I recently came across an amusing clip on Instagram — a 60-something man, dressed in an elegant black suit with thick glasses on, dancing passionately to the tunes of funky American music. He was joined in his merriment by a group of young people who appeared quite intimidated by the energy and “shaking” skills of this sexagenarian. Well, who could ever believe that this “cool old dude” is one of the best known public intellectuals not only in the United States but all over the world. A professor, writer, philosopher, and orator of great accomplishments, Dr. Cornel West is a man many would want to listen to for hours without blinking an eye, despite the fact that the subject of his discourses is not nearly easy or entertaining. Dr. West is currently the most popular public figure in the debate around race and injustice in America, appearing regularly on TV shows and podcasts with his typical accent of a Christian evangelist. His legendary book “Race Matters” is still revered as one of the most seminal works on the issue of social divide and oppression. Nonetheless, it is his other more philosophical and less political side that I will attempt to reflect upon in this essay.
Having never met him in real life, I can still picture him talking to me with his unique mannerism — “My dear brother….”, and a gaping smile on his face which is crowned by a thick chunk of black hair. That’s how easy it is to imagine Dr. West as your next-door wise man who greets everyone he meets with warmth and a load of humorous yet intelligent rhetoric. He seems to be challenging the conventional image of a philosopher as a lonely and pensive figure and brings philosophy out into the mainstream of public dialogue in the true Socratic tradition. “I am a bluesman in the life of the mind, I am a jazzman in the world of ideas” is how he describes himself in his numerous appearances on the media. His philosophy is poetic that rejoices in music. “Poetic refers not only to the versifiers but to all those who exercise imagination and get us outside of our egocentric predicament.” This unmistakable sense of hope and optimism is what makes Cornel West so appealing to most people. He is not Schopenhauer or Neitzche who despair in their extreme repulsion to the world, his philosophy aligns more with the likes of Albert Camus or Kierkegaard, for whom meaninglessness was as agreeable to live with as death and futility. Death is a recurring theme in his talks and reflections. “To live is to learn how to die” — he quotes in an interview for the film “Examined Life”. For Dr. West, a meditation on death is indispensable to philosophy of any kind, be it political or ethical. But will a realization of death make people more responsible or will it make them more hedonistic in their approach to life? This is where West’s “revolutionary Christianity” comes to the rescue. Apparently, Dr. West is also a professor at the Harvard Divinity School which makes him an authority on religion and theology. West’s Christianity is an exercise in existentialism reminding one of Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ”. He talks about “spiritual abandonment” on the cross and reiterates Neitzche’s “the death of God”. To him, being a Christian means to be hopeful in the face of death, to be loving in the face of suffering and injustice, and above all, to be faithful in the face of divine condemnation.
Unlike orthodox theologists, however, Dr. Cornel West also talks openly about fallacy and futility in the quest for truth— both religious and scientific. “Wholeness” is not a discipline in West’s philosophy. “One can have access to truth — small ‘t’ but not to Truth — capital ‘T’.” Thus, West somehow remains true to his early influences from Albert Einstein — everything is relative and nothing is absolute, not even truth.
Cornel West, to me, is the most relatable philosopher currently alive who is not afraid to speak truth to power and is neither ashamed to acknowledge the vices and inconsistencies of the intellectual traditions. Calling himself “a prisoner of hope”, Dr. West is someone who wants to make people dream of a better, more “dear brotherly” world despite all the nihilism and injustice around. That makes him an important voice to be heard.
“I don’t begin with romanticism, I begin with catastrophe”, says he. Catastrophe is perhaps all we have in today’s world. Therefore, Dr. West is the man of the era.
Picture of Dr. Cornel West is courtesy of nytimes.com.
Some of the excerpts and quotations are adapted from the essay “The Supreme Love and Revolutionary Funk of Dr. Cornel West, Philosopher of the Blues” by Jeff Sharlet (killingthebuddha.com).
Some other quotations of Dr. West have been paraphrased to fit the language context.
