
Tragic Soul-Life
W.E.B. Du Bois and the Moral Crisis Facing American Democracy
Terrence L. Johnson(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
Published on 12. July 2012
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-0-19-538398-0 (ISBN)
Description
Contemporary debates on the role of religion in American public life ignore the overlap between religion and race in the formation of American democratic traditions and more often than not imagine democracy within the terrain of John Rawls's political liberalism. This kind of political liberalism, which focuses on political commitments at the expense of our religious beliefs, fosters the necessary conditions to open historically closed doors to black bodies, allows blacks to sit at the King's table and creates the necessary safeguards for black protest against discrimination within a constitutional democracy. By implication of its emphasis on rights and inclusion, political liberalism assumes that the presence of black bodies signifies the materialization of a robust American democracy. However, political liberalism discounts the historical role of religion in forming and fashioning the nation's construction of race. Tragic Soul-Life argues that the collision between religion and politics during U.S. slavery and segregation created the fragments from which emerged a firm but shifting moral disdain for blackness within the nation's collective moral imagination.
The very problem political liberals want to avoid, our comprehensive philosophy, is central to solving the political and economic problems facing blacks.
The very problem political liberals want to avoid, our comprehensive philosophy, is central to solving the political and economic problems facing blacks.
Reviews / Votes
a stimulating treatise on American democracy through a Du Boisian lens ... Recommended. * J.M Robinson, Choice *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
523 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-538398-0 (9780195383980)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
06/2012
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€63.49
Available for download
Person
Johnson is an Assistant Professor or Religion at Haverford College.
Author
Assistant Professor of ReligionAssistant Professor of Religion, Haverford College
Content
Table of Contents ; Acknowledgments ; Preface ; Introduction ; Chapter One: Spiritual Isolation ; Chapter Two Haunting Echoes: Tragic Soul-Life and the Souls of Our Ancestors ; Chapter Three Spirit of Freedom ; Chapter Four The Dead, Death, and Dying ; Chapter Five The Spirit of Religion: Soul-Beauty and Human Strivings ; Chapter Six Ethics in a World of Bad Faith ; Conclusion