>> This is very different from Rorty's register, I mean he's talking about
profound sense and utopian impulse. Rorty's, you know, much more temperate,
alright. He's much less dramatic.
West loves the drama and he, and he sees that its not just drama for him, it is
urgency. The pragmatic urgency to change the
world. But he wants to temper that, even West,
tempers that sense of urgency with a sense of tragedy, knowing that you can't
always make the world conform even to your best impulses.
In the reading that I've asked for you to find for this week West says that
prophetic pragmatism denies Sisyphean pessimism and utopian perfectionism.
That is, West is trying to steer a course between pessimism and perfectionism.
He wants to tap into Christian traditions as well as pragmatic traditions.
That he says, keep hope alive as a vehicle for energizing the will to change
the world. Not because we have the foundations.
But because we have aspirations, to make the world a, a better place.
Through, envisioning, radical change. What, what West does say is that you in
here he's firmly in this pragmatic and Rortian tradition, is you have to move
away from epistemology. Epistemology is not important to
philosophy, but it is the move away from epistemology says the swerve away from
epistemology is a reconception of philosophy.
As cultural criticism. Philosophy is becomes a form of cultural
criticism that West wants to link to democratic aspirations.
West also is, is it's important for him to say the denial of foundations is not a
denial of religion. That is, for West belonging to a
community of faith, can be an empowering act.
Even without a commitment to foundationalism I that's a hard one to to
articulate clearly, for me, because I think the I West is trying to say as, as
Rorty did. That it's all about the communities to
which you belong and, and West, as the community to which I belong, I, Cornell
West belong, is a, is a Christian community that has a radical utopian
impulse. And that's not necessarily a foundation
in the philosophic sense, but it's a grounding existential.
Commitment for West and that, as he says, doesn't just keep hope alive, but
actually keeps one sane in a world of enormous disappointment.
And I'll, I'll give you back to this to send you back to a clip now to hear West
talk a little bit about that. in, in a section of the documentary.
>> Let's put it this way. That for me, I mean philosophy is
fundamentally about our finite situation. You can define it in terms of beings
towards death, featherless two-legged, linguistically-conscious creatures going
between the [UNKNOWN] feces and bile, that will one day be the culinary delight
of terrestrial worms. That's us.
Beings toward death. At the same time we have desire, why we
are organisms in space and time, so it's desire in the face of death.
And then, of course, you've dogmatism, various attempts to hold on to certainty.
Various forms of idolatry And you've got dialog in the face of
dogmatism that, of course structurally and institutionally you have domination.
And you have democracy, you have attempts of people trying to render accountable,
elites, kings, queens, [INAUDIBLE], corporate elites, politicians.
You try to make these elites accountable to everyday people.
So philosophy itself becomes a critical disposition of wrestling with desire in
the face of death, wrestling with dialogue in the face of dogmatism and
wrestling with democracy, trying to keep alive a very fragile democratic
experiment, in the face of structures of domination, patriarchy, white supremacy,
imperial power state power, all those concentrated forms of power that are not
accountable to people who are affected by it.
[SOUND] >> So, one question that keeps coming
up, or a phrase, is this idea of the meaningful life.
Do you think this is philosophy's duty to speak on this?
>> A meaningful life? >> How to live a meaningful, is that
even how about, is that even an appropriate question for a class?
>> No, I think it is. no I think the problem of meaning is very
important now, Niahlism is a serious challenge.
meaninglessness is a serious challenge. Even making sense of meaninglessness is
itself a kind of discipline and achievement.