Cornel West's Catastrophic Love
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Institutions-governmental, religious, financial, even revolution itself-have a way of turning stale and sour. "Thank God for the history of the heretics and the blasphemers. That's my crowd," says Dr. Cornel West. Quoting from some of history and literature's greatest thinkers and doers, West presents a poetic lecture on the role of hope in America's past and its future, and how to make your voice matter.
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CORNEL WEST
Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He has also taught at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Paris. Cornel West graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He has written over 20 books and has edited 13. Though he is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, his most recent releases, Black Prophetic Fire and Radical King, were received with critical acclaim.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Cornel West: Shelley was right when he said poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Yes Percy, we appreciate that. We understand that. We know they published that after you died, but we got the memo.
By poetry he wasn't talking about versifiers, he wasn't talking about folks who write words on a page; he was talking about all human beings who muster imagination and empathy to conceive of an alternative reality given the nightmarish catastrophic driven realities most of us have to come to terms with, which means to live a life of a certain kind is to be a poet, an artist of life, an artist of living, one who through one's deeds and actions and witness exemplifies an imagination and an empathy that is subversive in terms of relating to the past, which has fortitude and courageous in the present to pass onto the next generation, some wind at their back.
If you want to know what hope is just zoom in on August of 1955 with Emmett Till's mother when she's asked to speak before not just public but the whole world, because the cameras were there from all the various nations and there's her baby in the coffin with the coffin open. They tried to make sure they kept the coffin closed. She said, “No, they're going to keep it open. We just fetched this body from the Tallahassee River in Jim Crow gut-bucket Mississippi, killed by cowardly hateful American terrorists, white supremacists. We're going to keep it open. This is my only baby.” What you got to say, Mamie Till, to the world?
“I'm not speaking on behalf of myself,” she says. “I’m not speaking on behalf of black people or America, I'm speaking on behalf of the best of the human species, which is what? I don't have a minute to hate; I will pursue justice for the rest of my life.”
That's being a hope, and it's an echo. That magnificent moment in Reinhold Niebuhr's 1932 classic 'Moral Man and Immoral Society' where Reinhold says: any justice that's only justice soon degenerates into something less than justice. Justice must be rescued by something grander and deeper than justice, mainly love. Love, justice: not identical, but indivisible.
When Martin says, "Justice is what love looks like in public," he's talking about it in the legacy of Jerusalem, not the legacy of Athens. For Plato justice is a norm to giving and having one's due. But in Amos justice is a force. It's a major force. It's an answer to the question that Walter Hawkins in his song 'What Is This?': 'How do I account for this fire I have inside of me that won't give me any peace? I've got to somehow get it out. And if I don't do something the rocks are going to cry out.' That's existential.
I wouldn't even call it spiritual because we know religious folk have no monopoly on it given the history of religious institutions accommodating themselves to the most vicious forms of bestiality and atrocity. Be it against our Jewish brothers and sisters in the history of Christianity, it can be against Muslims, it could be against Arabs, it could be against women and gays and lesbians, black folk, whatever. Thank god for the history of the heretics and the blasphemers. That's my crowd.
Look at the history of communism, my god: every self-conscious Marxist find him or herself usually having to leave the...
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Cornel west is very good at expressing complexity so that we can see the bad and the good without relying on all our own prejudices.
Plus he has a great speaking voice.
"A condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak." WOW, I love that.
I absolutely LOVE this intellectual. In my fantasy, he is a good friend of mine. Peace Professor
I thought i was the only one. Hes my mentor in my head
man, so much beauty. bring tears to my eyes & peace to my heart...
I love it, 'defeat with integrity'.
If ever we can clone a mind, and keep it available for the enrichment of future generations, this man should be first in line.
Navigate your way out of material poverty and its grinding indignities,with this man.. and find your way to the spiritual and intellectual riches he speaks of.
Love that man.
I love your thinking!
Absolutely perfect response. Well done.
Brother made me just look, listen and Smile!! LOVE!!!
OK, you my man need to suggest me a play list!
@bens3rd I'll do that. Thanks!
he is saying that only a man who truly loves his identity has the ability to truly love others. love is fundamental. and you cant build a building on unstable soil.
I think what he means is that love begins in familiar places. Those immediately around us, our histories, our struggles etc. But he then characterizes it as "spilling over". He's primarily describing what his vision is of the nature of love and how it encompasses everything.
yes!
Justice is what love looks like in public, man that's really nice
Bluesman's sensibility - a way of life expressed in an Art form.
Amen brotha
If only the internet would listen to guys like Dr. West more.
..great Mind ..
Good guy
@shango02005 you should listen again, with all due respect. And beyond that, check out one of his books. One of my favorites is "Prophesy Deliverance!" Dr. West is certainly entertaining, but he is also one of the most brilliant public intellectuals of our times. It's tragic tragic that we only appreciate the lives of people like Dr. West after they are gone.
Cool story
Compassion and bitterness are ladled from the same cauldron of suffering and sadness.
Starting to like this man..
this guy is awesome.
I never mentioned 'type'
What about Train and monk and Mingus...
unconditional love is attached to justice - BINGO! Love this man!
some catastrophic afternoon wisdom for the lot...
Stephen Jay Gould used Baseball to illustrate some of the more complicated aspects of geology and evolution. Cornel West uses Blues Music. Whatever works! Whatever gets the important message across!
Fight violence with compassion and love; "blues" sensibilitiy as counter-terrorism; spill-over love! We should have a National Blues Music Sensibilities Day!
Although this is nothing necessarily "new" to me, being in the "choir" as I am, so to speak, he presents it in such a way that I am changed. No goin' back.
cornel, you my friend have allocated alot of life in the paradox called irony..i will define it tomorrow if you dont mind.
As for the absence of the counter-terrorist response . . . what about the terrorist response of street gangs terrorizing those unfortunate enough to have to live in their midst? What about all the criminal activity in those same communities, both from the gang members and free agents? What sort of love is that all about?
I love Cornel West. He is so inspirational and a wonderful intellect.
What cornell west said about black people not lynching white people made me cry.
What if unconditional love in the face of sorrow and cruelty is from the REVERSAL of values and tied to resentment?
Dis man's gat DA BLUESSS
And what privileges so called objectivity over unsettling? Dig a little deeper...
Huh?
Aw snap, son
and when i thought i could have no more respect and admiration for black civil right leaders
@hookalakah ehh, how is that fair? there are plenty of people from academia who are or have been "entertainers", like Carl Sagan, Michio Kaku etc. we need these intellectuals and people of science who are good with words to spread some of that knowledge and philosophical thought, through the media to the masses. not every single professor should have to be stuck teaching or doing research 24/7.. like come on now.
I don't wish to negate you, you certainly have a right to your perspective, but I hope you will have an opportunity to observe how Cornel West interacts in many discussions and interviews. I think he is one of the most objective, intelligent and honest people on the planet.
I started out as a big fan of Dr. West myself and then realized he gets very emotional on issues he's passionate about and can often distract and overwhelm his opponents with his animated style rather than attack their arguments and facts calmly. He also makes broad claims when he's riled up that can be factually falsified by simple fact checks. To me that's not very objective but, of course, that's just my subjective opinion!
So proper music is anything pre-1920? Tradition doesn't correlate to being 'art', sensory experience is sensory experience and value doesn't equate to it being the traditional concept of art.
If I could pick the perfect presidential cabinet. Dr West, Dr deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and Muhammed Yunus would be in it. Bring back some stability to this crazy world
There is nothing wrong with putting your family before others. In fact it is natural.
@shango02005 How so? He's talking about love for your fellow man...what is "bullshit" about that?
Oh hell yeah. Black people are usually 60-40 in favor at least on that kind of legislation. Even in blue states.
Cornel West delivers harsh truth with love so that you cry but also laugh.
Uh, i don't really know what you're talking about. If you read my comment, I was citing the fact that Black people vote against gay rights legislation much more often that other demographics. That doesn't mean I have anything against them.
I'm sorry I have lost the thread of your line, please re-iterate your main concerns and neurosis (in that order)
At 5:08 he says that his love starts with black folks and then spills over to other races. Am I mistaken in this or is he saying primarily loves his own race before all others? Not something I expected from Dr. West (I hope I am wrong).
Do you think there exists only one form or time of music that is proper or good? Do you apply this same standard visual art, to say nothing is good after the classical period? Art is subjective, people make noise and this art, so what is this proper music you speak of? that is very narrow minded point of view.
Yes music DESPERATELY needs some input from philosophy but, please, God help us if these trendy academics in their 40s/50s/60s start to think they can talk about music (Simon Critchely is another one we need to watch). At least Zizek has respect for true art music.
ink he's nostalgic about black civil struggles and neglects to affirm the violent, contradictory and often bloody side of black revolutionary struggle.
perhaps it should have been bloodier..
Buffalo Black perhaps not..
Hey Cornel, periods at the ends of sentences are put there for a reason.
What is this guy blathering about?
But the creation of Israel was facilitated by the United Nations in its shit-storm-inducing patchwork resolutions...
I believe in quality, try listening to some Bach, Beethoven or Mozart and then come back to me and say that this guy has a clue what he's talking about, thanks.
This guy is entertaining to listen to, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he is spewing quite a lot of bull shit...
Cornel is a nice person but he spins so much b.s. (with a smidgin of truth drowned out by empty poetry). The people who have the legacy of slavery and who were labeled based on their skin color are as diverse in their "sensibility" as anyone else. They are no more "blues" men and women than they are any other stereotype that presumes that race is something more than the cruel fiction that it is. Cornel needs race. It's his currency.
stop speaking about race and start speaking about class, that is the real struggle, there is where i find my brothers and sisters, not in the colour of their skin
sorry I don't buy this thing of being 'poor' excusing bad music-was Beethoven poor-yes was Mozart poor, yes-there is NO conflict between true art(As opposed to 'non musically academic--left wing philosophical-stuff that we grew up with in our childhood-shit music') and poverty. Blues isn't art, Mayfield isn't art-yes they were poor but that doesn't change this fact that they were not artists.Since when did being poor stop you going to the library and studying a proper music score?
"Cornel West, the Princeton professor of African-American studies...has never been much more than a six-figure entertainer, ready to bite the hand that pays him even while reaching for his check. He has never seen a microphone or television camera that he did not like.
Publicity, not scholarship, is his true tradition. West often gives his listeners no more than sound and fury, signifying nothing. And he is very good at appearing overcome by his passionate convictions." --Stanley Crouch
This is the first dude on big think that makes me feel like he's more into himself than his ideas. I'm just gonna throw out that he groups people pretty generally and on racial lines, and admits his primary love is for a group of people based on their skin color, which to me is more racism. Sorry, big think, but dislike.