A Jazz-soaked Philosophy for our Catastrophic Times: From Socrates to Coltrane’
Prof. Cornel West delivers the 2024 Gifford Lecture Series at the University of Edinburgh, titled ‘A Jazz-soaked Philosophy for our Catastrophic Times: From Socrates to Coltrane’.
Lecture Two
Lecture Three
Lecture Four
Lecture Five
Lecture Six
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Wow what a gift- wish I was there for them
You wait for Bella to publish some philosophy, then six lectures come at once. Well, I’ve only watched the first one so far, so it will be interesting to see if early impressions of strengths and weaknesses are sustained or revised.
No doubt Cornel West is an impressive philosophical performer. I was especially amused by his cheery name-checking as he wielded the scalpel of criticism (analytical philosophers failing to critique Empire is likely fair comment, for example). As with his commentary on the Matrix, you have to pay attention to the shape of what he doesn’t say, although he was really elliptic (indeed evasive) in answering questions. Still, I can find a lot of common ground with his views.
However, it remains to be seen if he subjects organised Christianity to the same level of criticism (throwing his call for moral consistency back at him) as he applies to empires, nation states and so forth. I suspect his personal salvation by a Church clouds his judgement. West’s contrast of religiosity with ‘nihilism’ seems not only jarring in context of the Scottish Census reporting a new majority for ‘no religion’, but actually insulting in the context of Israel’s war on Gaza backed by (often anti-Semitic) Christian evangelical Zionists. One could easily argue it is the Christian world (from which emerged NATO, Capitalism, global industrial pollution) that poses the greatest threat to the planet, especially the non-materialist Armageddonists and the materialist Churches of Affluence. West may position himself as anti-patriarchy, but that position is at odds with the traditions he most draws upon (so more criticism of these please).
Still, it was interesting and informative to hear about the foundation and influence of black American musical traditions on resistance, acknowledgement and catastrophe, which will probably be what I remember most from Lecture 1.
I watched last five lectures some time ago, so here’s a summary of highlights and interesting questions. The lectures are loosely structured around a chronology of phases in the Age of Europe, with musical themes and wide-ranging reflections on Western philosophy.
L2 Metaphilosophic Andante
West (CW) describes artists like Ella Fitzgerald as a distinct wave in an ocean, quite a clever way of saying that artists are distinctive but unexceptional., using the Greek term ‘atapos’: unclassifiable. The paradox of Plato writing against Athenian democracy (which killed his mentor Socrates) in the democratic form of dialogue. CW doesn’t like terms multicultural, diversity or inclusion. How to get people to recognise they are individually irreplaceable and question themselves and their traditions. Socrates on courage being best shown in musical life, harmonised self and basis of other virtues. Too many cowardly, complacent and conformant people in high and middle places.
Q&A
Rejects characterisation of capitalist entrepreneurs and colonialists as ‘courageous’ (or military bands drumming up ‘courage’).
Critically defends Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in USA as least evil in corporate universities. Truth, Justice and Love is where he wants to get to. Jesus didn’t die for diversity or other bureaucratic language. Nietzsche wrong and hypocritical about many things.
L3 Folly Presto
Luther said Erasmus wasn’t pious. Luther supported patriarchy and hated Jews. Socrates no sense of Jesus’ tragedy. Socrates says his parrhesia plain speech is cause of his death sentence. Canonical texts in modern institutions shot through with evils of dead white men, few comic writers included.
Western worldly wisdom used to oppress (Jews, Muslims, indigenous people in New World) “with levels of violence and atrocity we can hardly conceive of” which came back to European genocide.
Montaigne on wars of religion, Huguenots murdered. But Haiti, India, Congo? We need synoptic, polyphonic vision. Jazz polyphony comes from multiple voices within individual, like writers.
Theologians are touchy and quick to denounce heresy (they proscribed Erasmus’ work), self-love and looking down on people like cattle from their ‘third heaven’ on Earth, even Apostles themselves.
Q&A
Theologians with claims to solve Problem of Evil are holy fools.
L4 History Adagio
CW chose Hume to be examined on at 19 (with all the white supremacy and anti-Scotticisms), and still respects Hume’s work.
Montaigne invents essay genre, preoccupied with New World. Europeans as cannibals satire.
Vico brought historical consciousness. Truths under revision. Alternatives to Hobbes’ Might Makes Right? But pay attention to substance of today’s neocolonialism. Vico academically unsuccessful, life’s work proscribed by Catholic Church. But neither Vico nor Conrad threaten the status quo.
These lectures are about the Fightback and uplifting every voice. Three forms of memory: remembering, altering and right application finding proper arrangement; imagination (fantasia). But humans can only bear so much reality: great-great-grandfather refused to talk about experience of slavery. Breaking the silence. Despair must not ever be the last word.
L5 America Allegro Molto Vivace
Neo-Europeans and the New World legacy of dominant Frontier myth of American Empire. Vibrancy and violence. Indigenous were not people to settlers.
USAmerican spiritual deserts of lonely people in midst of prosperity. John Brown Christian freedom fighter sacrificed himself and his sons for Black cause. But… Eugene O’Neill: USA greatest failure, given everything but losing souls, Iceman Cometh most nihilist play. USAmerican belief in tomorrow, a past denied; never giving up greed for liberty. Barbarity of WW2 ended Age of Europe. Does self-knowledge destroy the self?
[Prompted my question: If Christians are conditioned to obey the Will of God, can this blind them to the Health of Nature?]
L6 A Love Supreme (A Way Through)
Seeing Exodus from both sides, Israelites and Canaanites, the Black perspective, WE Dubois. Pharoah is on both sides of bloody red seas, sometimes Pharoahs are Black and Brown. Insights and limitations of European thought tradition.
Blacks hated, but teach love, like Harriet Tubman, calling for freedom for all, no Black Klan, no hatred and revenge and bloody civil war (though if USA becomes fascist this year it won’t be because of Black people). Love Supreme, John Coltrane the great wave talking about freedom fighters and love amid great suffering and sorrow. Toni Morrison’s Beloved on body destroyed by slavery, all but great heart. Comic and catastrophic. Coltrane’s outburst that notes and music and instrument insufficient to express what he wanted during performance of Alabama. Woman-instituted Black speech. Guttural cries on slave ships and in slave markets. No mention of slavery in Constitution. Love oneself critically in culture conditioning Black (self) hate. Black folk didn’t need Philip Glass to tell them about silence. Wrong kind of hope leaves you vulnerable to crushing. Varieties of drama. Young people referring to still-alive generation ignoring anything beyond 3 years old [social media reference].
Morrison on Zula as metaphysically Black. People carrying their people inside them, but can expand their cultural canon without enshrining them. Stokely Carmichael’s friendship with Martin Luther King, carrying crosses. Malcolm X was gentle in private but initially uncompromising in public. No crown without a cross.
Q&A
CW gives due respect to Communists who racially desegregated first in USA, while the YMCA remained segregated. Nazis at Charlottesville listening to Motown; could soon get Jewish and Catholic head of Klan. Less focused on curricula.
Multiculturalism can perpetrate class structures and hierarchy.
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I was particularly taken with CW’s props to the Communists, which addresses my original question (the atheist Communists cannot be the ‘nihilists’ CW is talking about, in this reading). Which is good… but not really good enough, since it only appears as an extremely late addendum in the last answer in the last Question and Answer session, almost a throwaway (unless this was somehow prearranged). The lectures ended on the emphasis of a thought-provoking expression I’ll repeat, about:
People carrying their people inside them, but can expand their cultural canon without enshrining them.