0:12

Hello, and welcome to the History of Africana

0:14

Philosophy by C.K. Jeffers and Peter Adamson, brought

0:16

to you with the support of the King's

0:18

College London Philosophy Department and the LMU in

0:20

Munich, online at

0:22

historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode

0:25

will be an interview with Cornel West,

0:27

who is Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union

0:29

Theological Seminary and Professor Emeritus at Harvard

0:31

and Princeton Universities. Hello Brother

0:34

West, thank you so much for coming on

0:36

the podcast. Hi brother, I salute you and

0:38

I appreciate you being so kind

0:40

and patient to have me, and

0:43

I just look forward to learning and listening

0:46

to you. Likewise. And

0:48

we're going to start by going way back to 1977,

0:50

when I was a small child, and

0:54

I'm going to read an essay that you wrote

0:57

called Philosophy and the Afro-American Experience, which

0:59

is an important founding text for

1:01

African American philosophy. Looking

1:03

back, what was your aim in writing that piece?

1:06

And does it still reflect your view of what

1:08

African American philosophy ought to be? Yeah,

1:10

you don't want to begin by saluting

1:13

my dear brother Mark Kwartoski, who was

1:15

a professor of philosophy at Boston University

1:17

at that time. He had students like

1:19

Jesse McDade and others. Jesse wrote a

1:21

wonderful dissertation on transphenol and the Marx.

1:24

And he was the editor of that journal. And

1:27

that was the first so-called mainstream journal

1:30

that had a great interest in

1:32

what black philosophers were thinking about

1:34

and what we were reading. And that's why

1:36

you see, which is our law, Howard McGarry

1:39

and so many others there. And

1:42

when he asked me to do that,

1:44

it just comes from a conference at

1:47

Tuskegee. Tuskegee used to have an

1:49

annual conference in black philosophy. And

1:51

at that time, I was so deeply

1:53

into reading Heidegger and Wittgenstein and Dewey

1:55

and Whitehead. And so those were the

1:58

persons who were on my mind. I

2:00

somehow think of my

2:02

own formation, think of my own

2:05

tradition, my own history in regard

2:07

to those towering figures who already

2:10

had not just a legitimacy in

2:13

professional philosophy, but

2:15

they were the titans. And

2:17

because I've always been tied to the

2:19

goals and the marks and the

2:21

ground sheets who have a deep sense of

2:24

history and all of its complexity

2:26

and specificity, I

2:28

was concerned with trying to create a

2:30

conversation between those

2:33

European philosophers who

2:36

were deeply tied to history,

2:38

that philosophy going to school

2:41

with historical narratives, going

2:43

to school with historical

2:45

analysis and so forth.

2:48

And I had a lot of fun with it. I could

2:50

dip into the Black literary, a

2:52

little bit of the musical, but especially

2:55

the literary and intellectual tradition as a

2:57

whole, but it was very much still

2:59

tied to trying to show what

3:01

the result of a conversation would

3:03

look like if you

3:06

took those historicists from authors for

3:08

seriously and tried to take the

3:10

distinctive features and themes of Black

3:12

culture and Black experiences seriously. I

3:15

think an amazing thing reading it now

3:17

is that, like I said, this came out in 1977. It's

3:21

amazing how much you already tell this

3:25

very detailed, long-running narrative

3:28

of philosophy amongst African Americans, mentioning a lot

3:30

of the figures we've mentioned here on the

3:33

podcast and some others as well. So

3:35

did you have a sense already then that there was

3:37

this unrecognized phenomenon, African-American philosophy

3:40

that you could situate yourself in?

3:42

I was moving in that direction.

3:45

Keep in mind, see, I'm born in 1953, so I was

3:47

about 24 years old. I

3:50

had a lot of growth. Shakespeare

3:52

says, rightness is all. This

3:55

essay is not an exemplar of

3:57

rightness. It's page of... of

4:00

development, embryonic moment of

4:04

development. But just so right that

4:06

already, I think, so

4:08

much of what I would do. And as you know,

4:10

I'm headed now to the Gifford Lectures, you know, in

4:12

May, the first two weeks in May,

4:14

just a few months, and working on

4:16

those rethinking and reading and what have

4:18

you, I can see that, as Elliot

4:21

would say, so much of my end

4:23

is in my beginning. There's

4:25

no, but where I'm ending up, the arc I'm

4:28

reaching, is rooted very much in that

4:31

particular essay. You are so right about

4:33

that. I'm talking much more about music

4:35

now. What does it mean for philosophy

4:37

to go to school, not just with

4:40

poetry, not just with historical narrative, but

4:42

with music and the particular genres of

4:44

music, especially jazz? That's

4:46

where I am now. But the

4:48

two things that are so different

4:51

would be I'm much

4:53

more concerned about the relation

4:55

between the catastrophic and the

4:57

tragic comment. Black folk,

4:59

we've always lived in catastrophic times. That's

5:02

what it means to be a blues

5:04

people. Blues is very much catastrophe, lyrically

5:06

expressed. And that's always been

5:08

missing in much, if not

5:12

most, of professional philosophy. You don't

5:14

really get a sense of

5:16

the catastrophe, ecological,

5:19

nuclear, economic, social,

5:21

psychic, and so

5:23

on. You do

5:25

have the Sarts and the

5:27

Kewus and you do have the

5:29

Montanes and you do have the

5:31

Schopenhauer's and the Leopards and others

5:33

who are concerned about angst. Kierkegaard

5:35

has always meant much to me,

5:37

of course, and he's been concerned

5:39

about anxiety and dread to

5:42

follow through on what

5:44

it means to wrestle with catastrophe in

5:46

everyday life, the steady ache

5:48

of mystery and so forth. That's tragic comment.

5:51

So that's one thing and it's connected to

5:53

some notion of folly and fantasy that I

5:55

would spend much more time now than I

5:58

would in 1976. But

6:01

you're so right, so many of the

6:03

seeds of what would come

6:05

is right there in that essay. Now,

6:08

again, it reflects my own

6:10

parochialism in the sense that

6:13

I'm primarily in conversation with

6:15

towering Western teachers. Like

6:18

Dickinson. Exactly, exactly. The

6:20

White Heads and the Dewey's and

6:23

Bichesigns and others. So

6:25

when it comes to when we first had

6:27

the encounter at Leesha's Outlaws place and have

6:29

us way back in the early 80s, and

6:32

the African brothers came over. It was all

6:34

brothers at that time. And

6:36

oh, we had a wonderful time. I

6:38

mean, some had studied Germany. I'd spent

6:41

a year with Godamer at

6:43

Boston College. One of

6:45

the great figures had spent time with

6:47

Godamer too. And then

6:49

you had others who had spent time with

6:51

Habermas and Dettie Dye and what have you.

6:54

And I had some real deep African roots

6:57

that I knew not of. And

6:59

even when I read it, the steel was

7:01

external. It hadn't become in any way constitutive

7:03

of who I am. And

7:06

that remains the case as much as I have

7:08

deep interest. And that's why I've many

7:10

ways bow to you. Because

7:13

that African shine on somebody

7:15

much more colorful brother than

7:17

I am. Because I'm so

7:20

rooted in the West

7:22

and rooted in Black doings

7:24

and sufferings that

7:26

even as I read, and I have just

7:29

had long days, Marla, Karanga, and the whole,

7:31

so I did you love and respect. They

7:33

are very much in the Mahat traditions, very

7:35

much in the Egyptian traditions and so forth.

7:38

You see, I still go with Erasmus and

7:41

Vico and Marx and Gramsci. That's

7:44

the dyes of the world. Those are the

7:46

ones that speak to me at a

7:49

very, very intense and deep level. And

7:51

that's just part of my own context. One

7:54

figure that we wanted to ask you about, and I guess

7:56

long time listeners will not be surprised we wanted to ask

7:59

you about. him is W.E.B. Du

8:01

Bois because we've talked about him a lot

8:03

in the podcast, and who are the

8:05

figures come up the most actually. And

8:08

you've talked about him too. For

8:10

example, in Philosophy and the Afro-American Experience, which

8:12

we were just talking about, he's one of

8:14

the important thinkers in that story that you

8:16

tell there. And he's

8:19

even the central subject of what you've described

8:21

as one of your favorite writings, which is

8:23

Black Strivings and Twilight Civilization. So

8:27

he seems to be really important to you. Sometimes you're

8:29

critical of him as being

8:31

elitist, among other things. How do

8:33

you see Du Bois? Can you

8:35

summarize your feelings about him, or are they

8:37

too complicated to do that? On the one

8:39

hand, he means the world. I

8:42

think that he's certainly the greatest

8:44

intellectual to emerge, not only out

8:47

of the Black intellectual tradition, but

8:49

I think he's the greatest public

8:52

intellectual of the 20th century in the

8:54

American Empire. He's got some serious competitors.

8:57

He's got John Dewey, he's got Lionel

8:59

Trillion, he's got Susan Sontag. He's got

9:01

Edmund Wilson. You've got

9:03

some towering figures. But when

9:05

it comes to a figure of

9:08

who is comprehensive, encyclopedic, connects the

9:10

spiritual and the social, the

9:12

economic and the existential, the

9:15

personal and the political, Du

9:17

Bois is the candidate for

9:19

me. At the

9:21

same time, I've got profound ambivalence

9:24

for Du Bois. His

9:27

towering figure is Gert.

9:29

I respect Gert as genius, but

9:32

I'm with Beethoven. I'm with Schopenhauer.

9:34

I mean, Gert is metaphors

9:37

of cloudless sky. I'm a folk master.

9:39

I'm concerned about what Samuel Beckett called

9:41

the mess. So I'm closer

9:43

with William James, let's say, who's concerned about

9:45

the vague and the opaque and the indeterminate.

9:48

Whereas Gert is concerned about

9:50

clarity, transparency, lucidity, sound a

9:52

little cartesian, right? But

9:54

he's neoclassical Weimar, but he just has

9:56

a different orientation. He's the one who

9:59

takes von Neumann. and those against the

10:01

wall and says he doesn't want to read it.

10:03

He's the one who rewrites that, taking it and

10:05

rewrites Hamlet, because it's too dark. You see, as

10:07

the blues man, I begin in

10:09

the dark. I stay in the dark. I'm

10:12

concerned about that little small beam in

10:14

the dark, that little flickering

10:16

candle in the darkness of barbarism and

10:19

the history of the species. See,

10:21

that's my orientation. And that's

10:23

why I'm very critical of the voice when it

10:25

comes to his distance from blues and the tragic

10:28

comic, his distance from jazz and

10:30

in the history of the West, his distance

10:32

from Kafka, his distance from Paul Solani, all

10:34

of these figures he could have written about.

10:37

And he kept it on his length, his

10:40

distance from James Joyce, his distance from

10:42

the greatest of them all Chekhov. So

10:44

I have a very different temperament. I

10:46

have a very different sensibility. I

10:48

recognize him as the greatest

10:52

on both of those levels, black and left tradition

10:54

and public and election of the American Empire. But

10:56

we are in very different zones. Very,

10:59

very different zones. Now we would have been in the

11:01

same demonstrations. We were going

11:03

to the same tell-sales together. And

11:06

I still get up with that. Very

11:09

much so. It's true, too,

11:11

that he's a man of his time, the

11:13

way I'm a man of my time. So

11:15

he's much more kind of highbrow, brother,

11:18

whereas I'm much more gut-bucky.

11:22

Something else I guess you have in common with

11:24

him is at least an

11:27

attraction to socialism or maybe

11:29

better Marxism. Yes,

11:31

yes. I was reading something you wrote about this, where

11:33

you say that to

11:35

Marxism you say both no and yes. That's

11:39

right. And I think that's

11:41

true. Indefensible, but in the end,

11:43

inadequate. So where do you see

11:45

the main kind of payoff of Marxism for

11:48

you? And where do you see its limitations? As

11:51

a woman who was born at the

11:54

very beginning of the Americanization of the

11:56

world, at the very end of the

11:58

Europeanization of the world. begin 1492 and

12:01

end of 1945, the age of Europe. We

12:07

can't understand that age without understanding

12:09

capitalism. You

12:11

don't stop there, but if you don't

12:13

have a serious, sophisticated

12:15

grasp of the complex dynamics

12:18

of capitalist growth and

12:20

expansion, then you're going to miss much of

12:22

what that age of Europe was all about.

12:25

And so Karl Marx becomes a broker fire

12:27

through which one must pass, that you have

12:29

to go, through a

12:31

tradition that's trying to understand

12:34

one of the most fundamental

12:36

processes in the making of

12:38

the age of Europe, what we call the

12:40

modern world. Now

12:42

Americanization, which builds after

12:45

Europe is a divide, you're in Munich now,

12:47

you know the story, right? What is Germany?

12:50

It's almost a symbol, right? Divided,

12:53

devastated, completely decimated, dependent, one part

12:55

on the American Empire, the other

12:57

part dependent on the Soviet Empire.

12:59

So it's a different world after

13:01

1945. I

13:04

was born eight years after that, and

13:06

therefore in America, my God, you know,

13:08

the capitalism, most of production in its

13:10

various forms, especially the ugly predatory forms,

13:13

become fundamental, elemental.

13:17

But in the end, you got to understand a whole lot of other

13:19

things too. But that's

13:21

one of the things you have to

13:23

understand so that Marx is indispensable, but

13:26

also inadequate. He's inadequate

13:28

when it comes to understanding dynamics

13:30

of nation-states and cultures and structures

13:33

of feeling, structures of value. He

13:35

has no conception of death, of

13:37

dread, and despair, and disappointment,

13:39

and disenchantment. Were those things a

13:42

part of life? You

13:44

can't have a philosophic belch in China,

13:46

worldview, and don't have anything to say

13:48

about death. It's not just

13:50

something that happens to a particular member

13:53

of the species. Now, as the precious

13:55

human being trying to make sense of

13:57

the world and having loved ones who

13:59

are... behind and you

14:01

had to read some kindergarten. You have to read some

14:04

Strindberg. You're gonna be somebody else other

14:06

than Carl. And as you know, you

14:09

know, when Jenny von Westfallen died, what

14:11

did Mark do? Walking in

14:13

the out, so all by himself with a picture

14:15

in his back pocket. You

14:18

wish you Carl, but you

14:20

knew it was coming, brother. You

14:22

got to fortify yourself. You got

14:25

kids that, oh, I mean, so

14:27

that's just one small example. But the

14:30

boys, now the boys came to

14:32

Mark much later than I, you know,

14:34

I wrote my dissertation on Mark, as you

14:36

know, for instance, way back in the

14:38

late 70s. I was writing the same

14:40

time I was writing that essay. So I was in an

14:43

African-American experience in 77 and

14:45

I wrote my dissertation in

14:47

79 on ethics and

14:49

sources in the Marxist tradition that we published

14:51

at Monster Review, the ethical dimensions of Mark's

14:54

and the start 91. Thank God to Paul

14:56

Sweezy and Harry Magdol from Monster

14:58

Review who were kind enough to push me

15:00

to publish that. I want to work

15:02

so closely with them. But the boys

15:04

doesn't really come to Marxism until about 1912,

15:06

1913. He

15:11

was born in 1868, so he's

15:13

already in his early 40s.

15:16

He had been shamed. He's there in Germany,

15:19

where he's studying with Weber. And

15:21

that's, I got it. It just

15:24

business the great back of Weber

15:26

himself. But they had

15:28

pushed Mark's aside when he

15:30

was in Germany, you know, they had pushed

15:32

Schmoller and the other pushed Mark's aside. And

15:35

he doesn't really encounter Mark T. Edison

15:38

until after World War I. Fortunately,

15:41

he still had another five decades to live or

15:43

something. So you have no time to think about

15:45

it. Isn't that a trill of

15:47

another 50 years? Almost 50 years. It's

15:51

interesting that your critique of Marxism is not

15:53

so much that Mark's himself is getting things

15:55

wrong on the topics that he addresses, is

15:57

that there are topics that he has to

15:59

do. he just doesn't touch. So

16:02

as you say, something like existential dread, right?

16:05

If you want to know about that, and that's

16:07

part of life, as you say, is part of

16:09

philosophy, although that's not always philosophy the way it's

16:11

done these days. But for that,

16:13

you have to go to Kierkegaard. Is

16:15

that also where you see Christianity playing

16:18

a role by, as it were, supplementing

16:20

what you can get from other philosophical

16:22

sources? Obviously Kierkegaard's a Christian thinker as

16:24

well. Right. Oh, no, absolutely.

16:27

And of course, you know, just no

16:29

Kierkegaard without Luther and Augustine

16:31

and Pascal and

16:33

Montaigne, those who came before,

16:36

but absolutely. But for me,

16:38

you know, the Christian formation,

16:41

which is almost like my skin, tied

16:43

to mom and dad in Shiloh Baptist

16:45

Church and growing up and working

16:47

with the Black Panther Party

16:49

right alongside Shiloh Baptist Church

16:51

in Sacramento, it provided

16:54

a lens of wrestling

16:57

with what it means to be

16:59

human across space and time for

17:03

this particular member

17:05

of the human species, this

17:07

particular person, individual, always

17:09

embedded in family, community,

17:12

tradition. I'm very God-amarian

17:14

about that, right? Everybody

17:16

has a tradition. The question is, which one

17:19

is it? Usually not just one, but

17:21

it's inescapable, it's unavoidable, but

17:23

those traditions have varieties of

17:25

possibilities of modality that open

17:27

themselves to various interpretation. That

17:30

fusion of horizons that the great God-am But

17:43

I've always remained high to

17:46

one of my earliest wants, and that has to

17:48

do with the conception of what it means to be

17:50

human, and what it means to be you

17:52

when you're God to come to terms with

17:54

death, dread, despair, and disappointment.

17:57

But also, social arrangements, also.

18:00

visions of justice, but also

18:03

beauty, also

18:06

laughter, also folly,

18:10

also fantasy. And Christianity

18:13

in some way is like Marx's.

18:16

Jesus weeps but never

18:18

lasts. It's

18:21

like Socrates never cries. Now

18:23

Socrates doesn't shed tears, I mean you give

18:26

up on Socrates. This means he's, for me,

18:28

one of the greatest examples of intellectual integrity

18:30

that we have willing to die for. But

18:32

if he doesn't shed a tear, he probably

18:34

never loved anybody, and tens enough, and therefore

18:37

he's not somebody who I'm gonna follow. And

18:40

critically, I want to out-sacritize Socrates. I

18:42

want to raise questions about him. Jesus

18:45

weeps deeply. He loves people. He

18:47

weeps for last. He weeps for

18:49

the people of Jerusalem. And

18:52

he comes from the weeping people, the

18:54

Jewish brothers and sisters that unleash to

18:57

the world its magnificent conception of headset,

18:59

of spreading that loving kindness through the

19:02

orphan and widow, and fatherless and motherless,

19:04

oppressed, and so forth. Adorno

19:07

said it, condition of truth is to

19:09

allow suffering to speak. That's he goes

19:11

grand chair. Adorno's half

19:13

Jewish, but he didn't talk about it

19:16

too much. But an important point is

19:18

that these are

19:20

lens through which to look at the

19:23

world, which for me are

19:25

constitutive of who I am.

19:28

But, you know, there's

19:30

not a whole lot of stress on

19:32

laughter and beauty, even in

19:34

the Christian tradition. But where do

19:36

you go? There's a lot of places

19:39

you can go. You can go back to the Greek if you're

19:41

in the West. Or

19:43

you can go to which philosopher put beauty

19:45

at the center of their velted child, white

19:48

head. The teleology of

19:50

the universe is the production of beauty,

19:53

that's what he said, in

19:55

Adventures of Ideas. And that angle of

19:57

philosophy, that one lecture he gave at

19:59

the end. in his career from graduate students

20:01

at Harvard and Radcliffe. Philosophy

20:04

and poetry are akin. Philosophy

20:07

is mathematical formula, poetry to

20:09

media. And he's a mathematician as well, so

20:11

we understand his backdrop. And

20:13

he understands physics very well. We

20:16

understand his backdrop. But he's got

20:18

a comprehensive understanding of things that

20:20

embraces poetry, music,

20:23

historical narrative. He's one of the

20:25

few who, like Plato, has this

20:27

kind of syn of

20:35

the whole itself, only the whole is true.

20:38

Condonos is only the whole is false. But

20:41

we need his conception of the whole. I'm tied

20:43

to synoptic vision, synoptic,

20:45

to imagination, synthetic analysis

20:49

that has a sense of connecting

20:51

parts and showing

20:53

how they're interrelated and intertwined. That's very

20:55

much a part of my understanding. And

20:57

therefore, I know that every tradition that

20:59

feeds me has its own

21:01

blindness. It's a jazz-like

21:04

situation. The improvising as you

21:06

move, pulling from various insights

21:08

into these various traditions that shape you,

21:11

but they're critically filtered.

21:14

Actually, that's something I have to ask you

21:16

about. Unfortunately, the listeners can't see that you're

21:18

sitting in front of an amazing John

21:20

Coltrane image. Actually, I

21:22

guess it's various Coltrane album covers.

21:26

That's right, about 30,000. Yeah,

21:28

I can only see about 12 on

21:30

the screen. It's

21:32

so impressive. And

21:36

that's something that we really resonate with

21:38

in your work, because in the podcast

21:41

series, we've highlighted a whole

21:43

bunch of different connections between different musical

21:45

genres and philosophies. So we talked about

21:47

reggae. We talked about funk. We

21:49

talked about jazz. We talked

21:51

about gospel and spirituals as well.

21:55

I think this is a really interesting idea,

21:57

and maybe a rather unfamiliar idea to a

21:59

lot of people. people. So the notion that

22:01

music could somehow be philosophical or

22:04

play a part in the history

22:06

of philosophy, I guess

22:08

it also, though, connects to religion, what

22:10

we were just talking about, because you've

22:12

written that African-American music plays a ritual

22:14

role as well. Right. That's

22:17

right. So, and I think actually that's

22:19

sort of immediately understandable that music does

22:21

have the even in, you know, if

22:23

you think about like early soul music,

22:25

it's obviously coming out of the church

22:27

and so on. But could

22:29

you explain why it is that

22:31

music can similarly

22:33

fulfill a philosophical function?

22:37

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. One is that

22:39

you go back to Plato and he

22:41

said, why does he ban flute in

22:45

the Republic? It allows

22:47

for the liar. Just like

22:49

he bans most of the poets, but he preserves

22:51

those poets who will write him to the gods

22:53

and then comb him to the good

22:56

man. So he doesn't ban all of the poets.

22:59

No, but most doesn't ban all of the

23:01

instruments, but the flute goes. Well, he understands

23:03

the power of music, just like he understands

23:05

the power of poetry. And of course, the

23:08

iron and flute over self is

23:10

probably the greatest poetic prose writer in the history

23:12

of the West. So

23:14

he understands the power of poetic

23:17

expression. And therefore he wants

23:19

to constrain it and wants to limit it.

23:22

Now, if that's the case, then you say, so

23:25

when he's trying to displace Homer in 607

23:29

B5 and book 10 of the

23:31

Republic with that traditional quarrel between

23:33

philosophy and poetry, he's understanding the

23:35

power of Homer. Homer is the

23:38

most poetic of poets. And that's

23:40

precisely why he's

23:42

my major enemy in terms of

23:44

shaping people. The paideia that's

23:46

necessary, the deep forms of education

23:49

that's required to sustain

23:51

an ideal republic. I

23:53

come along and say that echoes

23:55

really of Lorraine Hansberg.

23:58

You know, when she rewrites the... waiting for the

24:00

note, great Samuel Beck, was

24:03

the use of flowers after

24:05

the nuclear catastrophe had started all

24:07

over again. And she starts with

24:09

the professor of English, who teaches

24:12

the two students how to play the flute. They

24:16

say, what's going on there? Well, you

24:18

turn the VCO. Let's turn the VCO,

24:20

1725, with the new science. VCO,

24:22

what do you have to say? Well, I

24:25

see that history in many

24:27

ways actually generated in part

24:29

by human beings burying

24:32

their loved ones, the corpses

24:34

in the ground, and

24:36

the moans and groans and sighs

24:38

that they make after the silences,

24:42

are responses to a

24:45

catastrophe that overwhelms them.

24:48

And it's going to take a while for them

24:50

to get to rational discourse. It's going to take

24:52

a while for them to get to consistency

24:55

and clarity and lucidity that you

24:57

get, let's say, a day car obsessed

24:59

with geometry and math and the new

25:01

science of the 17th

25:03

century. That human beings are the

25:06

kinds of creatures who do

25:09

make sounds in the face

25:12

of their sorrow, who

25:15

wrestle with grammar later

25:17

on in the face of their grief,

25:19

and therefore would get argued that the

25:22

moans and groans that serve as the

25:24

raw stuff of moving from

25:26

noise to sound on

25:28

the way to music cuts

25:31

deeper than

25:33

does rational discourse. People

25:36

say, oh, the

25:38

sounding romantic, oh,

25:40

it's just nowhere.

25:42

VCO was on to something very important.

25:44

That's why that third chapter in that

25:46

book's about Homer. And he

25:48

says Homer's not an isolated individual. It's

25:51

the collective voices of a people

25:53

who are wrestling with one. The

25:55

catastrophe is war with Achilles

25:57

and we go on and on and on. And

26:00

that it's inescapable. That

26:02

doesn't mean he's anti-philosophy. He just

26:05

wants philosophy to be honest about

26:07

itself. And if it does in

26:09

some sense come a little later, visa

26:11

of visa catastrophe, then human beings

26:13

have to come to terms with.

26:17

And every human being has

26:19

catastrophes on their way to

26:21

their house. There's just no

26:23

escape. Mama's gonna die, dad's

26:25

gonna die, love's gonna die, your friend's

26:27

gonna be crazy, your girlfriend, a boyfriend,

26:29

a sibling friend, or whatever, don't hurt

26:32

you. That's just

26:34

like... That kind of sounds like the bubbles

26:36

right there. But

26:39

what's important for me is that because,

26:41

you see, the Black musical tradition, which

26:43

I understand to be the greatest tradition

26:45

of the most catastrophic century of the

26:47

quarter time, which is the

26:49

20th century, the millions and millions and millions and

26:51

hundreds of millions of millions of people

26:53

killed, that it begins with catastrophe.

26:57

And most philosophers don't begin with catastrophe. They

27:00

just don't. And they

27:02

don't linger, they don't stay there. And

27:04

the three fundamental bases and pillars of

27:06

the Black musical tradition, which is for

27:08

me the greatest tradition of artistic

27:11

creativity, moral courage, and spiritual

27:13

fortitude, is

27:16

connecting catastrophe to a certain

27:18

conception of time, which Duke

27:20

Ellington calls swing, and

27:22

then improvisation, which I view

27:25

as pronincent, as practical

27:27

wisdom. So it's

27:30

connected to Aristotelian talk, connected

27:32

to what Sophocles ends up

27:34

with in antiquity, and

27:36

it's connected to what the Latinas would

27:38

call prudence. That's why

27:41

somebody like Erasmus means very much to me,

27:43

because praise the fallen. See,

27:45

I would argue, and this would be one of

27:47

my claims, actually, in the Gifford Lecture that I

27:49

talked about before, that praise

27:51

the fallen would be a fascinating starting point

27:54

for modern philosophy in the West rather than

27:57

dinkar, because instead of being a

27:59

part of the world, beginning with the clear

28:01

and distinct ideas and the obsession

28:03

with indubitability and certainty and

28:06

transparency, you begin

28:09

with the unbelievable crisis

28:11

in everyday life and the forms

28:13

of folly that are operating and

28:15

the various kinds of illusions that

28:17

are being produced and yet the

28:19

need in the end for prudencia,

28:21

for practical wisdom, how to live,

28:23

how to make it from day

28:25

to day and week to week

28:27

and month to month. You see,

28:29

that's the blues people start with.

28:33

So begin not in enlightenment but

28:35

with ironic confrontation of our own

28:37

limitations, something like that. That's exactly

28:39

right. In fact, it's beyond irony.

28:43

Irony is a moment within it

28:45

but it's tragic comic. It's

28:48

tragic comic so that those vehicles

28:50

are just tragic comic because it's

28:52

cyclical. He's pulling from Polybius and

28:55

Plato. He's got a cyclical

28:57

conception of history. Different ages go round

28:59

and round and round. Now, you don't

29:01

get that in the rest because he's

29:04

a good Christian humanist but

29:06

you do get the sense that, well,

29:09

any breakthrough is crucified. Any

29:11

breakthrough is tied to being

29:14

crucified with the shedding

29:16

of blood being misunderstood

29:18

and misconstrued and

29:21

that even though it may in

29:23

the end have a telos, in

29:26

the interim you

29:29

see nations, empires,

29:31

persons undergoing a kind

29:33

of cycle. I look to them, we don't

29:35

learn from the past too

29:37

well so we recycle the

29:40

same kinds of new forms

29:42

of organized hatred, new forms

29:44

of institutionalized greed and so

29:46

on. And Erasmus actually has

29:48

that work, he deeply influenced that

29:51

evolution. We translated with Thomas More.

29:54

Illusion is the great comic right

29:56

from pre-modern west. We somebody who

29:59

liked more. marks, a

30:01

broker fired, that which one

30:03

must pass. I

30:06

think that a lot of philosophers, if

30:08

they're asked, okay, well, if you associate

30:10

just one two word phrase with Cornel

30:12

West, I guess a lot

30:14

of them might say prophetic pragmatism, right? So

30:16

there's a label that is

30:18

stuck on you sometimes. Right. And

30:22

it is a phrase you've used as well. And

30:25

I think that this conversation has

30:27

helped me understand it better. Because

30:30

at first it looks like a bit of a contradiction

30:32

in terms, like pragmatism is dealing

30:34

with things as they come. Right.

30:36

Prophetic mode, which you associate with the

30:38

Old Testament prophets, which you mentioned before,

30:40

is some kind of visionary mode, right?

30:42

Right. But that idea

30:44

that on the one hand, we're kind

30:47

of muddling through and having

30:49

to face these tragedies

30:51

as they come, but on the other

30:53

hand, kind of keeping hope

30:55

that there is some kind of deliverance in

30:58

the end that we're working towards. Is that

31:00

something like what you mean by prophetic pragmatism?

31:03

It's true. I mean, I coined that term

31:05

back in the eighties, you know, when I

31:07

was writing the American invasion philosophy, I was

31:10

teaching at Universal Paris at the time, very

31:12

weird sound to me. And

31:14

I love with Rorty, Rorty wrote some

31:16

wonderful comments about that book. He wanted

31:18

me to exclude most of the parts

31:20

about himself. I said, no, no, no,

31:23

no, brother, brother, brother. Explain

31:25

this is Richard Rorty, who's like

31:27

a major sort of neo pragmatist.

31:30

Who is a teacher

31:32

and brother and absolutely.

31:35

But again, you know, the prophetic

31:38

pragmatism had not really come to

31:40

terms with tragicomic had

31:43

not come to terms with folly had not come

31:45

to terms with the catastrophic

31:47

in the most more explicit way that

31:49

I talk about. That's one

31:51

of the differences. But it's

31:53

true that, you know, I said pragmatism like

31:56

building on James really is the house of

31:58

many rooms, this mansion with many. spaces

32:00

therein. And prophetic

32:02

pragmatism would just be one little room

32:05

within that larger house. I

32:08

think there's always a pragmatist sensibility

32:10

that's deeply shot through of who

32:13

and what I am. We

32:15

take two things. We think of

32:19

three sources. I mean, Perce has a

32:21

Kantian source and Dewey has a Hegelian

32:23

source, and James has a British

32:25

and Pierce's source of their pragmatism. But

32:29

they're fundamentally concerned about the

32:32

richness and variety

32:35

of experiences, that it's very

32:37

difficult to ever get a

32:39

hold. But that's the fundamental

32:42

source from which one pulls

32:44

and what one falls back on.

32:46

Now, see, I do take that

32:48

very seriously. There's no doubt

32:50

about that. It's just

32:52

that when you look at it

32:55

through catastrophic comic lens with a different

32:57

time swing, concerned about practical

33:00

wisdom, how do you keep

33:02

on living, then

33:05

the roles of tradition become much more

33:07

important. You see, when Dewey defines

33:09

pragmatism, you remember that wonderful essay. Forget

33:11

what it's called. I think it's just

33:13

called On American Pragmatism. He

33:16

says that pragmatism is unique

33:18

among philosophical traditions because it

33:20

describes metaphysical status

33:23

to futurity. The

33:26

consequences, the results, you're always looking to

33:28

the future. That's a very new world,

33:30

very American, very USAS,

33:35

very Stoneham and Sacramento

33:37

and Birmingham. But

33:41

the danger there, of course, is to

33:43

think that somehow you generate and produce

33:45

a tradition of numerous and novelty and

33:47

not understood the way in which this

33:49

Whitehead says, nothing novel

33:51

is wholly known. Nothing

33:55

new is wholly new. It's

33:57

always rooted in some sense in an appropriate.

34:00

interpretation, and interpretation, and engagement of

34:02

the past. And I'm

34:04

much more with TS Eliot than this. You

34:07

know, he's right when he's politics.

34:09

I'm radically opposed, but he's

34:11

a literary genius, and a towering figure,

34:14

and fellow Christian too, after

34:16

1927 at the Eastern version. That

34:19

tradition and

34:22

individual thinkers, talent,

34:24

individual figures, individual

34:26

philosophers are always

34:28

in some ways understood against a

34:30

larger arise. So

34:33

all the talk about newness in the

34:35

world is just a matter of situating

34:37

you within a certain innovation

34:39

within the piece of a certain tradition.

34:42

It's just like the jazz tradition. Well, Charlie Parker

34:44

is brand new. Now, I'll

34:46

go back and listen to Jelly

34:49

and some of the others, and you'll

34:51

see elements there, but he's going to

34:53

sound different than Louis. Louis might go

34:55

understand it at all, don't call it.

34:58

We won't use the language because it's bad language,

35:00

but Louis wasn't crazy. But he can't dance to

35:02

it, not tied to the ritual of the culture.

35:05

He's too isolated, individualistic. Hey,

35:07

Louis, we don't exist

35:09

without you, man, but the system is historical.

35:12

We're in the clubs now. They small, man.

35:14

You can hardly even drink, let alone dance.

35:17

We just sit there and listen to the music and

35:20

take it in. So

35:22

with these changes containing the sunrods, I'm going to

35:24

go up to Pluto and Mars with

35:26

it. I mean, that's part of our tradition.

35:29

And yet in the end, I

35:31

do come back to these three pillars,

35:35

catastrophic, concept

35:37

of the temporalities and the full swing

35:40

and improvisation, not

35:43

just the way Levi Strauss talks about

35:45

him trying to briclage and briclure and

35:47

plexus, but the art

35:50

of improvisation. And

35:53

the art of improvisation is

35:55

actually rooted in some ways

35:58

in the history of the world. are falling

36:00

to the fools. This

36:03

is all very complicated, what we've been

36:05

talking about. I'm wondering, is this too

36:07

simple? So I'm struck by

36:09

the hypothesis that in

36:12

your early work, you're thinking a lot about humanism,

36:15

and then you move on to thinking about

36:18

pragmatism, and then you move

36:20

on to this tragicomic sensibility,

36:23

which almost looks like a

36:25

kind of concern with the

36:27

same phenomenon, except maybe with

36:29

a deeper appreciation of just

36:31

how absurd or horrifying, but

36:34

also how hilarious the

36:36

life is that we're confronted with. Is that

36:38

right? You hit the nail on the head,

36:41

though. But the whole project is a humanistic

36:43

project. Right. The

36:45

pragmatism itself is a particular species, kind

36:47

of new world humanism, kind of USA

36:49

American humanism of a certain sort. That

36:53

itself remains rooted in Socratic legacies

36:55

of Athens and prophetic legacies of

36:57

Jerusalem. So Cicero

36:59

and legacies of Rome, let's say,

37:02

speaking just kind of broadly, but you can see

37:04

how these streams feed into the

37:07

Dewey's and the James's and others.

37:09

And yet for me, the black

37:11

musical tradition and black philosophy

37:13

would go hand in hand

37:16

our profoundly humanistic

37:20

projects that are informed by

37:22

the best of the West,

37:25

but at the same time are

37:28

rooted in certain non-Western sources in

37:30

terms of African bodies, African rhythm,

37:32

African styles. But they're so

37:34

composite, they're so hybrid, they're so cross-culturally

37:38

fertilized in

37:40

a US situation, which is deeply

37:43

European and deeply Western, as well

37:45

as non-European and non-Western in certain

37:48

ways. So you'd think somebody like

37:50

me, check off to me, it's the greatest

37:52

figure that the West produced.

37:56

And I think he's even deeper than the blues because...

38:00

Chekhov has a

38:03

catastrophic consciousness rooted

38:06

in everyday life. That's what makes him

38:08

comic rather than just tragic. He

38:11

has a different conception of time. A

38:14

short story on Rothschild playing the violin

38:16

and the ways in which the

38:19

Yiddish sensibilities are shot through the

38:21

Russian oppressors circumstances to generate this

38:23

sense of being off to be,

38:26

before to be, under to be, in the

38:28

minor key which is very blues like. When

38:31

Duke Ellington says black people's make dissonance a

38:33

way of life. Chekhov understood

38:36

there's no accident, you know, the Yiddish writers

38:38

read Chekhov. They said he must be Yiddish.

38:40

There's no way he could speak to my

38:42

experience and not be Yiddish. Russian

38:44

is the translation of the Yiddish. Having

38:46

the highest composition you can see, right?

38:48

Because he's thinking, well, I'm touching

38:51

on something human here. What

38:53

makes that deeper even than my own blues

38:55

tradition is that the blues is still new

38:57

world and American. So

38:59

there's still some crucial role for

39:01

maturity. And there's some

39:04

possibility of a substantive futurity to break

39:06

through that green light that F.

39:08

Scott Fitzgerald talked about at the end

39:10

of the great gas. Gas, we still

39:12

believe that the all he wants to

39:14

do in the green light tomorrow will

39:16

be better. Tomorrow will be bigger. Tomorrow

39:18

will solve it. Tomorrow will have no

39:20

constraints. That's very American. Deeply

39:24

so. And that's not the right Mr. Shakespeare

39:26

was looking for when Edgar says, right? This

39:28

is all in King Lear. Best

39:30

for Chekhov. Even

39:33

futurity itself doesn't have any kind

39:35

of special status. It's

39:37

what human beings do in light

39:40

of their formation of the characters

39:42

that they have honed out given

39:44

circumstances under which they have not

39:46

chosen. And that

39:48

future will be a future, but it doesn't

39:50

have any physical status. He doesn't know this

39:53

is going to be better. It's going to

39:55

be a breakthrough. No, what the end of

39:57

Lady with a lap dog? the

40:00

problems just beginning when they make the

40:02

breakthrough. Or the other

40:04

three sisters have only we knew. If

40:06

only we knew we ain't gonna ever

40:08

get the Moscow. We're waiting like Samuel

40:10

Beckett, Dee Dee, and Go-Go. You're

40:13

waiting, you never get there. So that

40:15

the future doesn't have this little special

40:17

zone, special status that

40:19

it has in pragmatism. And in

40:21

the blues, it's

40:24

much, much, much, much less than

40:26

pragmatism, but even

40:28

in good morning heartache, it's almost like

40:31

I'm just really waiting for this. Come on,

40:34

next morning is it gonna be, are you really think

40:36

the next morning is gonna be a heartache again? You

40:38

really think, well, check off and say, of

40:41

course, the question is how you

40:43

gonna deal with it, give up

40:45

on that futurity obsession. And

40:48

it's hard for Americans to do that. Very,

40:50

very difficult. That's something to do, Henry Adams, Eugene

40:54

O'Neill and the Iceman come with you in some

40:56

way, wrestled with it, but

40:58

still, I mean, Eugene O'Neill begins that play,

41:01

talking about Jimmy tomorrow,

41:04

because O'Neill understands what

41:06

we're talking about at a very profound level.

41:08

And you think, who are

41:11

the philosophical analogs to

41:14

check off Eugene O'Neill?

41:18

Don't have any, man. Or no West,

41:20

maybe? Well, I'm

41:22

certainly leaning and lurching

41:25

in that direction. You're

41:27

right about that. You're

41:29

right about that. Actually,

41:31

that's kind of the last thing I wanted

41:34

to ask you. So I was reading a

41:36

much older interview of yours, which is collected

41:38

in the Cornel West Reader, I think it's

41:40

called. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And as you

41:42

were asked point blank, do you consider yourself

41:44

a professional philosopher? And

41:47

you said no. You

41:49

sort of said, well, I do philosophy, but

41:52

I'm kind of doing all these other things

41:54

too. And when you describe yourself, you use

41:57

words that don't sound like philosophers. So you

41:59

say things like. I'm an insurgent.

42:01

Obviously, you're an activist, right? So

42:03

you're many things. But

42:05

since this is a history of philosophy

42:07

podcast, and since after all, you

42:09

do have a PhD in philosophy, you've moved

42:12

into philosophical academic circles. Where

42:14

would you place philosophy kind of in

42:16

the whole spectrum of what you're doing?

42:18

So obviously, there's music, there's literature, there's

42:20

history, there's a lot going on

42:23

here. Do you think that philosophy was maybe

42:25

the best umbrella term for all of it?

42:27

Or is it more like figures

42:29

like we started with Heidegger and

42:31

Wittgenstein. So people were recognized as

42:34

being philosopher philosophers. Are they just one part of

42:36

a mosaic or is philosophy for you the kind

42:38

of the whole thing? Let me

42:41

put it this way that certainly

42:43

my two closest soulmates would be

42:46

Coltrane and Checo. We very rarely teach

42:49

in philosophy courses. Very

42:51

rarely. Even though I was thinking,

42:53

you know, I think love's

42:56

brain might actually fit in

43:02

play those in public because the

43:05

quest for God and it's tremendous him to

43:07

the God. So you

43:09

think, that's quite fascinating. Mind

43:12

you, for a quartet, he means a

43:14

lot to me, but he's not

43:16

as close to check up in

43:18

Coltrane. But I can't conceive

43:20

myself without philosophy

43:22

and philosophical traditions that inform me.

43:26

They just mean that much. Kierkegaard

43:28

was my first intellectual

43:31

companion of the

43:33

highest caliber. And I always remain

43:35

a certain kind of Kierkegaardian. You

43:37

just know that about that. But

43:41

I love reading Whitehead. I love reading

43:43

Saint-Erianna. I love reading Ernst-Cocer.

43:46

I love reading Suzanne Langer.

43:49

I love reading Stanley Cavell. I love

43:51

reading Lucius Outlaw. I love reading

43:54

Angela Davis. But you

43:56

can see again, you know, I'm not as rooted as

43:58

I should be in the end. African

44:00

and the Asian and more

44:02

non-western tradition than just the

44:05

lovely roomie. I mean, the roomie

44:07

and charms and company, all that.

44:11

He's on the love train way. I'm just lucky

44:13

to be at the back of the commutes on

44:15

that love train. And

44:17

I consider myself a love boy. You know, but

44:20

no, the roomie, oh my God. But he was

44:22

a little bit soupy and got a lot of

44:24

side-ups going on. So I do

44:26

have an appreciation of certain individuals, but

44:28

I'm not rooted in roomie's

44:30

tradition that shaped him. So

44:33

I know I would never call myself a

44:35

professional philosopher. That's just

44:37

true and narrow. I have an appreciation

44:39

of philosophers who are in the profession.

44:42

Oh my God, yes, I'm shaped by them very

44:45

much so. I mean, Rorty's anti-professionalism

44:47

in some ways is parasitic on

44:49

the profession. And

44:52

we used to remind him of that all

44:55

the time. Very important. And

44:57

he would recognize it. He

44:59

read his dissertation on Aristotle's notion of

45:02

potentiality on the 700-page dissertation. He wrote

45:04

on the ball white and then Yale.

45:07

And you see, oh, Rorty, yeah, I think

45:09

you're a member of the profession, brother. But

45:16

there's certain favorites, you know, there's like

45:19

in American tradition, James and Bill with

45:21

me, so much. Very

45:24

much so. Okay, well,

45:26

that gives us a perfect transition to

45:28

the next episode, which will actually be

45:30

the penultimate episode of this entire series

45:33

on Africana philosophy. We're going to be

45:35

talking about professional philosophy in

45:38

the 20th century, or perhaps we're going to be

45:40

talking about philosophers in the profession, as you just

45:42

put it. For

45:45

now, I will thank Cornel West so much for coming

45:47

on. I really enjoyed that. This was

45:49

wonderful, my brother. I appreciate it. You

45:51

have such a cute grasp

45:55

of what I've been up to. I mean, I

45:57

appreciate the kind of time and effort

45:59

that you've done. you exerted, time taken

46:01

and effort exerted to

46:03

read so much of what I've done.

46:05

I appreciate that. Well, I got a lot out of

46:08

it. So thank you and

46:10

thank you to the listeners for joining us.

46:12

And please join us next time as we

46:14

come to the second to last episode of

46:17

the history of Africana philosophy.