A History of Philosophy in America, 1720-2000

by Kuklick, Bruce

• ISBN13: 9780198250319
• ISBN10: 0198250312
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-04-25
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

Ranging from Joseph Bellamy to Hilary Putnam, and from early New England Divinity Schools to contemporary university philosophy departments, historian Bruce Kuklick recounts the story of the growth of philosophical thinking in the United States. Readers will explore the thought of early American philosophers such as Jonathan Edwards and John Witherspoon and will see how the political ideas of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson influenced philosophy in colonial America. Kuklick discusses The Transcendental Club (members Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson) and describes the rise of pragmatism centered on Metaphysical Club of Cambridge (and members William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Charles Peirce). He examines the profound impact Darwinism had on American philosophy and looks at Idealists such as the Kantian Josiah Royce and the Hegelian John Dewey. The book shows how, in the twentieth century, the Nazi conquest of Europe unleashed a flood of European intellectuals onto these shores, including such major thinkers as Theodore Adorno, Erich Fromm, Rudolph Carnap, and Alfred Tarski. Finally, Kuklick examines the contributions of such contemporary philosophers as Sidney Hook and Willard Quine and such books as John Rawl's A Theory of Justice and Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. Kuklick pulls no punches in portraying the state of American philosophy today and its contested role in the intellectual life of the nation and the world. The range of philosophical thought in our nation's history has been great, from Edwards's Religious Affections to Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Bruce Kuklick has captured it all in a book that blends intricate details with sweeping vision.

Author Biography

Bruce Kuklick is Nichols Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also edited American Quarterly and held appointments in the departments of Philosophy and Religious Studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction	x
Part I Speculative Thought in America, 1720-1868	1	(94)
Calvinism and Jonathan Edwards	5	(21)
Philosophy and Politics	26	(12)
Theological Dispute	38	(20)
From Joseph Bellamy, True Religion Delineated (1750) to Nathaniel William Taylor, Moral Government of God (1858)
Collegiate Philosophy	58	(17)
From John Witherspoon, Lectures on Moral Philosophy (1800) to Noah Porter, The Human Intellect (1868)
Innovative Amateurs	75	(20)
From James Marsh's Edition of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection (1829) to the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (1867)
Part II The Age of Pragmatism, 1859-1934	95	(104)
The Shape of Revolution	97	(14)
The Impact in America of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859), J. S. Mill's Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865), and German higher criticism
The Consensus on Idealism, 1870-1900	111	(18)
Pragmatism in Cambridge	129	(21)
From Charles Peirce `On a New List of Categories' (1867) to Morris Cohen (ed.), Chance, Love, and Logic: Philosophical Essays by the Late Charles S. Peirce, the Founder of Pragmatism (1923)
Pragmatism at Harvard	150	(29)
From William James, `Spencer's Definition of Mind' (1878) to Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity (1913)
Instrumentalism in Chicago and New York	179	(20)
From John Dewey (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory (1903) to John Dewey, A Common Faith (1934)
Part III Professional Philosophy, 1912-2000	199	(83)
Professional Realism	201	(24)
From The New Realism (1912) to Wilfrid Sellars, 'Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind' (1956)
Europe's Impact on the United States	225	(18)
From Rudolph Carnap, Logische Aufbau der Welt (1928) to Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (1964)
Harvard and Oxford	243	(16)
From Nelson Goodman, 'The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals' (1946) to W. V. O. Quine, `Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World' (1975)
The Tribulations of Professional Philosophy	259	(23)
From Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) to Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (1999)
Conclusion	282	(4)
Methods, Sources, Notes	286	(24)
Acknowledgements	310	(1)
Index	311