To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Tommie Shelby (Editor), Brandon M. Terry (Editor)

Overview

Martin Luther King, Jr., may be America’s most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. On the fiftieth 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 write 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674980754
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	02/19/2018
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Tommie Shelby is Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University. In addition to Dark Ghettos he is the author of We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity and coeditor with Brandon M. Terry of To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Brandon M. Terry is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and codirector of the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. He is the coeditor, with Tommie Shelby, of To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and editor of Fifty Years Since MLK.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Martin Luther King, Jr., and Political Philosophy Brandon M. Terry Tommie Shelby 1

Part I Traditions

1 The Du Bois-Washington Debate and the Idea of Dignity Robert Gooding-Williams 19

2 Moral Perfectionism Paul C. Taylor 35

3 The Roots of Civil Disobedience in Republicanism and Slavery Bernard R. Boxill 58

4 Showdown for Nonviolence: The Theory and Practice of Nonviolent Politics Karuna Mantena 78

Part II Ideals

5 From Anger to Love: Self-Purification and Political Resistance Martha C. Nussbaum 105

6 The Prophetic Tension between Race Consciousness and the Ideal of Color-Blindness Ronald R. Sundstrom 127

7 Integration, Freedom, and the Affirmation of Life Danielle Allen 146

8 A Vindication of Voting Rights Derrick Darby 161

Part III Justice

9 Prisons of the Forgotten: Ghettos and Economic Injustice Tommie Shelby 187

10 Gender Trouble: Manhood, Inclusion, and Justice Shatema Threadcraft Brandon M. Terry 205

11 Living "in the Red": Time, Debt, and Justice Lawrie Balfour 236

12 The Costs of Violence: Militarism, Geopolitics, and Accountability Lionel K. McPherson 253

Part IV Conscience

13 The Path of Conscientious Citizenship Michele Moody-Adams 269

14 Requiem for a Dream: The Problem-Space of Black Power Brandon M. Terry 290

15 Hope and Despair: Past and Present Cornel West 325

Afterword: Dignity as a Weapon of Love Jonathan L. Walton 339

Notes 351

Acknowledgments 419

Contributors 421

Index 425

Editorial Reviews

03/19/2018
In this robust and wide-ranging collection, Shelby and Terry assemble essays about King’s legacy as a political philosopher. The book as a whole displays the pliability and dynamism of King’s thought, applying it to circumstances both recent (Barack Obama’s presidency) and far in the past (the practice of slavery in 18th- and 19th-century America). Throughout, King’s voice is placed within a community of philosophers. Robert Gooding-Williams, a Columbia professor of African-American studies, addresses the contrasting viewpoints of W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington and illuminates how King created a distinct approach by drawing on both Du Bois’s militant resistance to racial injustice and Washington’s thesis that hatred of the oppressor reduces one’s dignity. Ronald Sundstrom, a professor and former chair of the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco, complicates concepts of color-blindness often ascribed to King, highlighting ways in which he supported “color-conscious remedies.” Coeditor Shelby’s essay demonstrates the continued relevance of King’s conception of economic justice to present-day African-American economic struggles. As the nation approaches the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination, this work demonstrates, for anyone who needs convincing, the continued and vital importance of his thinking. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Looks at the work of Dr. King as a philosopher, rather than a political figure. By examining some lesser-known writings, the authors draw the conclusion that Dr. King was a much more radical thinker than his watered-down legacy would suggest.

Vox

King’s own scholarship is refreshingly illuminated in To Shape a New World.

Prospect - Colin Grant

Reimagines King as a political thinker for our—and for all—time.

The Point

This is a powerful and invaluable collection of essays on Dr. King. I hope it will inspire an entirely new generation of readers to go back and immerse themselves in Dr. King’s language and thought and hear and heed his prophetic voice.

Marian Wright Edelman

While his birthday has become a national holiday and schoolchildren across the nation and the world know the words of his most famous speeches, there are still many aspects of his life and work that remain lesser known.

Time

While his birthday has become a national holiday and schoolchildren across the nation and the world know the words of his most famous speeches, there are still many aspects of his life and work that remain lesser known.

Time

2017-11-21
A collection of thought-provoking essays on the different dimensions of Martin Luther King Jr.'s thought.Edited by Shelby (African-American Studies and Philosophy/Harvard Univ.; Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform, 2016, etc.) and Terry (African-American Studies and Social Studies/Harvard Univ.), this book demonstrates the necessity of revisiting King's philosophy and creed of nonviolence. We have historically seen him as a personification of the most deeply rooted features of black political culture and a paragon of virtuosic oratory performance and wisdom. In these essays, readers will be struck by all those who came before him, beginning the struggle and laying the groundwork but not gaining the same limelight. These include Bayard Rustin, Glenn Smiley, and A. Philip Randolph, among many others. King agreed also with W.E.B Du Bois' view of the race problem as an external factor of color discrimination and an internal factor of the culture of poverty. The contributors touch on a wide variety of vital topics: anger, courageous action, channeling inner rage, and achieving self-respect and the ultimate goal, a sense of dignity, only attainable with political and economic equality. Throughout his career, King sought the middle ground between hatred and acquiescence in his speeches; he was militant enough to arouse but moderate enough to keep that fervor within bounds. He adapted the nonviolence of Gandhi to his revolution, which was not geared to overthrow but to "get in." Perhaps most importantly, this collection gives us a clear look at the mechanisms of the nonviolent approach, a different option to discrimination instead of submission or violent resistance. Some of the notable contributors include Cornel West, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Danielle Allen.This is not a quick or easy book. It will take a great deal of thought, rereading, and reflection, but it will make readers stronger and more attuned to social issues. A good choice for any course on King and the civil rights movement.

Kirkus Reviews

King was not simply a compelling speaker, but a deeply philosophical intellectual…King drew on theological, economic, and historical ideas to inform his philosophical thinking…We still have much to learn from him.

Quartz - Olivia Goldhill

King’s theology, philosophy, and nonviolent prophetic engagement are needed now more than any time since his death. In his last speech, Dr. King said that when it comes to the struggle for love and justice, ‘nothing would be more tragic than for us to turn back now.’ We must embrace his challenge in this moment and commit to go forward together, not one step back.

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

To Shape a New World firmly situates Dr. King in the canon of American political thought. An extraordinary group of scholars grapple with the subtlety and nuance of King’s political philosophy, and they set the stage for a renewed engagement with his broader work. This is a must-read in our time.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Fascinating and instructive…Shelby and Terry may offer the best solution to the pain of thinking about King and our loss of him…King’s philosophy, speaking to us through the written word, may turn out to constitute his most enduring legacy.

New York Review of Books - Annette Gordon-Reed

[An] ambitious, illuminating volume…The collection facilitates rigorous engagement with King’s thought in its own time and place but also presses the question of what we ought to do with it in this current ‘age of impunity and mendacity.’

Journal of the History of Philosophy - Erin R. Pineda

The collection brings together a series of impressive scholars—Cornel West, Martha Nussbaum, and Robert Gooding-Williams among them—to look at King’s understudied writings on economic inequality, just-war theory, and voting rights…To Shape a New World is a compelling work of philosophy, all the more so because it treats King seriously without inoculating him from the kind of critique important to both his theory and practice.

Los Angeles Review of Books - Shivani Radhakrishnan

To Shape a New World is a milestone in the study of Martin Luther King, Jr., essentially a sanctified figure in American life, whose actual ideas are rarely interrogated in any depth, either in the public realm or in academic circles. What makes this volume particularly striking is the exceptionally high quality of the essays, which are analytically rigorous, impressively researched, and often profoundly original. They highlight the limits of common narratives about King and the civil rights movement, showing the shifts in his own thinking and the unconventional nature of many of his arguments. This is a path-breaking book.

Aziz Rana

To Shape a New World firmly situates Dr. King in the canon of American political thought. An extraordinary group of scholars grapple with the subtlety and nuance of King’s political philosophy, and they set the stage for a renewed engagement with his broader work. This is a must-read in our time.

Eddie S. Glaude