Title: Review: To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.Published by: Mind
Pages: 8
View Review at Mind
View Penultimate VersionTo Shape a New World, edited by Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry, is a gift. It’s a gift to teachers who feel that there is so much more to Martin Luther King, Jr. than his dream but have been puzzled by how to incorporate him in their classrooms. Due to syllabi constraints, pedagogical rules, and canonical exclusionary practices—particularly in philosophy—teachers who are able to teach King’s work often find that the only way of doing so is to put him in conversation with Socrates. This conversation about civil disobedience creates a spot for King’s ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ alongside Plato’s ‘Crito’. However, the course often goes on without any mention of King and his other theoretical contributions. This volume is a solution to that problem. It gives us reasons to incorporate King in philosophy and political theory courses in ways that go beyond the civil disobedience debate. More importantly, it makes us question how in the world we could have ignored King’s philosophical thought as much as we have in any course focused on examining our political and social world.
This volume is also a gift for...