The Critique of Nonviolence : Martin Luther King, Jr., and Philosophy / Mark Christian Thompson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thompson, Mark Christian, 1970- Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968--Philosophy.

King, Martin Luther.

African American philosophy.

African Americans--Civil rights.

African Americans.

Nonviolence--Philosophy.

Nonviolence.

Ontology.

Philosophy, German.

Race--Philosophy.

Race.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (232 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

How does Martin Luther King, Jr., understand race philosophically and how did this understanding lead him to develop an ontological conception of racist police violence? In this important new work, Mark Christian Thompson attempts to answer these questions, examining ontology in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s philosophy. Specifically, the book reads King through 1920s German academic debates between Martin Heidegger, Rudolf Bultmann, Hans Jonas, Carl Schmitt, Eric Voegelin, Hannah Arendt, and others on Being, gnosticism, existentialism, political theology, and sovereignty. It further examines King's dissertation about Tillich, as well other key texts from his speculative writings, sermons, and speeches, positing King's understanding of divine love as a form of Heideggerian ontology articulated in beloved community. Tracking the presence of twentieth-century German philosophy and theology in his thought, the book situates King's ontology conceptually and socially in nonviolent protest. In so doing, The Critique of Nonviolence reads King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963) with Walter Benjamin's "Critique of Violence" (1921) to reveal the depth of King's political-theological critique of police violence as the illegitimate appropriation of the racialized state of exception. As Thompson argues, it is in part through its appropriation of German philosophy and theology that King's ontology condemns the perpetual American state of racial exception that permits unlimited police violence against Black lives.

Contents:

Introduction : ontology and nonviolence

Being and nonviolence

Nonbeing and nonviolence

Black power as nonviolence

Gnosticism and nonviolence

Divine nonviolence

Conclusion : eros as nonviolence.

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Mai 2022)

ISBN:

9781503632080

1503632083

OCLC:

1322124485