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.

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This study uses Processwork as a lens to evaluate the facilitation of social change and related design projects at all levels of scale. Social change processes are deconstructed and explored in terms of awareness of signals, roles, dimensions of rank and power, belief systems, and phenomenological experience within the analytical structure of deep democracy and eldership. Data is collected for the case studies from workshops, interviews with practitioners and participants, relevant texts and field experiences. The Bolivian case studies involved 24 rural indigenous farmers (men of varying ages) and 16 women (aged 16 - 54), all from situations of extreme urban poverty and shows the application of Processwork in empowering participants to facilitate social change. The Zaragoza case study was a part-time multi-module two-year course involving 38 male and female lawyers. They gained the confidence to design, and in some cases implement, a parallel mediation training, based on a whole systems design. The Thai case study consisted of 3 week-long workshops with Buddhist monks and nuns, university professors, community leader, consultants and trainers. The results suggest the emphasis on eldership, group process structure, rank, power, and double signals was extremely useful, even for those already experienced in awareness-based practices. The Ecovillage case study focuses on one female facilitator working in an extremely diverse cultural setting and demonstrates the importance of working with inner diversity and the value of both inner and outer awareness Processwork exercises. In choosing this broad spectrum of applications, the similarities and differences of Processwork in diverse cultural and social contexts is illustrated. The case studies and my experience suggest that Processwork can contribute to a shift in perspective required to build a more sustainable civilization with its capacity to broaden perspective and increase awareness at the worldview level. Processwork facilitates a process of meta-design, that encourages participants to see the larger, complex context of their projects as well as the details and momentary interactions and can be very helpful to all those working with complex systems, including facilitators and designers.