NONFICTION - Dec. 26, 1993

KEEPING FAITH: Philosophy and Race in America by Cornel West (Routledge: $19.95; 319 pp.). Cornel West cites just about every philosopher you can think of in this volume--from Lukacs and Kant to Rorty and Unger. It’ll set your head spinning--until you realize that West, an African-American, a prolific writer and a Baptist minister to boot, feels he must constantly re-legitimize his often radical views in order to make them acceptable as academic discourse. West, recently hired by Harvard from Princeton’s Afro-American studies department, touches on the problems faced by black intellectuals in the U.S., but a larger theme here is political engagement--the role scholars can and should play in reforming the culture at large. Most readers will prefer to encounter West’s view in his more accessible “Race Matters” (one sentence in “Keeping Faith” reads: “Epistemic antifoundationalism and minimalist ontological realism . . . proceed from taking seriously the impact of modern historical and rhetorical consciousness on truth and knowledge”). But this book provides uncommon insight into what West calls “prophetic criticism”--critical analysis that inspires as well as condemns.