Cornel West

Cornel Ronald West is a Philosophe and a specialist in the religions born with Tulsa, Oklahoma the July 2nd 1953.

Having taught with the University Harvard, he is now professor of religion and history on the American Blacks with the Université of Princeton. Its single contribution with the field of philosophy rests on the church black Baptist American, the Marxisme, the Pragmatisme and the transcendent Approche.

Biography

Being the grandson of a preacher, it received a traditional religious education which prepared it with the political debates. In adolescence, it takes part in different demonstrations for the rights of the Blacks, just like it asks that its school propose courses of studies on the Noirs. In one of its writings, he affirms that he admires the militancy Malcolm X, the rage of the party of the Black Panther, just like the aggressive theology of James Cone.

He supplements studies Magna cum laude three years in Harvard in literature and languages of the the Middle East. Thereafter, he studies in Princeton, where he accepts the influence of the professor Richard Rorty, more specifically its passion for the pragmatic approach in philosophy.

He publishes his thesis, supplemented in 1980 and published later, in the book The Ethical Dimensions off Marxist Thought .

Around 25 years, it goes back to Harvard like part-time lecturer, before becoming a assistant-professor with the Union Theological Seminary with New York.

In 1984, the vocational school Divinity School of the Université of Yale urges it to teach the American history. Whereas he teaches at this school, he expresses on the campus against L Apartheid which prevails in South Africa, which is worth to him to be imprisoned. In reprisals, the administration retains it during spring 1987, which obliges it to teach so much in Yale than with L Université of Paris.

By afterwards, it turns over to the Union Theological Seminary before being found in Princeton, where he becomes professor of religion and director of the programme of studies on the American Blacks. In collaboration with various partners, inter alia the black écrivaine Toni Morrison, it revitalizes this program.

It publishes the collection of tests Race Matters in 1993, which makes fury with the the United States. The same year, it leaves Princeton to join the department studies on the American Blacks of Harvard. In 1998, it is finally named at the prestigious station of University Professor (the occupants of this station, very few, directly give an account of their work to president d' Harvard).

Although its book is a success, its prestige is not universal. Several critics, carried out by Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the review The New Republic , show it opportunism, to have the direction of the setting in scene and to miss academic rigor. During several years, it does not produce any more significant books, preferring to diffuse its ideas differently.

He remains an author frequently quoted, although its contributions were largely ignored by the academic world.

In 2001, Cornel West is in the center of a polemic with new president d' Harvard. This last shows it to deal too much with policy and not enough academic activities, because West created a disc of Hip hop entitled Sketches off my Culture . In 2002, it leaves Harvard to turn over to Princeton.

In 2003, it seems one of the advisers in the films Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions . In box DVD Matrix , it records comments on philosophy.

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