Cornel West: Why Closing Classics Depts. is a Catastrophe | Amanpour and Company

cornell west is a philosopher scholar and civil rights activist whose searing speeches have educated and inspired many and here he is speaking to walter isaacson about why classics must remain in the curriculum as well as biden's first hundred days thank you chris john and dr cornell west welcome to the show it's a blessing to be here and i salute you for your illustrious career my brother 50 years ago we arrived at harvard at the same time and we still going we are two blessed brothers i tell you well that's one of the things you've always taught in your lessons is to remember each morning how blessed you can be uh you've just written a uh op-ed piece with a partner decrying howard university and other places that are minimizing or getting rid of the classics department why is teaching the classic so important you know my brother i'm thoroughly convinced that we're living in a moment of spiritual decay and more decrepitum in the american empire we've got to come up with countervailing forces and countervailing weights against rule of money rule of mediocrity rule of military might rule of narrow conformity and rule of indifference and callousness and the best of the classics of any civilization any empire any culture has to do with trying to convince us to involve ourselves in a quest for truth and beauty and goodness and then for some of us like myself as a christian to hold it you talk about spiritual decay and you say it's a moral decline and it's a deep intellectual narrowness that's crept in how did the classics help us uh push back against that classic force us become the terms with the most terrifying question we could ever raise which is what does it mean to be human the unexamined life is not a life of the human in plato's apology line 38a and what does that human mean well it comes from the latin humanita which means burial we are disappearing creatures we're vanishing organisms on the way to bodily extinction and therefore the question becomes who will we be in the meantime what kind of virtues will we enact what kind of visions will we pursue what kinds of values will we try to embody and once you raise that question what it means to be human you then you begin to see on the one hand like shakespeare and dante have taught us like tony morrison and john coltrane have taught us it's dark in our history most of our history is a history of domination and oppression it's a history of hatred it's a history of contempt it's a history of fear driven cruelty but what is the best of our history counterweights against that and that's everywhere you look every civilization every continent every race every gender every sexual orientation and once you come to terms with that then the question becomes how do you become equipped what kind of spiritual and moral armor do you have that allows you to think critically that allows you to open yourself to others that allows you to act courageously what did frederick douglass learn from both reading the classics and engaging in the conversation with uh the great western canon of thinkers well i think he was already a uh freedom fighter because he did not want to be a slave but he was able to come to terms with languages because he was he had foreign languages his languages had african backdrop when he in the united states he had learned these european languages english language and the french and the german and in those languages he was able to tease out as can anybody even though he's very distinctive in many ways and eloquence and what is eloquence cicero and quintillions say eloquence is wisdom speaking what is wisdom speaking having the courage to learn how to die and you learn how to die by questioning your assumptions and presuppositions anytime you let certain assumptions of presupposition go that's a form of death to be to allow you to be reborn to allow you to grow allow you to develop allow you to mature and we live in an empire my brother in many ways it's grown powerful grown rich but it hasn't grown up fo matheson used to say that america in some ways be distinctive because he would move from perceived innocence to corruption without a mediating state of maturity and so we begin with this notion of we're innocent no other nation believes that they're innocent how can you be authorizers of devastation of indigenous peoples and african slaves and then view yourself as dennis james baldwin said that innocence itself is the crime before you even commit to crime you need to grow up this is not peter pan this is not disneyland you got to be mature and it's possible for any human being to be innocent and naive to be mature and separate childishness from childlikeness childlikeness is the side of maturity childishness you need to grow up to what extent did martin luther king gain that maturity by being part of this conversation with the ancients with the classics with the western heritage that you now say is under assault at some universities well i mean mother king jr of course learned it from coming from a people who had been hated for 400 years and still tried to teach the world so much about love and it goes from martin king to john coltrane loves supreme james baldwin's love soaked essays to tony morrison's beloved he comes from a people who've been traumatized for 400 years but still at our best decided to be wounded healers rather than wounded her church he came from where people had been terrorized for 400 years all the way up to brother floyd himself all the way up to brother andrew brown all the way up brianna taylor but the best of our response has been what to call for freedom for everybody not terrorize others not create a black version of the ku klux klan the black people that opted for creating a black version of the ku klux klan it's been a civil war every generation there have been terrorist cells in every chocolate section of the city no it was the tradition of the virtues of a vision that embraces all that is predicated on the humanity of each and every one of us each one each human being made in the image and likeness of a god that gives us a value a worth a sanctity a dignity that's been the best of black leadership and once that black leadership is reduced to just a quest for dollars and smartness rather than justice and deep commitment to love and compassion then you lose the best of the black tradition and see i argue brother walter that the black freedom tradition has been 11 in the american democratic loaf we've seen that in the last election got 58 of our white brothers voted for trump 53 of our white sisters voted for trump it wasn't for the black vote for the most part especially the black sisters vote that we'd have trump again we could have a neo-fascist america so that the best of black folk has always been one of broadening the expansion of not just rights and liberties but of the quality of our relations to one another so it's also about the hasset that great concept it comes from the genius of hebrew scripture that loving kindness to be spread to orphan and widow and fatherless and motherless do we spread to the weak and the vulnerable and if you give up on that and it becomes simply through symbicus might makes right if you give up on that it just becomes a matter of survival of the slickest if you give up on that and push the ten commandments away and you only end up with the eleventh commandment down shall not get caught thou shalt get over by any means and make as much money and status as spectacle as you can you lose your democracy you lose your soul and my dear brother the greatest play ever written about the american empire which is eugene o'neill's the iceman cometh what does it profit to the nation to gain the whole world and lose its soul how do people who are not part of the western tradition take back being having their voice be part of that western tradition in the classics oh you challenge you challenge it because keep in mind this wonderful wonderful formulation by the great the great uh uh henry james and he wrote a letter january 12 1901 to robert lewis stephen said he said no theory that no theory is kind to us that cheats us of seeking no theory is kind to us that cheats us of seeing and what did he mean by that what he meant by that was that in fact every theory has a certain limitedness and narrowness and the aim is to broaden what we see so that we're not short-sighted we're not myopic and i would add to feel more deeply so that we're not caught in forms of uh indifference you know the great rabbi abraham joshua history satan indefinitely evil is more evil and evil itself he's absolutely right he's absolutely right so when you see more broadly and feel more deeply and then act more courageously lo and behold you accent the best of who we are and even when we have the best of who we are we still have our limitations we have our faults we have our voices that's why democracy itself is approximate solution to insoluble problems you're never going to get away with the hatred the insecurity and the anxieties that go hand in hand with who we are as human beings but we can have mechanisms of accountability vis-a-vis the most vulnerable that's democracy that's why voices from below can merge to try to shape the destiny of a nation in the january sixth insurrection on capitol hill some of the people wore greek helmets and they carried flag that said you know mullin lobby meaning come get our weapons it was almost like they were the battle of thermopylae they were they were channeling the classics for white supremacy what did you think when you saw that well i mean one my brother as a black man in america as a revolutionary christian i'm never surprised by evil and never paralyzed by despair so any tradition can be used in a vicious manner any religion can be re used in a vicious manner any institution can and uh and there's no accident that there's a whole host of resources in the classical tradition of the west or any other civilization that lends itself to interpretations grounded in a hatred and agreed and attempt to dominate others yet those same traditions also are open to being used and deployed to bring them call into question to critique to undermine uh hatred and greed and domination and so it's like the ku klux klan and here they got my jesus and my cross and they think that they're christians well there's a long history of christians who have been involved in form of hatred and greed and promote structures of domination i shouldn't be surprised but that doesn't mean that those ugly versions of christianity somehow exhaust the best of prophetic christianity what dorothy dave's about you see mark what martin king was about what fanny lou hamer was about but phillip berrigan was about to say it would be true but judaism what rabbi hesher was about so it would be true with secular traditions as well you see what mural real kaiser was about what what malcolm x the prophetic muslim was about those are forces for good at their best you were not a supporter of uh joe biden when he ran for the president you supported bernie sanders now that we're 100 days into the biden administration have you revived your assessment of him and maybe think that he could be a little bit like lyndon baines johnson and surprise us especially on the issue of race i think that biden is going to surprise us he surprised me when he went in i my view was that he was tied to four crimes against humanity mass incarceration unleashing wall street greed with the glass-steagall act repealed with the invasion of occupation of iraq and israeli occupation all of those you would not say a critical word about in any substantive way and in many ways he was the architect and supporter of them in coming into office he hits the issue of yemen and afghanistan head on relief bill infrastructure bill deeply concerned about police brutality talks about white supremacy talks about jim crow he reminds me very much of lbj who started as a white supremacist from jim crow texas and ended up one of the major forces for good against white supremacy that's why you never give up on people you never know which way they're headed you never know what kind of change they can put forward if biden continues in this way he's going to be very much like elbridge and will be a much stronger force for good against white supremacy on the ground than barack obama was now barack obama had the symbol because he's brilliant he's black he's poised and so forth didn't have the courage didn't have the willingness to fight that biden does when it comes to this issue when it comes to variety of issues so who would know who would think that joseph biden from scranton pennsylvania could become such a force for good for progressives now i still have criticisms until he he hasn't moved in the middle eastern issue the way i would like and uh the relation to what was going on in haiti right now very critical in terms of the dictatorial rule and his unwillingness to call it into question so there's a number of things i continue to put pressure on and i will continue to put pressure on any elected official no matter what color but it's always in the name of moral and spiritual issues linked to spreading hesit to the most vulnerable in any society what was your reaction to the conviction of derrick shovin for the murder of george floyd and might it help us get further along on police reform and even race issues i was just glad to see that they had a fair trial and the policeman went to jail just so rare as you know my brother that policeman actually goes to jail when they shoot down so many of our fellow citizens and as you know over a thousand fellow citizens are shot down every year disproportionately black and brown but not exclusively you got a lot of white brothers and sisters who are shot down as well this is arbitrary power deployed that's what democracies are about how do you curtail and attenuate the use of arbitrary power especially when it's tied to the state you can't do that you don't have a serious democracy you see that's why black folk for most of the time we're here we've been victims of american democracy as malcolm x said because the arbitrary power of white supremacy has been so vicious against us so i was i was glad to see it i just hope it's not an isolated incident and i hope that it can become much more institutionalized in terms of fair trials and ensuring that people are not not able to use arbitrary power especially violent power against fellow citizens especially those who who historically have been so hated and terrorized and traumatized like we black folk you talk about the importance of education and that education can help us emote help us cry let me express my condolences you just lost your mother who was a great educator tell me about her yeah yeah well mom you know she was a kind of walking truth beauty goodness and uh and grounded in the holy because she believed fundamentally as a christian woman as a black woman coming out of jim crow louisiana born in crawley louisiana that's my roots just like new orleans for you my brother that she wanted to open herself to empty herself to donate herself to give herself to make the world a better place she understood if the kingdom of god is within you then everywhere you go you ought to leave a little heaven behind and anytime somebody sees me they see her because her afterlife's at work in part in my life trying to leave a little heaven behind he could be socratic heaven he could be prophetic heaven he could be a little richard pryor comic heaven but it's some kind of helping to empower somebody to make the world better it's my mental world to make sure you leave it just a little more sweet and joyful than when you found it that's mom that's irene b west nobody like him one of a kind dr cornell west thank you for joining us thank you my dear brother salute you man god bless you and your family too man you

Channel: Amanpour and Company

Views: 61,086

Keywords: interview, CNN, PBS, Christiane Amanpour, world news, news anchor, news show, news, public affairs, late-night TV, journalist, Chief International Correspondent, Cornel West, Walter Isaacson, classics

Id: R3vKDGLH1p0

Length: 18min 3sec (1083 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021