SOURCE: A review of Keeping Faith, in Ethics, Vol. 105, No. 4, July, 1995, pp. 954-5.

In the following review, Allen offers a positive assessment of Keeping Faith.

Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America is a collection of philosophic essays about race, religion, art, law, and architecture. The author of the collection is a professor of African American studies and religion whom admirers herald as America’s premier black intellectual. A quirky, synthetic genius, Cornel West is getting to be about as famous as a midcareer ivy-league academic could hope to be. Shortly after West’s book Race Matters became a “best-seller” in 1993, he was the subject of a cover story in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine. This more scholarly book laying out a newsworthy scholar’s complex creed thus holds special interest.

Keeping Faith is unlike many academic books, since few scholars share Cornel West’s seeming obsession with...