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Nelson Keith's Outline of a New Liberalism is a must-read for anyone interested in social justice, pragmatism, contemporary political philosophy, or critical philosophy of race...Focusing more specifically on how the political landscape and the political life of the US have been shaped by the combination of modern rational-liberalism and racism, Keith offers compelling arguments about how modern rational-liberalism has been complicit with racial injustices and how a pragmatist-phronetic pragmatism can address those injustices...Keith's engaging and provocative book nicely sets the agenda for contemporary pragmatist discussions of social justice. William James Studies This remarkable book argues vigorously for the relevance, or even necessity, of pragmatism in political thought. A move from mainstream modern liberalism to pragmatist social and political philosophy, based on William James's and John Dewey's ideas in particular, is vital insofar as we are committed to hearing the voice, and to recognizing the experiences, of the 'stigmatized Other.' -- Sami Pihlstrom, University of Helsinki As we find today more Blacks and peoples of color embracing Pragmatism, many are left wondering: why? This book presents the most convincing historically informed and defensible answer I have read. Modern liberalism and its rationalism has failed in their promises of emancipation and inclusion. Pragmatism, with its attention to lived experience, contextualism, openness, pluralism, intersubjectivity, self-determination, practical wisdom, and tragic dimensions of human experience, is congruent to what we seek and need today. -- Gregory Fernando Pappas, Texas A&M University As Nelson Keith makes clear in this book, liberalism has been divided within itself, between the requirements of interest group politics and identity group politics, where the calculative disposition of the first gives way to the qualitative complexities of second- property yielding to recognition, as the idiom now has it. Keith's book gives us a very readable sense of how the conception of politically and socially marginalized subpopulations, excluded by the neutrality of the first sort of liberalism (the stigmatized Other, blacks and gays, for instance) might be recuperated by the corrective intuitions of the second. There is, also, an autobiographical undertone in the running argument, to the effect that Keith himself belongs to the population affected, which explains in part the wide range of reading he draws on. I think the ultimate lesson is becoming increasingly clear: liberalism is far from dead, but it will need to come to grips with its own complicity with anti-liberal conceptions. -- Joseph Margolis, Temple University

This remarkable book argues vigorously for the relevance, or even necessity, of pragmatism in political thought. A move from mainstream modern liberalism to pragmatist social and political philosophy, based on William James's and John Dewey's ideas in particular, is vital insofar as we are committed to hearing the voice, and to recognizing the experiences, of the 'stigmatized Other.' -- Sami Pihlstrom, University of Helsinki As we find today more Blacks and peoples of color embracing Pragmatism, many are left wondering: why? This book presents the most convincing historically informed and defensible answer I have read. Modern liberalism and its rationalism has failed in their promises of emancipation and inclusion. Pragmatism, with its attention to lived experience, contextualism, openness, pluralism, intersubjectivity, self-determination, practical wisdom, and tragic dimensions of human experience, is congruent to what we seek and need today. -- Gregory Pappas, Texas A&M University

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Nelson W. Keith is professor emeritus in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at West Chester University.

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