything; you say that he bore witness. He left a committed life so that people would never forget the suffering of people that he was connected to. King was prophetic because he lived a committed life. Now he did critique society, saying you're going to go under if you don't treat your poor right. I mean, that is part of prophetic calling, but it's not predicting anything.
You can't talk about truth unless you talk about yourself.
Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity.
We live in a predatory capitalist society in which everything is for sale. Everybody is for sale, so there is ubiquitous commodification - be it of music, food, people, or parking meters.