To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr.
- 16h 25m 7s
- Brandon M. Terry, Tommie Shelby
- Blackstone Audio, Inc. dba Blackstone Publishing
- 2018
Martin Luther King Jr. may be America's most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. On the 50th anniversary of King's assassination, the man and his activism are as close to public consciousness as ever. But despite his stature, the significance of King's writings and political thought remains underappreciated.
In To Shape a New World, Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry state that the marginalization of King's ideas reflects a romantic consensus history that renders the civil rights movement inherently conservative - an effort not at radical reform but at "living up to" enduring ideals laid down by the nation's founders. On this view, King marshaled lofty rhetoric to help redeem the ideas of universal (white) heroes, but produced little original thought. This failure to engage deeply and honestly with King's writings allows him to be conscripted into political projects he would not endorse, including the pernicious form of "color blindness" that insists, amid glaring race-based injustice, that racism has been overcome.
Cornel West, Danielle Allen, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Gooding-Williams, and other authors join Shelby and Terry in careful, critical engagement with King's understudied writings on labor and welfare rights, voting rights, racism, civil disobedience, nonviolence, economic inequality, poverty, love, just-war theory, virtue ethics, political theology, imperialism, nationalism, reparations, and social justice. In King's exciting and learned work, the authors find an array of compelling challenges to some of the most pressing political dilemmas of our present, and rethink the legacy of this towering figure.
In this Audiobook
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Chapter 1 - The Du Bois–Washington Debate and the Idea of Dignity
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Chapter 2 - Moral Perfectionism
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Chapter 3 - The Roots of Civil Disobedience in Republicanism and Slavery
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Chapter 4 - Showdown for Nonviolence: The Theory and Practice of Nonviolent Politics
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Chapter 5 - From Anger to Love: Self-Purification and Political Resistance
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Chapter 6 - The Prophetic Tension Between Race Consciousness and the Ideal of Color-Blindness
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Chapter 7 - Integration, Freedom, and the Affirmation of Life
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Chapter 8 - A Vindication of Voting Rights
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Chapter 9 - Prisons of the Forgotten: Ghettos and Economic Injustice
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Chapter 10 - Gender Trouble: Manhood, Inclusion, and Justice
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Chapter 11 - Living “in the Red”: Time, Debt, and Justice
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Chapter 12 - The Costs of Violence: Militarism, Geopolitics, and Accountability
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Chapter 13 - The Path of Conscientious Citizenship
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Chapter 14 - Requiem for a Dream: The Problem-Space of Black Power
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Chapter 15 - Hope and Despair: Past and Present
