Revolution of conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the philosophy of nonviolence

Abstract

Martin Luther King has been widely studied as a preacher, an activist, and an orator, but less as an intellectual. This book situates King as one of the most important social and political philosophers of our time, arguing that King's systematic logic of nonviolence is at the same time new and deeply rooted in African American intellectual history. Showing how King's concepts of equality, structure, direct action and justice are strands of a coherent philosophical whole, the book also emphasizes the continuing relevance of the logic of nonviolence to liberatory politics.