Genealogy of Prophetic Pragmatism: Three Waves of Left Romanticism -- Cornel West (*American Evasion of Philosophy*)
By dtunstall
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
The patron philosophe of the French Revolution. Advocate of organizing society around the general will. Also an advocate of liberty and the exercise of collective will to promote equality in a society. -
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Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Second Vice President and third President of the United States. -
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First wave of left romanticism
Even though this wave of romanticism ends around 1800, its influence in the U.S. continued into the 1850s. The representatives of this wave of romanticism are Thomas Jefferson and Jean-Paul Rousseau. They both worked to "significantly transformed selves and societies and directed immense human desires and hopes toward the grand moral and credible political ideals of democracy and freedom, equality and fraternity" (p. The Cornel West Reader, 153; American Evasion of Philosophy, p. 215). -
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American Revolution
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United States' independence formally recognized
The Revolutionary War officially ends on this date. Britain formally recognized the United States' independence by signing the Treaty of Paris. -
Declaration of the Right of Man and Citizen
This document had no legal status in France when it was adopted by the French National Assembly. Yet, it was one of the documents that inspired the French Revolution. For more information about this document, see https://www.britannica.com/topic/Declaration-of-the-Rights-of-Man-and-of-the-Citizen . -
British surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia
This is the end of the last battle of the Revolutionary War. -
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French Revolution
From the establishment of the First French Republic (a republican government) in September 1792 to Napoleon's coup d'etat in November 1799. -
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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
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Karl Marx (1818-1883)
The Marx most important for this period is the socialist and humanist Marx of the 1840s -- the Marx of the Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844 and of the 1848 Communist Manifesto. -
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John Dewey (1859-1952)
The Dewey relevant to the third wave of romanticism is the Dewey of The Public and Its Problems (1927), Individualism: Old and New (1929), Liberalism and Social Action (1935) and Freedom and Culture (1939). This Dewey is the one who "embraces the idea of fundamental economic, political, cultural and individual transformation in light of Jeffersonian and Emersonian ideals of accountable power, small-scale associations and individual liberties" (Cornel West Reader, p. 156). -
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Second wave of left romanticism
The two representatives of this wave of left romanticism are Emerson and Marx. "Both had a profound faith in the capacity of human beings to remake themselves and society in more free and democratic ways. And both looked toward science-the new cultural authority on knowledge, reality and truth-as an indispensable instrument for this remaking and betterment." (Cornel West Reader, p. 154; American Evasion of Philosophy, p. 216) Their philosophies were prominent during this period. -
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Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
"In various fragments, incomplete studies and political interventions and in works such as The Prison Notebooks (1929-35) and The Modern Prince, Gramsci sets forth a penetrating version of Marxism that rests upon yet spills over beyond Leninism. This version focuses on a notion of historical specificity and a conception
of hegemony that preclude any deterministic, economistic or reductionist readings of social phenomena." (Cornel West Reader, p. 156) -
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Michel Foucault (1929-1984)
According to West, Foucault asked Kantian questions about the condition of possibility of modern subjects and gave Nietzschean answers. Despite West's disagreements with Foucault's philosophy, West adopts Foucaultian genealogy (see American Evasion of Philosophy, pp. 161-164; also see ibid. pp. 70-72). For more on Foucault, see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/ . -
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Third wave of left romanticism
West distinguishes his prophetic pragmatism, which is a philosophical position emerging from a leftist version of romanticism from the Rousseau-Marx-Gramsci tradition, with its Marxist-inspired social democratic theory (see American Evasion of Philosophy, pp. 158-161). This form of left romanticism takes seriously the decolonization movements in Asia and Africa. It also takes seriously the Civil Rights Movement and liberation theologies in North America and South America. -
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Decolonization of Asia and Africa (U.S. Territories and British Empire)
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Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947 - present)
Unger is a political and legal philosopher who has been influenced by the Rousseau-Marx-Gramsci tradition of social democratic theory. He was influential in the Critical Legal Studies movement in the 1970s and 1980s. He is a third wave left romantic thinker who neglects the Jefferson-Emerson-Dewey tradition of democratic theory. -
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Prophetic pragmatism
A form of pragmatism emerging from the third wave of left romanticism. It rejects Emerson's optimist theodicy and affirms the Niebuhrian strenuous mood along with Du Bois's structural analyses of US society (see Cornel West Reader, pp. 164-166). West himself ceased identifying as a prophetic pragmatist by 2000, as he increasingly associated his thought and activism with tragicomic, "blues-inflected," Christian, and Chekovian sensibilities. He remains sympathetic to Deweyan pragmatism.