title: Cornel West and Philosophy (Africana Thought)
author: Clarence Johnson
description: ...a formidable work of scholarship. As a philosophical scholar, Johnson has produced a readerly text that captures the reader's attention from beginning to end. -- Floyd W. Hayes, III, The APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience<br />Nowhere in the literature on West -- and certainly not in West's writings themselves -- is there nearly such a good statement of West's views or one that organizes them into such a readily comprehensible structure. So, for someone who is looking for a good clear understanding of what really drives West's apparently unconnected views on so many matters, this volume cannot be beaten. -- Amazon.com<br />. . .the best available introduction to West's thought. -- Amazon.com<br />...a welcome and intelligent assessment of West's philosophy and ethics and their engagement with issues of social justice and race. -- Seminary Co-op Bookstore Review<br />...a formidable work of scholarship. As a philosophical scholar, Johnson has produced a readerly text that captures the reader's attention from beginning to end. -- Floyd W. Hayes, III, <em>APA Newsletter on Philosophy and</em> <em>the Black Experience</em>
zlib_text: Opinionator
  A Gathering of Opinion From Around the Web
  THE STONE
  The Enlightenment’s ‘Race’ Problem, and
  Ours
  By Justin E.h. Smith 
  February 10, 2013 7:15 pm
  The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both
  timely and timeless.
  In 1734, Anton Wilhelm Amo, a West African student and former chamber
  slave of Duke Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, defended a philosophy
  dissertation at the University of Halle in Saxony, written in Latin and entitled “On
  the Impassivity of the Human Mind.” A dedicatory letter was appended from the
  rector of the University of Wittenberg, Johannes Gottfried Kraus, who praised “the
  natural genius” of Africa, its “appreciation for learning,” and its “inestimable
  contribution to the knowledge of human affairs” and of “divine things.” Kraus
  placed Amo in a lineage that includes many North African Latin authors of
  antiquity, such as Terence, Tertullian and St. Augustine.
  In the following decade, the Scottish philosopher 