Introduction : To be human, modern and American -- I. Autobiographical prelude. The making of an American radical democrat of African descent -- On my intellectual vocation -- Sing a song -- II. Modernity and its discontents. The ignoble paradox of modernity -- Race and modernity -- Black strivings in a twilight civilization -- The new cultural politics of difference -- III. American pragmatism. Why pragmatism? -- On prophetic pragmatism -- Pragmatism and the sense of the tragic -- The limits of neopragmatism -- Nietzsche's prefiguration of postmodern American philosophy -- IV. Progressive Marxist theory. The indispensability yet insufficiency of Marxist theory -- Fredric Jameson's American Marxism -- Race and social theory -- V. Radical democratic politics. The role of law in progressive politics -- The political intellectual -- A world of ideas -- The dilemma of the black intellectual -- American progressivism reoriented -- Parents and national survival -- On the 1980s -- Michael Harrington, democratic socialist --

VI. Prophetic Christian thought. The crisis in contemporary American religion -- The historicist turn in philosophy of religion -- Religion and the left -- On Elizabeth Sch�ussler Fiorenza's In memory of her -- On Leszek Kolakowski -- On liberation theology : Segundo and Hinkelammert -- Christian love and heterosexism -- A philosophical view of Easter -- On Gibson Winter's ecological ecumenism -- Prophetic Christian as organic intellectual : Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Subversive joy and revolutionary patience in black Christianity -- VII. The arts. Critical reflections on art -- Horace Pippin's challenge to art criticism -- Race and architecture -- The spirituals as lyrical poetry -- In memory of Marvin Gaye -- On Afro-American music : from bebop to rap -- On Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the mirror -- On Walt Whitman -- VIII. Race and difference. On affirmative action -- On black-brown relations -- On black sexuality -- On black nationalism -- Tensions with Jewish friends and foes -- On Jackie Robinson -- On Julianne Malveaux -- Conversation with bell hooks -- IX. Postscript. Chekhov, Coltrane and democracy.