To Shape a New World

Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-0-674-98075-4
Verlag: Harvard University Press

Buch, Englisch, 464 Seiten, Format (B × H): 168 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 794 g

Martin Luther King, Jr., may be America’s most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. On the fiftieth anniversary of King’s assassination, the man and his activism are as close to public consciousness as ever. But despite his stature, the significance of King’s writings and political thought remains underappreciated. In To Shape a New World, Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry write that the marginalization of King’s ideas reflects a romantic, consensus history that renders the civil rights movement inherently conservative—an effort not at radical reform but at “living up to” enduring ideals laid down by the nation’s founders. On this view, King marshaled lofty rhetoric to help redeem the ideas of universal (white) heroes, but produced little original thought. This failure to engage deeply and honestly with King’s writings allows him to be conscripted into political projects he would not endorse, including the pernicious form of “color blindness” that insists, amid glaring race-based injustice, that racism has been overcome. Cornel West, Danielle Allen, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Gooding-Williams, and other authors join Shelby and Terry in careful, critical engagement with King’s understudied writings on labor and welfare rights, voting rights, racism, civil disobedience, nonviolence, economic inequality, poverty, love, just-war theory, virtue ethics, political theology, imperialism, nationalism, reparations, and social justice. In King’s exciting and learned work, the authors find an array of compelling challenges to some of the most pressing political dilemmas of our present, and rethink the legacy of this towering figure.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Shelby, Tommie

Terry, Brandon M

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur

Über Autor(innen)

Terry, Brandon M
Brandon M. Terry is Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and of Social Studies at Harvard University.

Shelby, Tommie
Tommie Shelby is Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University. In addition to <i>Dark Ghettos</i> he is the author of <i>We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity</i> and coeditor with Brandon M. Terry of <i>To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.</i>