This work provides an overview of Cornel West's moral thought. I begin by analyzing West's characterization of a promising viewpoint in moral inquiry that he believed Karl Marx adhered to--radical historicism. This viewpoint, which West presents in an early work of his, The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought, leads one to discard the traditional philosophical pursuit of certainty in ethics in favor of a historically situated attempt to enact meliorative social change. After outlining the details of this viewpoint and West's characterization of Marx's relationship to it, I examine some of West's subsequent work in light of radical historicism. In this section, I indicate that West still maintains the efficacy of ideals in the moral realm despite his abandonment of the traditional philosophical pursuit of apodictic foundations. For West, these ideals mainly stem from three main traditions: the tragicomic, the deep democratic, and the prophetic Christian.

This project addresses problems of political disengagement, social exclusion, multi-generational poverty, and social injustice in communities left behind by an incomplete democracy, now in acute crisis. Using jazz improvisation as a metaphor for Dewey’s ideals for a thriving and creative American democracy, this normative critical theory and pedagogy is part of a multi-pronged approach to radical democratic reform. Building on theories of humanistic prophetic pragmatism, critical pedagogy, and democratic theory, and suffused with critical race feminism, this critical approach begins with individual transformation, critical consciousness, and agency of marginalized citizens, through critical improvisational pedagogy. The approach seeks to prepare more diverse voices for active democratic deliberation and effective participation in democratic public spaces of input, negotiation, and challenge for the issues that affect marginalized people. The project creates an architecture, a basic template, and an operationalization strategy for the development of centers of critical improvisational pedagogy for the transmission of critical knowledge, mentoring, community support, and apprenticeships through culturally appropriate arts and cultural programming in accessible local community sites. Key Words: critical improvisational pedagogy, prophetic pragmatism, critical feminist theory, radical democratic reform, jazz imaginary, critical consciousness / Political Science