Keeping Faith is a rich, moving and deeply personal collection of essays from one of the leading African American intellectuals of our age. Drawing upon the traditions of Western philosophy and modernity, Cornel West critiques structures of power and oppression as they operate within American society and provides a way of thinking about human dignity and difference afresh.

Preface: The Difficulty of Keeping Faith. Cultural Criticism and Race 1. The New Cultural Politics of Difference 2. Black Critics and the Pitfalls of Canon Formation 3. A Note on Race and Architecture 4. Horace Pippin's Challenge to Art Criticism 5. The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual. Philosophy and Political Engagement 6. Theory, Pragmatisms and Politics 7. Pragmatism and the Sense of the Tragic 8. The Historicist Turn in Philosophy of Religion 9. The Limits of Neopragmatism 10. On Georg Lukacs 11. Fredric Jameson's American Marxism. Law and Culture 12. Reassessing the Critical Legal Studies Movement 13. Critical Legal Studies and a Liberal Critic 14. Charles Taylor and the Critical Legal Studies Movement 15. The Role of Law in Progressive Politics. Explaining Race 16. Race and Social Theory 17. The Paradox of the African American Rebellion Notes Index