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Oxford Companion to Philosophy:

American Philosophy

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Philosophizing in the United States has developed apace over the past century and has never been in as flourishing a condition as today, with philosophy firmly established as a subject of instruction in thousands of institutions of higher learning. However, the nature of the philosophical enterprise is changing, with the earlier heroic phase of a small group of important thinkers giving way to a phase of disaggregated production in a scattered industry of diversified contributors.

Already in colonial times there were various writers who treated philosophical subjects: theologians like Jonathan Edwards and philosophically inclined statesmen like Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson . But such talented amateurs exerted no influence on other identifiable philosophers. More systematic developments had to await the growth of the university system in the nineteenth century, when academic philosophy was imported from Europe, with idealists dominant at Harvard and Scottish thought dominant at Princeton, while Kantians were prominent in Chicago, Hegelians in St Louis, and Thomists at the Catholic institutions. But even late into the nineteenth century America's most significant philosophers operated outside the academic system, where eccentric thinkers like R. W. Emerson , John Fiske , C. S. Peirce , and Orestes Brownson never managed to obtain a secure foothold. However, with the rising importance of the natural sciences, philosophy became the linchpin that linked them to the liberal arts. The Harvard of James and Palmer and such distinguished imports as Santayana and Münsterberg was a harbinger of this, with philosophy here closely joined to psychology. The influx of the scientifically trained philosopher-refugees who crossed the Atlantic after the rise of Nazism greatly intensified this linkage of philosophy to the sciences.

The era between the two world wars saw a flourishing in American academic philosophy, with people like John Dewey , C. I. Lewis , R. B. Perry , W. P. Montague , A. O. Lovejoy , Ernest Nagel , and many others making substantial contributions throughout the domain. And after the Second World War there was an enormous burgeoning of the field. Numerous important contributors to philosophy were now at work in America, and the reader will find individual articles on dozens of them in this Companion.

However, no characteristically American school or style of philosophizing has developed, excepting one, namely pragmatism as originated by C. S. Peirce and popularized by William James . The pragmatists saw the validity of standards of meaning, truth, and value as ultimately rooted in consideration of practical efficacy—of ‘what works out in practice’. Though highly influential at home, this approach met with a very mixed reception abroad. Bertrand Russell , for example, objected that beliefs can be useful but plainly false. And various continental philosophers have disapprovingly seen in pragmatism's concern for practical efficacy—for ‘success’ and ‘paying off’—the expression of characteristically American social attitudes: crude materialism and naïve democratic populism. Pragmatism was thus looked down upon as reflecting a quintessentially crass American tenor of thought—a philosophical expression of the American go-getter spirit with its success-orientated ideology, and a manifestation of a populist reaction against the chronic ideological controversies of European philosophizing—epistemological rationalism versus empiricism , ontological materialism versus idealism , etc. (Americans, de Tocqueville wrote, seek to ‘échapper à l'esprit de système’.) With pragmatism as a somewhat special case, American philosophers past and present have, as a group, been thoroughly eclectic and have drawn their inspiration for style and substance from across the entire spectrum of philosophizing. In consequence, American philosophizing as a whole reflects the world, with its contributors drawing their inspiration from materialism and idealism, from Aristotle and Kant , from ancient scepticism and modern phenomenology , etc. What is distinctive about contemporary American philosophizing is not so much its ideas (which, taken individually, could have issued from the minds and pens of non-Americans), but rather the enterprise as a whole, viewed as a productive industry of sorts.

Perhaps the most striking feature of present-day professional philosophy in North America is its scope and scale. The American Philosophical Association, to which most US academic practitioners of the discipline belong, currently has more than 8,000 members, and the comprehensive Directory of American Philosophers for 2002–3 lists well over 12,000 philosophers affiliated to colleges and universities in the USA and Canada. North American philosophers are extraordinarily gregarious by standards prevailing anywhere else. Apart from the massive American Philosophical Association, there presently exist well over 1,000 different philosophical societies in the USA and Canada, most of them with well over 100 members. In part because of the ‘publish or perish’ syndrome of their academic base, American philosophers are extraordinarily productive. They publish well over 200 books per annum nowadays. And issue by issue they fill up the pages of over 175 journals. Almost 4,000 philosophical publications (books or articles) and a roughly similar number of symposium papers and conference presentations appear annually in North America. The comparatively secure place of philosophy in the ‘liberal arts’ tradition of American collegiate education assures it a numerical size that makes for such professional health. (It is this statistical fact rather than anything coherent in the traditions themselves that has led to the ascendancy of American over British philosophy: as with industrial production, America's intellectual production is of preponderant volume.)

To be sure, this variation of philosophical approaches brings conflict in its wake, with each methodological camp and each school of thought convinced that it alone is doing competent work and the rest are at best misguided and probably pernicious. Few philosophers are sufficiently urbane to see philosophical disagreement and controversy as a form of collaboration. Internecine conflict is particularly acute between the analytic tradition, which looks to science as the cognitive model, and those who march to the drum of continental thinkers who—like Nietzsche , Heidegger , Foucault , Derrida , and co.—take not ‘reality’ but cultural artefacts (particularly literature and even philosophy itself) as the prime focus of philosophical concern. (Since deep-rooted values are at stake, there is no easy compromise here, although in intellectual as in social matters there is much to be said for live and let live.)

The total number of doctorates awarded by institutions of higher learning in the USA has been relatively stable at around 100,000 per annum since 1960. But the production of philosophy doctorates has declined substantially (along with that of humanities Ph.D.s in general), sinking from some 1,200 for 1970–5 to less than 600 by the end of the century. But even this meagre replenishment rate still enables the profession to maintain itself at a very substantial level.

Given the scale of the enterprise, it is only natural and to be expected that such unity as American philosophy affords is that of an academic industry, not that of a single doctrinal orientation or school. The size and scope of the academic establishment exerts a crucial formative influence on the nature of contemporary American philosophy. It means that two different—and sometimes opposed—tendencies are at work to create a balance of countervailing forces. The one is an impetus to separateness and differentiation—the desire of individual philosophers to ‘do their own thing’, to have projects of their own and not be engaged in working on just the same issues as everyone else. The other is an impetus to togetherness—the desire of philosophers to find companions, to be able to interact with others who share their interest to the extent of providing them with conversation partners and with a readership of intellectual cogeners. The first, centrifugal tendency means that philosophers will fan out across the entire reach of the field—that most or all of the ‘ecological niches’ within the problem-domain will be occupied. The second, centripetal tendency means that most or all of these problem-subdomains will be multiply populated—that group or networks of kindred spirits will form so that the community as a whole will be made up of subcommunities united by common interests (more prominently than by common opinions), with each group divided from the rest by different priorities as to what ‘the really interesting and important issues’ are. Accordingly, the most striking aspect of contemporary American philosophy is its fragmentation. The scale and complexity of the enterprise is such that if one seeks in contemporary American philosophy for a consensus on the problem-agenda, let alone for agreement on the substantive issues, then one is predestined to look in vain. Here theory diversity and doctrinal dissonance are the order of the day, and the only interconnection is that of geographic proximity. Such unity as American philosophy affords is that of an academic industry, not that of a single doctrinal orientation or school. Every doctrine, every theory, every approach finds its devotees somewhere within the overall community. On most of the larger issues there are no dominant majorities. To be sure, some uniformities are apparent at the localized level. (In the San Francisco Bay area one's philosophical discussions might well draw on model theory, in Princeton possible worlds would be brought in, in Pittsburgh pragmatic themes would be prominent, and so on.) But in matters of method and doctrine there is a proliferation of schools and tendencies, and there are few if any all-pervasively dominant trends. Balkanization reigns supreme.

The extent to which significant, important, and influential work is currently produced by academics outside the high-visibility limelight has not been sufficiently recognized. For better or for worse, in the late twentieth century we entered a new philosophical era where what counts is not just a dominant élite but a vast host of lesser mortals. Great kingdoms are thus notable by their absence, and the scene is more like that of medieval Europe—a collection of small territories ruled by counts-palatine and prince-bishops. Scattered here and there in separated castles, a prominent individual philosophical knight gains a local following of loyal vassals or dedicated enemies. But no one among the academic philosophers of today manages to impose their agenda on more than a minimal fraction of the larger, internally diversified community. Given that well over 10,000 academic philosophers are at work in North America alone, even the most influential of contemporary American philosophers is simply yet another—somewhat larger—fish in a very populous sea.

As regards those ‘big names’, the fact is that those bigger fish do not typify what the sea as a whole has to offer. Matters of philosophical history aside, salient themes and issues with which American philosophers are grappling at the present time include: ethical issues in the professions, the epistemology of information processing, the social implications of medical technology (abortion, euthanasia, right to life, medical research issues, informed consent), feminist issues, distributive justice, human rights, truth and meaning in mathematics and formalized languages, the merits and demerits of relativism regarding knowledge and morality, the nature of personhood and the rights and obligations of persons, and many more. None of these topics was put on the problem-agenda of present concern by any one particular philosopher. They blossomed forth like the leaves of a tree in springtime, appearing in many places at once under the formative impetus of the Zeitgeist of societal concern. Accordingly, philosophical innovation in America today is generally not the response to the preponderant effort of pace-setting individuals but a genuinely collective effort.

So much for the question of issues. But what of methodology and style? Pragmatism and applied philosophy apart, all of the dominant styles of American philosophy in the twentieth century—analytic philosophy, scientistic and logicist philosophizing, neo-Kantianism, phenomenology and ‘Continental’ philosophizing at large—originated in Europe. As far as philosophical approaches are concerned, Emerson's idea of an America moving beyond the dominance of European tendencies and traditions of thought has not been realized, and—given currently pervasive intellectual globalization—may never be. The extent to which American philosophy rests on European antecedents is graphically reflected in the great divide in the American Philosophical Association between the ‘Analysts’ and the ‘Pluralists’. To all intents and purposes this split mirrored the opposition in the Germany of the 1920s between the followers of Reichenbach and Carnap , on the one side, and those of Heidegger and Gadamer , on the other, the one looking for inspiration and example to science (especially mathematics and physics), the other to humanistic studies (especially literature and philology)—a duality of perspective which itself had deep roots in the philosophizing of nineteenth-century Germany with its opposed allegiances, respectively to the Naturwissenschaften ( Fries , Bolzano , Haeckel) and the Geisteswissenschaften ( Schleiermacher , Nietzsche , Dilthey).

A century ago, the historian Henry Adams lamented the end of the predominance of an oligarchy of the great and the good in American politics—as it had been in the days of the Founding Fathers. He regretted the emergence of a new order based on the dominance of the masses and their often self-appointed and generally plebeian representatives. Control of the political affairs of the nation had slipped from the hands of a cultural élite into that of the unimposing, albeit vociferous, representatives of ordinary people. In short, democracy was setting in. Precisely this same transformation from the pre-eminence of great figures to the predominance of mass movements is now, 100 years on, the established situation in even so intellectual an enterprise as philosophy. (Not that a sizeable percentage of people-at-large take any interest in philosophy; in this regard the democratization of the field is something quite different from its popularization.) In its present configuration, American philosophy reflects that ‘revolt of the masses’ which Ortega y Gasset thought characteristic of our era. This phenomenon manifests itself not only in politics and social affairs, but even in intellectual culture, including philosophy, where Ortega himself actually did not expect it, since ‘its perfect uselessness protects it’. For what the past century's spread of affluence and education has done through its expansion of cultural literacy is to broaden the social base of creative intellectual efforts beyond the imaginings of any earlier time. A cynic might characterize the current situation as a victory of the troglodytes over the giants. In the Anglo-Saxon world, at any rate, cultural innovation in philosophy as elsewhere is nowadays a matter of trends and fashions set by substantial constituencies that go their own way without seeking the guidance of agenda-controlling individuals. This results in a state of affairs that calls for description on a statistical rather than a biographical basis. (It is ironic to see the partisans of political correctness in academia condemning philosophy as an élitist discipline at the very moment when professional philosophy itself has abandoned élitism and succeeded in reinventing itself in a populist reconstruction. American philosophy has now well and truly left ‘the genteel tradition’ behind.)

And so the heroic age of American philosophy, in which the work of a few ‘big names’ towered over the philosophical landscape like a great mountain range, is now over. One sign of this is that the topical anthology has in recent years gained a position of equality with, if not preponderance over, the monographic philosophical text. Another sign is that philosophers nowadays are not eccentric geniuses working in obscure isolation, but work-aday members of the academic bourgeoisie (even if not, as in continental Europe, civil servants).

The rapid growth of ‘applied philosophy’—that is, philosophical reflection about detailed issues in science, law, business, social affairs, computer use, and the like—is a particularly striking structural feature of contemporary American philosophy. In particular, the past three decades have seen a great proliferation of narrowly focused philosophical investigations of particular issues in areas such as economic justice, social welfare, ecology, abortion, population policy, military defence, and so on. This situation illustrates the most characteristic feature of much of contemporary English-language philosophizing: the emphasis on detailed investigation of special issues and themes. For better or for worse, anglophone philosophers in recent years have tended to stay away from large-scale abstract matters of wide and comprehensive scope, characteristic of the earlier era of Whitehead or Dewey, and generally address their investigations to issues of small-scale detail.

In line with the increasing specialization and division of labour, American philosophy has become increasingly technical in character. Contemporary American philosophical investigations generally make increasingly extensive use of the formal machinery of philosophical semantics, modal logic, computation theory, psychology, learning theory, etc. Unfortunately, this increasing technicalization of philosophy has been achieved at the expense of its wider accessibility—and indeed even of its accessibility to members of the profession. No single thinker commands the whole range of knowledge and interests that characterizes present-day American philosophy, and indeed no single university department is so large as to have on its faculty specialists in every branch of the subject. The field has outgrown the capacity not only of its practitioners but even of its institutions.

Do American philosophers exert influence? Here the critical question is: Upon whom? Certainly as far as the wider society is concerned, it must be said that the answer is emphatically negative. American philosophers are not opinion-shapers: they do not have access to the media, to the political establishment, to the ‘think tanks’ that seek to mould public opinion. In so far as they exert an external influence at all, it is confined to academics of other fields. Professors of government may read John Rawls , professors of literature Richard Rorty , professors of linguistics W. V. Quine . But the writings of such important American philosophers exert no influence outside the academy. It was otherwise earlier in the century—in the era of philosophers like William James , John Dewey , and George Santayana —when the writings of individual philosophers set the stage for at least some discussions and debates among a wider public. But it is certainly not so in the America of today. American society today does not reflect the concerns of philosophers; the very reverse is the case—where ‘relevant’ at all, the writings of present-day American philosophers reflect the concerns of the society.

Wikipedia on Answers.com:

American philosophy

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Painting by Howard Chandler Christy of the scene at the Philadelphia Convention which led to the signing of the United States Constitution, an important document in American political and legal philosophy.

American philosophy is the philosophical activity or output of Americans, both within the United States and abroad. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while American philosophy lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and shaping collective American identity over the history of the nation."[1]

Contents

17th century

See also: 17th century philosophy

The American philosophical tradition began at the time of the European colonization of the New World.[1] The Puritan arrival in New York set the earliest American philosophy into the religious tradition, and there was also an emphasis on the relationship between the individual and the community. This is evident by the early colonial documents such as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639) and the Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641).[1]

Thinkers such as John Winthrop emphasized the public life over the private, holding that the former takes precedence over the latter, while other writers, such as Roger Williams (co-founder of Rhode Island) held that religious tolerance was more integral than trying to achieve religious homogeneity in a community.[2]

18th century

See also: 18th century philosophy

18th century American philosophy is often broken into two halves, the earlier half being marked by Puritan Calvinism, and the latter characterized by the American incarnation of the European Enlightenment that is associated with the political thought of the Founding Fathers.[1]

Calvinism

Jonathan Edwards is considered to be "America's most important and original philosophical theologian."[3] Noted for his energetic sermons, such as "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (which is said to have begun the First Great Awakening), Edwards emphasized "the absolute sovereignty of God and the beauty of God's holiness."[3] Working to unite Christian Platonism with an empiricist epistemology, with the aid of Newtonian physics, Edwards was deeply influenced by George Berkeley, himself an empiricist, and Edwards derived his importance of the immaterial for the creation of human experience from Bishop Berkeley.

The non-material mind consists of understanding and will, and it is understanding, interpreted in a Newtonian framework, that leads to Edwards' fundamental metaphysical category of Resistance. Whatever features an object may have, it has these properties because the object resists. Resistance itself is the exertion of God's power, and it can be seen in Newton's laws of motion, where an object is "unwilling" to change its current state of motion; an object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will remain in motion.

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, 1800.

As a Calvinist and hard determinist, Jonathan Edwards also rejected the freedom of the will, saying that "we can do as we please, but we cannot please as we please." According to Edwards, neither good works nor self-originating faith lead to salvation, but rather it is the unconditional grace of God which stands as the sole arbiter of human fortune.

Age of Enlightenment

While the early 18th century American philosophical tradition was decidedly marked by religious themes, the latter half saw a reliance on reason and science, and, in step with the thought of the Age of Enlightenment, a belief in the perfectibility of human beings, laissez-faire economics, and a general focus on political matters.[1]

Four of the Founding Fathers, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison, wrote extensively on political issues. In continuing with the chief concerns of the Puritans in the 17th century, the Founding Fathers debated the relationship between the individual and the state, as well as the nature of the state, importantly concerning the state's relationship to God and religion. It was at this time that the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were written, and they are the result of debate and compromise.

The Constitution sets forth a federated republican form of government that is marked by a balance of powers accompanied by a checks and balances system between the three branches of government: a judicial branch, an executive branch led by the President, and a legislative branch composed of a bicameral legislature where the House of Representatives is the lower house and the Senate is the upper house.[4]

While the Declaration of Independence does contain within it references to the Creator, the Founding Fathers were decidedly not exclusively theistic, some openly professing personal concepts of deism, as was characteristic of other European Enlightenment thinkers, such as Maximilien Robespierre, François-Marie Arouet (better known by his pen name, Voltaire), and Rousseau.[5] The most notably and self-consciously Christian of the Founding Fathers was John Adams. However, the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, signed by John Adams, states that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion".[6]

Thomas Paine, the intellectual, pamphleteer, and revolutionary who wrote Common Sense and Rights of Man was an influential Enlightenment thinker and American Founding Father. Common Sense, which has been described as “the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era"[7] provides justification for the American revolution and independence from the British Crown.

19th century

See also: 19th century philosophy

The 19th century saw the rise of Romanticism in America. The American incarnation of Romanticism was transcendentalism and it stands as a major American innovation. The 19th century also saw the rise of the school of pragmatism, along with a smaller, Hegelian philosophical movement led by George Holmes Howison that was focused in St. Louis, though the influence of American pragmatism far outstripped that of the small Hegelian movement.[1]

Other reactions to materialism included the "Objective idealism" of Josiah Royce, and the "Personalism," sometimes called "Boston personalism," of Borden Parker Bowne.

Transcendentalism

Henry David Thoreau, 1856
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ca. 1857

Transcendentalism in the United States was marked by an emphasis on subjective experience, and can be viewed as a reaction against modernism and intellectualism in general and the mechanistic, reductionistic worldview in particular. Transcendentalism is marked by the holistic belief in an ideal spiritual state that 'transcends' the physical and empirical, and this perfect state can only be attained by one's own intuition and personal reflection, as opposed to either industrial progress and scientific advancement or the principles and prescriptions of traditional, organized religion. The most notable transcendentalist writers include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller.[8]

The transcendentalist writers all desired a deep return to nature, and believed that real, true knowledge is intuitive and personal and arises out of personal immersion and reflection in nature, as opposed to scientific knowledge that is the result of empirical sense experience.[9]

Things such as scientific tools, political institutions, and the conventional rules of morality as dictated by traditional religion need to be transcended. This is found in Henry David Thoreau's Walden; or, Life in the Woods where transcendence is achieved through immersion in nature and the distancing of oneself from society.

Darwinism in America

The release of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory in his 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species had a strong impact on American philosophy. John Fiske and Chauncey Wright both wrote about and argued for the re-conceiving of philosophy through an evolutionary lens. They both wanted to understand morality and the mind in Darwinian terms, setting a precedent for evolutionary psychology and evolutionary ethics.

Darwin's biological theory was also integrated into the social and political philosophies of English thinker Herbert Spencer and American philosopher William Graham Sumner. Herbert Spencer, who coined the oft-misattributed term "survival of the fittest," believed that societies were in a struggle for survival, and that groups within society are where they are because of some level of fitness. This struggle is beneficial to human kind, as in the long run the weak will be weeded out and only the strong will survive. This position is often referred to as Social Darwinism, though it is distinct from the eugenics movements with which social darwinism is often associated. The laissez-faire beliefs of Sumner and Spencer do not advocate coercive breeding to achieve a planned outcome.

Sumner, much influenced by Spencer, believed along with the industrialist Andrew Carnegie that the social implication of the fact of the struggle for survival is that laissez-faire capitalism is the natural political-economic system and is the one that will lead to the greatest amount of well-being. William Sumner, in addition to his advocacy of free markets, also espoused anti-imperialism (having been credited with coining the term "ethnocentrism"), and advocated for the gold standard.[10]

Pragmatism

Perhaps the most influential school of thought that is uniquely American is pragmatism. It began in the late nineteenth century in the United States with Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Pragmatism begins with the idea that belief is that upon which one is willing to act. It holds that a proposition's meaning is the consequent form of conduct or practice that would be implied by accepting the proposition as true.[11]

Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirce, an American pragmatist, logician, mathematician, philosopher, and scientist.

Polymath, logician, mathematician, philosopher, and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce (play /ˈpɜrs/ like "purse"; 1839–1914) coined the term "pragmatism" in the 1870s.[12] He was a member of The Metaphysical Club, which was a conversational club of intellectuals that also included Chauncey Wright, future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and another early figure of pragmatism, William James.[11] In addition to making profound contributions to semiotics, logic, and mathematics, Peirce wrote what are considered to be the founding documents of pragmatism, "The Fixation of Belief" (1877) and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878).

In "The Fixation of Belief" Peirce argues for the superiority of the scientific method in settling belief on theoretical questions. In "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" Peirce argued for pragmatism as summed up in that which he later called the pragmatic maxim: "Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object". Peirce emphasized that a conception is general, such that its meaning is not a set of actual, definite effects themselves. Instead the conception of an object is equated to a conception of that object's effects to a general extent of their conceivable implications for informed practice. Those conceivable practical implications are the conception's meaning.

The maxim is intended to help fruitfully clarify confusions caused, for example, by distinctions that make formal but not practical differences. Traditionally one analyzes an idea into parts (his example: a definition of truth as a sign's correspondence to its object). To that needful but confined step, the maxim adds a further and practice-oriented step (his example: a definition of truth as sufficient investigation's destined end).

It is the heart of his pragmatism as a method of experimentational mental reflection[13] arriving at conceptions in terms of conceivable confirmatory and disconfirmatory circumstances — a method hospitable to the formation of explanatory hypotheses, and conducive to the use and improvement of verification.[14] Typical of Peirce is his concern with inference to explanatory hypotheses as outside the usual foundational alternative between deductivist rationalism and inductivist empiricism, though he himself was a mathematician of logic and a founder of statistics.

Peirce's philosophy includes a pervasive three-category system, both fallibilism and anti-skeptical belief that truth is discoverable and immutable, logic as formal semiotic (including semiotic elements and classes of signs, modes of inference, and methods of inquiry along with pragmatism and critical common-sensism), Scholastic realism, theism, objective idealism, and belief in the reality of continuity of space, time, and law, and in the reality of absolute chance, mechanical necessity, and creative love as principles operative in the cosmos and as modes of its evolution.

William James

William James, an American pragmatist and psychologist.

William James (1842–1910) was "an original thinker in and between the disciplines of physiology, psychology and philosophy."[15] He is famous as the author of The Varieties of Religious Experience, his monumental tome Principles of Psychology, and his lecture "The Will to Believe."

James, along with Peirce,[16] saw pragmatism as embodying familiar attitudes elaborated into a radical new philosophical method of clarifying ideas and thereby resolving dilemmas. In his 1910 Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, James paraphrased Peirce's pragmatic maxim as follows:

“ [T]he tangible fact at the root of all our thought-distinctions, however subtle, is that there is no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve — what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare. ”

He then went on to characterize pragmatism as promoting not only a method of clarifying ideas but also as endorsing a particular theory of truth. Peirce rejected this latter move by James, preferring to describe the pragmatic maxim only as a maxim of logic and pragmatism as a methodological stance, explicitly denying that it was a substantive doctrine or theory about anything, truth or otherwise.[17]

James is also known for his radical empiricism which holds that relations between objects are as real as the objects themselves. James was also a pluralist in that he believed that there may actually be multiple correct accounts of truth. He rejected the correspondence theory of truth and instead held that truth involves a belief, facts about the world, other background beliefs, and future consequences of those beliefs. Later in his life James would also come to adopt neutral monism, the view that the ultimate reality is of one kind, and is neither mental nor physical.[18]

John Dewey

John Dewey (1859–1952), while still engaging in the lofty academic philosophical work of James and Peirce before him, also wrote extensively on political and social matters, and his presence in the public sphere was much greater than his pragmatist predecessors. In addition to being one of the founding members of pragmatism, John Dewey was one of the founders of functional psychology and was a leading figure of the progressive movement in U.S. schooling during the first half of the 20th century.[19]

Dewey argued against the individualism of classical liberalism, asserting that social institutions are not "means for obtaining something for individuals. They are means for creating individuals."[20] He held that individuals are not things that should be accommodated by social institutions, instead, social institutions are prior to and shape the individuals. These social arrangements are a means of creating individuals and promoting individual freedom.

Dewey is well known for his work in the applied philosophy of the philosophy of education. Dewey's philosophy of education is one where children learn by doing. Dewey believed that schooling was unnecessarily long and formal, and that children would be better suited to learn by engaging in real-life activities. For example, in math, students could learn by figuring out proportions in cooking or seeing how long it would take to travel distances with certain modes of transportation.[21]

20th century

George Santayana, a Spanish-American philosopher.
See also: 20th century philosophy

Pragmatism, which began in the 19th century in America, by the beginning of the 20th century began to be accompanied by other philosophical schools of thought, and was eventually eclipsed by them, though only temporarily. The 20th century saw the emergence of process philosophy, itself influenced by the scientific world-view and Einstein's theory of relativity. The middle of the 20th century was witness to the increase in popularity of the philosophy of language and analytic philosophy in America. Existentialism and phenomenology, while very popular in Europe in the 20th century, never achieved the level of popularity in America as they did in continental Europe.[1]

Rejection of idealism

Pragmatism continued its influence into the 20th century, and Spanish-born philosopher George Santayana was one of the leading proponents of pragmatism in this period. He held that idealism was an outright contradiction and rejection of common sense. He held that, if something must be certain in order to be knowledge, then it seems no knowledge may be possible, and the result will be skepticism. According to Santayana, knowledge involved a sort of faith, which he termed "animal faith."

In his book Scepticism and Animal Faith he asserts that knowledge is not the result of reasoning. Instead, knowledge is what is required to order to act and successfully engage with the world.[22] As a naturalist, Santayana was a harsh critic of epistemological foundationalism. The explanation of events in the natural world is within the realm of science, while the meaning and value of this action should be studied by philosophers. Santayana was accompanied in the intellectual climate of 'common sense' philosophy by the thinkers of the New Realism movement, such as Ralph Barton Perry.

Process philosophy

Process philosophy embraces the Einsteinian world-view, and its main proponents include Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. The core belief of process philosophy is the claim that events and processes are principle ontological categories.[23] Whitehead asserted in his book The Concept of Nature that the things in nature, what he referred to as "concresences" are a conjunction of events that maintain a permanence of character. Process philosophy is Heraclitan in the sense that a fundamental ontological category is change.[24] Charles Hartshorne was also responsible for developing the process philosophy of Whitehead into process theology.

Analytic philosophy

An image of Quine as seen on his passport.

The middle of the 20th century was the beginning of the dominance of analytic philosophy in America. Analytic philosophy, prior to its arrival in America, had begun in Europe with the work of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists. According to logical positivism, the truths of logic and mathematics are tautologies, and those of science are empirically verifiable. Any other claim, including the claims of ethics, aesthetics, theology, metaphysics, and ontology, are meaningless (this theory is called verificationism). With the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, many positivists fled Germany to Britain and America, and this helped reinforce the dominance of analytic philosophy in the United States in subsequent years.[1]

W.V.O. Quine, while not a logical positivist, shared their view that philosophy should stand shoulder to shoulder with science in its pursuit of intellectual clarity and understanding of the world. He criticized the logical positivists and the analytic/synthetic distinction of knowledge in his essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and advocated for his "web of belief," which is a coherentist theory of justificiation. In Quine's epistemology, since no experiences occur in isolation, there is actually a holistic approach to knowledge where every belief or experience is intertwined with the whole. Quine is also famous for inventing the term "gavagai" as part of his theory of the indeterminacy of translation.[25]

Saul Kripke at Juquehy Beach

Saul Kripke, a student of Quine at Harvard, has profoundly influenced analytic philosophy. Kripke was ranked among the top ten most important philosophers of the past 200 years in a poll conducted by Brian Leiter (Leiter Reports: a Philosophy Blog; open access poll)[26] Kripke is best known for four contributions to philosophy: (1) Kripke semantics for modal and related logics, published in several essays beginning while he was still in his teens. (2) His 1970 Princeton lectures Naming and Necessity (published in 1972 and 1980), that significantly restructured the philosophy of language and, as some have put it, "made metaphysics respectable again". (3) His interpretation of the philosophy of Wittgenstein.[27] (4) His theory of truth. He has also made important contributions to set theory (see admissible ordinal and Kripke-Platek set theory)

David Kellogg Lewis, another student of Quine at Harvard, was ranked as one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century in a poll conducted by Brian Leiter (open access poll).[28] He is well known for his controversial advocacy of modal realism, the position which holds that there is an infinite number of concrete and causally isolated possible worlds, of which ours is one.[29] These possible worlds arise in the field of modal logic.

Thomas Kuhn was an important philosopher and writer who worked extensively in the fields of the history of science and the philosophy of science. He is famous for writing The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, one of the most cited academic works of all time. The book argues that science proceeds through different paradigms as scientists find new puzzles to solve. There follows a widespread struggle to find answers to questions, and a shift in world views occurs, which is referred to by Kuhn as a paradigm shift.[30] The work is considered a milestone in the sociology of knowledge.

Return to political philosophy

The analytic philosophers troubled themselves with the abstract and the conceptual, and American philosophy did not fully return to social and political concerns (that dominated American philosophy at the time of the founding of the United States) until the 1970s. The return to political and social concerns included the popularity of works of Ayn Rand, who promoted Ethical egoism (which she called Objectivism) in her novels, The Fountainhead in 1943 and Atlas Shrugged in 1957.

These two novels gave birth to the Objectivist movement, one which started as a small group of students called The Collective, one of whom was a young Alan Greenspan, the well-known libertarian Chairman of the Federal Reserve.[31] Objectivism holds that there is an objective external reality that can be known with reason, that human beings should act in accordance with their own rational self-interest, and that the proper form of economic organization is laissez-faire capitalism.[32] Academic philosophers have been highly critical of the quality and intellectual rigor of Rand's work,[33][34] but she remains a popular, albeit controversial, figure within the American libertarian movement.[35][36]

In 1971 John Rawls published his book A Theory of Justice. The book puts forth Rawls' view of justice as fairness, one which is based on a form of social contract theory. Rawls employs the use of a conceptual mechanism called the veil of ignorance to outline his idea of the original position.[37]

In Rawls' philosophy, the original position is the correlate to the Hobbesian state of nature. While in the original position, persons are said to be behind the veil of ignorance, which makes these persons unaware of their individual characteristics and their place in society, such as their race, religion, wealth, etc. The principles of justice are chosen by rational persons while in this original position. The two principles of justice are the equal liberty principle and the principle which governs the distribution of social and economic inequalities. From this, Rawls argues for a system of distributive justice in accordance with the Difference Principle, which says that all social and economic inequalities must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged.[38]

Viewing Rawls as promoting excessive government control and rights violations, libertarian Robert Nozick published Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974. The book advocates for a minimal state and defends the liberty of the individual. He argues that the role of government should be limited to "police protection, national defense, and the administration of courts of law, with all other tasks commonly performed by modern governments – education, social insurance, welfare, and so forth – taken over by religious bodies, charities, and other private institutions operating in a free market."[39]

Nozick asserts his view of the entitlement theory of justice, which says that if everyone in society has acquired their holdings in accordance with the principles of acquisition, transfer, and rectification, then any pattern of allocation, no matter how unequal the distribution may be, is just. The entitlement theory of justice holds that the "justice of a distribution is indeed determined by certain historical circumstances (contrary to end-state theories), but it has nothing to do with fitting any pattern guaranteeing that those who worked the hardest or are most deserving have the most shares."[40]

Alasdair MacIntyre, while he was born and educated in the United Kingdom, has spent around forty years living and working in the United States. He is responsible for the resurgence of interest in virtue ethics, a moral theory first propounded by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.[41][42] He is considered the preeminent Thomist political philosopher. He holds that "modern philosophy and modern life are characterized by the absence of any coherent moral code, and that the vast majority of individuals living in this world lack a meaningful sense of purpose in their lives and also lack any genuine community".[43] He recommends a return to genuine political communities where individuals can properly acquire their virtues.

Outside academic philosophy, political and social concerns took center stage with the Civil Rights Movement and the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Feminism

Betty Friedan
See also: History of feminism

While there were earlier writers who would be considered feminist, such as Sarah Grimké, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Anne Hutchinson, the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, also known as second-wave feminism, is notable for its impact in philosophy.[44]

The popular mind was taken with Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This was accompanied by other feminist philosophers, such as Adrienne Rich. These philosophers critiqued basic assumptions and values of philosophy, such as objectivity and what they believe to be masculine approaches to ethics, for example, rights-based political theories. They wrote that there is no such thing as a value-neutral inquiry and they sought to analyze the social dimensions of philosophical issues.

Contemporary philosophy

Hilary Putnam

Towards the end of the 20th century there was a resurgence of interest in pragmatism. Largely responsible for this are Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty. Rorty is famous as the author of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and Philosophy and Social Hope. Hilary Putnam is well known for his quasi-empiricism in mathematics,[45] his challenge of the brain in a vat thought experiment,[46] and his other work in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science.

The debates that occur within the philosophy of mind have taken center stage. American philosophers such as Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson,[47] Daniel Dennett,[48] Douglas Hofstadter,[49] John Searle,[50] as well as Patricia and Paul Churchland[51] continue the discussion of such issues as the nature of mind and the hard problem of consciousness, a philosophical problem indicated by the Australian philosopher David Chalmers.[52]

Noted American legal philosophers Ronald Dworkin and Richard Posner work in the fields of political philosophy and jurisprudence. Posner is famous for his economic analysis of law, a theory which uses microeconomics to understand legal rules and institutions.[53] Dworkin is famous for his theory of law as integrity and legal interpretivism.[54][55]

African-American philosopher Cornel West is known for his analysis of American cultural life with regards to race, gender, and class issues, as well as his associations with pragmatism and transcendentalism.

Alvin Plantinga is a Christian thinker known for his evolutionary argument against naturalism, his assertion that one can know God as a properly basic belief, and his modal version of the ontological argument for the existence of God. Michael C. Rea has developed Plantinga's thought by claiming that both naturalism and supernaturalism are research programmes that have to be adopted as a basis for research.[56]

See also

Lists:

Organizations:

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h "American philosophy" at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved on May 24, 2009
  2. ^ "Religious Tolerance" - Freedom: A History of US: PBS.com Retrieved September 9, 2009
  3. ^ a b Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Jonathan Edwards," First published Tue Jan 15, 2002; substantive revision Tue Nov 7, 2006
  4. ^ "Bicameralism and Enumerated, Implied, Resulting, and Inherent Powers" Retrieved September 7, 2009
  5. ^ "Declaration of Independence & Christianity Myth" Retrieved September 7, 2009
  6. ^ "The Avalon Project" at Yale Law School Library Retrieved August 2, 2010
  7. ^ Gordon Wood, The American Revolution: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2002), 55
  8. ^ "Famous Transcendentalists" Retrieved September 9, 2009
  9. ^ "Transcendentalism" at the SEP Retrieved September 9, 2009
  10. ^ "William Graham Sumner" - nndb.com Retrieved September 9, 2009
  11. ^ a b "Pragmatism" at IEP Retrieved on July 30, 2008
  12. ^ "Pragmatism - Charles Sanders Peirce" Retrieved September 9, 2009
  13. ^ Peirce (1902), Collected Papers v. 5, paragraph 13, note 1. See relevant quote at Pragmatic maxim#6.
  14. ^ See Collected Papers, v. 1, paragraph 34, Eprint (in "The Spirit of Scholasticism"), where Peirce ascribes the success of modern science less to a novel interest in verification than to the improvement of verification.
  15. ^ "William James" at SEP Retrieved on July 30, 2009
  16. ^ See "Pragmatism (Editor [3])", c. 1906, especially the portion published in Collected Papers v. 5 (1934), paragraphs 11-12.
  17. ^ Peirce (1903), Collected Papers v. 2, paragraph 99; v. 5, paragraphs 18, 195; v. 6, paragraph 482.
  18. ^ "Neutral Monism" at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved September 9, 2009
  19. ^ Violas, Paul C.; Tozer, Steven; Senese, Guy B.. School and Society: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. p. 121. ISBN 0-07-298556-9. 
  20. ^ "Dewey's Political Philosophy" at SEP Retrieved on July 30, 2009
  21. ^ John Dewey: Philosophy of Education" Retrieved on July 30, 2009
  22. ^ "George Santayana" at the Stanford Encylclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved September 9, 2009
  23. ^ "Process Philosophy" at the SEP Retrieved on September 7, 2009
  24. ^ "Process Philosophy and the New Thought Movement" Retrieved September 7, 2009
  25. ^ "UNDERSTANDING QUINE'S THESES OF INDETERMINACY" by Nick Bostrom Retrieved September 7, 2009
  26. ^ Brian Leiter, "The last poll about philosophers for awhile--I promise!" [1] (March 7, 2009) and "So who *is* the most important philosopher of the past 200 years?" [2] (March 11, 2009), Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog.
  27. ^ 1982. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: an Elementary Exposition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-95401-7. Sets out his interpretation of Wittgenstein aka Kripkenstein.
  28. ^ "Let's Settle This Once and For All: Who Really Was the Greatest Philosopher of the 20th-Century?" Retrieved on July 29, 2009
  29. ^ "David K. Lewis" - Princeton University Department of Philosophy Retrieved on September 7, 2009
  30. ^ "Thomas Kuhn" at the SEP Retrieved on September 7, 2009
  31. ^ Ip, Greg; Steel, Emily (September 15, 2007). "Greenspan Book Criticizes Bush And Republicans". Wall Street Journal: p. A1. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118978549183327730.html. 
  32. ^ "INTRODUCING OBJECTIVISM" by Ayn Rand Retrieved on September 7, 2009
  33. ^ "The Winnowing of Ayn Rand" by Roderick Long Retrieved July 10, 2010
  34. ^ "The philosophical art of looking out number one" at heraldscotland Retrieved July 10, 2010
  35. ^ "Ayn Rand" at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved July 10, 2010
  36. ^ "Profile of Ayn Rand at the Cato Institute Retrieved July 10, 2010
  37. ^ "Philosophy: John Rawls vs. Robert Nozick" Retrieved September 7, 2009
  38. ^ "Distributive Justice" at SEP Retrieved December 18, 2009
  39. ^ "Robert Nozick (1938—2002)" at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved September 7, 2009
  40. ^ "Robert Nozick" at IEP Retrieved January 5, 2010
  41. ^ "The Virtues of Alasdair MacIntyre" Retrieved on September 7, 2009
  42. ^ "Virtue Ethics" at SEP Retrieved on September 7, 2009
  43. ^ "Political Philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre" at IEP.com Retrieved December 22, 2009
  44. ^ "Topics in Feminism" at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved September 7, 2009
  45. ^ Putnam, Hilary, 1975, Mind, Language, and Reality. Philosophical Papers, Volume 2. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. ISBN 88-459-0257-9
  46. ^ "Brains in a Vat" at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved September 10, 2009
  47. ^ "Donald Davidson" at the Internet Encylclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved September 10, 2009
  48. ^ "Daniel Dennett" at the Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind Retrieved September 10, 2009
  49. ^ Douglas Hofstadter's page at Indiana.edu Retrieved September 10, 2009
  50. ^ "John Searle" at the Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind Retrieved September 10, 2009
  51. ^ "Eliminative Materialism" at the Stanford Encylclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved September 10, 2009
  52. ^ "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" - David Chalmers Retrieved September 10, 2009
  53. ^ "The Economic Analysis of Law" by Lewis Kornhauser at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved September 11, 2009
  54. ^ "Interpretivist Theories of Law" by Nicos Stavropoulos at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved September 11, 2009
  55. ^ Allan, T. R. S. (1988). "Review: Dworkin and Dicey: The Rule of Law as Integrity". Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (Oxford University Press) 8 (2): 266–277. doi:10.1093/ojls/8.2.266. ISSN 01436503. JSTOR 764314. 
  56. ^ Michael C. Rea: World Without Design: Ontological Consequences of Naturalism. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2001.

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