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This article introduces the preoccupations and themes that define the study and practice of black aesthetics. It presents a provisional sketch of a field that has long been recognized in other humanities disciplines, but that is only now gaining wide notice in academic philosophy. This sketch emphasizes the aspects of the field that invite specifically philosophic scrutiny, while touching lightly on specific artworks, critical literatures and historical developments. Among the topics that receive attention are the following: race, aesthetic politics, creolization, nationalism, modernity, white supremacy and the blues.

Those who know anything about black history and culture probably know that aesthetics has long been a central concern for black thinkers and activists. The Harlem Renaissance, the Negritude movement, the Black Arts Movement, and the discipline of Black British cultural studies all attest to the intimate connection between black politics and questions of style, beauty, expression, and art. And the participants in these and other movements have made art and offered analyses that wrestle with clearly philosophical issues. In _A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics_, I propose to identify and explore the most significant philosophical issues that emerge from the aesthetic dimensions of black life. The book will consist of eight short chapters, each of which will discuss a complex of related themes and phenomena. Every chapter will begin with one or two illustrative real-world examples, and then use the complexities of these opening cases to introduce the relevant issues. Many people in several fields have explored various bits of the terrain that I’ll cover. But none has surveyed the entire terrain in the name of aesthetics, and none has conducted this survey from an explicitly philosophical perspective. Setting up the project in this way means that its main conclusions will come in two forms. One kind of conclusion will emerge from the way I frame the issues. The two most important points here are that the field of aesthetics ought to cover more than the study of western fine art, and that the field of black aesthetics allows and requires the sort of comprehensive and philosophical analysis that I’ll offer. Another set of conclusions will emerge from my treatment of the specific issues in each chapter. In each case the aim will be to defend, albeit briefly, some position on the major issues raised in each chapter

Contemporary analytic aestheticians have little interest in the old paradigm of expression theory. They observe that expression theorists tend to locate the essence of art in the externalization of emotion, and they argue persuasively that this tendency is unfortunate. Then they consign expression theorists like Dewey; Collingwood, and Croce to the dustbin of history. This dismissive posture has become standard in aesthetics, for some good reasons. But at least in the case of Dewey, the reasons don't apply. The burden of my dissertation is to make a case for this claim. ;While Dewey does help himself to the vocabulary of expressionism in Art as Experience, he uses it to make arguments less appropriate to a fin-de-siecle expression theorist than to a contemporary cultural critic. He never claims that art is essentially the expression of emotion; he doesn't even agree that emotion is what's expressed in art. His account of expression in art is about the production and reproduction of culture by means of individual agency. It is what Charles Taylor calls expressivism, not expressionism. ;My interpretation of Dewey's aesthetics diverges radically from the one in Alan Tormey's The Concept of Expression, which has become a kind of controlling precedent for the analytic approach to expressionism. I avoid and reject Tormey's reading by locating Dewey's musings on expression in the broader contexts of his conception of the aesthetic, his pragmatist philosophical system, and the tradition of expressivist thought that includes Hamann, Herder, Hegel and Marx. Proceeding in this way not only reveals certain motivations and themes that would otherwise remain obscure, but also highlights certain insights that point toward new, more culturally grounded modes of aesthetic theorizing. I try to recover Dewey's work as a step toward this new aesthetics, an approach that I call, following Cornel West, prophetic aesthetics

In his contribution to Cheryl Misak's New Pragmatists volume, David Bakhurst considers the "prospect of a fruitful alliance between [ethical] particularism and pragmatism." 1 In an attempt to show that members of the two camps can "profit from critical engagement with each other's works" (124), he considers how pragmatists might help resolve three outstanding problems for ethical particularists. Unfortunately, his generosity outpaces his imagination, and he does not really find a great deal that pragmatists can contribute. So Bakhurst's potential alliance ends up being a case of convergent evolution. He finds that he and his fellow particularists now occupy positions—positions against, among other ..

There is an odd duality in Cornel West's work. He is a generous thinker and voracious interlocutor, willing to learn from anyone on a sincere quest for insight. But he is also he is an unapologetic admirer of greatness, as stingy with ascriptions of genius as he is lavish with praise for the select few who qualify. "Making Niagara a Cataract" reflects on this duality. I try to explain what motivates West's commitment to the importance of greatness, and how these motivations emerge from and shape his intellectual project

Paul C. Taylor provides an accessible guide to a well-travelled but still-mysterious area of the contemporary social landscape. The result is the first philosophical introduction to the field of race theory and to a non-biological and situational notion of race. Provides the first philosophical introduction to the field of race theory. Outlines the main features and implications of race-thinking; asks questions such as: What is race-thinking? Don’t we know better than to talk about race now? Are there any races? What is it like to have a racial identity? Engages with the ideas of such important figures as Linda Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, W.E.B. Du Bois, Howard Winant, and Naomi Zack. Explores the enduring significance of race in relation to culture, personal relationships and social justice

On Obama examines some of the key philosophical questions that accompany the historic emergence of the 44th US president. The purpose of the book is to take seriously the once-common thought that Mr. Obama had ushered in a post-historical age. Three questions organize the argument of the book. Has the US become post-racial? Does Obama’s pragmatism show the way to a post-partisan approach to politics? And does the reining in of US power and ambitions signal the emergence of a post-imperial moment? The book does not answer these questions directly, but considers how Mr. Obama’s public image and career raise the questions, and experiments with some lines of thought that emerge in their light