Saturday, January 24, 2009

Cornel West, liberation theologian?

Written 19 January 2009

Johnson, Clarence Shole. Book review: Rosemary Cowan (2003), Cornel West: The Politics of Redemption, APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience, Volume 03, Number 1, Fall 2003, pp. 52-56.

Johnson points up the contradictions in Cornel West's prophetic pragmatism and sociopolitical perspective. West eschews the label "liberation theologian" because it commits one to a transcendentalism which his allegedly experientially based pragmatism negates. But how can West's Christianity avoid transcendentalism, or the issues of theodicy raised by William R. Jones? Christian theodicy is logically at odds with an empirically based conception of sociopolitical causality.

I think this highlights the bankruptcy of West's left bourgeois theophilosophy.

No comments: