A History of Philosophy in America, 1720-2000

by Kuklick, Bruce

• ISBN13: 9780199260164
• ISBN10: 0199260168
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-24
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

Here at last is the only up-to-date history of American philosophy, an American counterpart to Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. In this fascinating volume, the eminent historian Bruce Kuklick tells the story of the growth of philosophical thinking in the United States, in the context of intellectual and social change. He sketches the genesis of these intellectual practices in New England Calvinism and the writing of Jonathan Edwards. He discusses theology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the origins of collegiate philosophy in the early part of the nineteenth century. We see the development of secular preconceptions and the emergence, after Darwin's writings of the mid-late nineteenth century, of forms of thought hostile to religion. All of the great American thinkers are portrayed and their contributions to philosophy assessed--from Charles Peirce to William James, John Dewey to C. I. Lewis, and Wilfrid Sellars to W. V. Quine. The work brings us right up to date with the first historical treatment of the period after pragmatism, and the fragmentation of philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. The author steers a controversial course between the divergent views that historians and philosophers take of the significance of philosophy in recent years.

Author Biography

Bruce Kuklick is Nichols Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

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	(26)
Acknowledgements	312	(1)
Index	313