The Soul of Classical American Philosophy: The Ethical and Spiritual Insights of William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Pierce

by Mullin, Richard P.

• ISBN13: 9780791471104
• ISBN10: 0791471101
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-05-10
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

The Soul of Classical American Philosophy is an introduction to the thought of William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Peirce, particularly in terms of the ethical and the spiritual. Writing for the nonspecialist in a straightforward style, Richard P. Mullin brings together the central ideas of these three key figures of classical American Pragmatism and explores their engagement with issues of truth, the meaning of self, free will, moral values, community, scientific thinking, and the relationship with the transcendent. He also addresses the growing international interest in American philosophy and sheds light on a defining movement in its history. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Richard P. Mullin is Professor of Philosophy at Wheeling Jesuit University

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xi
Purpose of this Work	p. xi
Personal Note	p. xiv
List of Abbreviations	p. xvii
William James
Meaning and Truth	p. 3
Pragmatism	p. 3
Radical Empiricism	p. 5
Body and Mind	p. 11
Materialism versus Dualism	p. 11
Neither Dualism nor Materialism	p. 13
A Radical Empiricist View of Mind and Body	p. 19
Free Will	p. 21
Psychology and the Subjective Experience of Free Will	p. 21
Indeterminism and the Physical Possibility of Free Will	p. 24
A Late Twentieth-Century Adaptation of James's Concept of Free Will	p. 26
William James and Moral Philosophy	p. 31
The Task of the Moral Philosopher	p. 31
James's Moral Ideals	p. 37
The Adequacy of James's Theory	p. 40
Rationality and Religious Faith	p. 41
Faith in the Salvation of the World	p. 42
The Meaning of Rationality	p. 44
The Reasonableness of Theism	p. 46
William James's Personal Faith	p. 49
Human Immortality	p. 51
Human Nature and the Life of the Spirit	p. 55
Spirituality Defined and Placed in a Metaphysical Context	p. 56
Naturalism and Spirituality	p. 58
The How and Why of Spirituality	p. 59
A Worldview Compatible with Spirit	p. 61
Josiah Royce
The Idealism of Josiah Royce	p. 67
Ideas and Reality	p. 68
The First and Second Conceptions of Being: Realism and Mysticism	p. 71
The Third Conception of Being: Critical Rationalism	p. 73
The Fourth Conception of Being: Royce's Idealism	p. 75
Josiah Royce's Concept of the Self	p. 81
The Ambiguity of the Self	p. 81
The Self as an Ethical Category	p. 83
Individual and the Whole	p. 85
Josiah Royce's Philosophy of Loyalty as the Basis for Ethics	p. 89
Royce's Idea of Loyalty	p. 89
The American Problem	p. 91
The Contemporary Problem	p. 92
The Practicality of Roycean Loyalty	p. 93
Ethics and the Full-Breasted Richness of Life	p. 96
The Religious Insights of Josiah Royce	p. 103
Individual Experience	p. 105
Social Experience	p. 106
Reason	p. 107
Will	p. 109
Loyalty	p. 110
Sorrow	p. 111
Unify of the Spirit	p. 113
What James Missed	p. 114
Charles Sanders Peirce
Peirce and the Origin of Pragmatism	p. 119
Peirce's Pragmatism	p. 121
Peirce's Critique of Nominalistic Pragmatism	p. 124
Charles Sanders Peirce on the Human Person	p. 127
Peirce's Critique of the Separated Self	p. 127
The Illusory Self and the Authentic Self	p. 131
Ethics and the Purpose of Human Life	p. 133
Reasons for the Incompatibility of Practical and Theoretical Ethics	p. 133
The Place of Ethics in Peirce's Architectonic	p. 137
Love and Evolution	p. 141
Deriving a Virtue Ethic from Peirce's Theoretical Ethics	p. 145
Continuity of Practical and Theoretical Ethics	p. 148
Conclusion	p. 149
Notes	p. 153
Bibliography	p. 161
Index	p. 165
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