American Philosophy

American Philosophy PDF Author: John Kaag
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374713111
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The epic wisdom contained in a lost library helps the author turn his life around John Kaag is a dispirited young philosopher at sea in his marriage and his career when he stumbles upon West Wind, a ruin of an estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that belonged to the eminent Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. Hocking was one of the last true giants of American philosophy and a direct intellectual descendent of William James, the father of American philosophy and psychology, with whom Kaag feels a deep kinship. It is James’s question “Is life worth living?” that guides this remarkable book. The books Kaag discovers in the Hocking library are crawling with insects and full of mold. But he resolves to restore them, as he immediately recognizes their importance. Not only does the library at West Wind contain handwritten notes from Whitman and inscriptions from Frost, but there are startlingly rare first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As Kaag begins to catalog and read through these priceless volumes, he embarks on a thrilling journey that leads him to the life-affirming tenets of American philosophy—self-reliance, pragmatism, and transcendence—and to a brilliant young Kantian who joins him in the restoration of the Hocking books. Part intellectual history, part memoir, American Philosophy is ultimately about love, freedom, and the role that wisdom can play in turning one’s life around.

American Philosophy

American Philosophy PDF Author: John Kaag
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374713111
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
The epic wisdom contained in a lost library helps the author turn his life around John Kaag is a dispirited young philosopher at sea in his marriage and his career when he stumbles upon West Wind, a ruin of an estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that belonged to the eminent Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. Hocking was one of the last true giants of American philosophy and a direct intellectual descendent of William James, the father of American philosophy and psychology, with whom Kaag feels a deep kinship. It is James’s question “Is life worth living?” that guides this remarkable book. The books Kaag discovers in the Hocking library are crawling with insects and full of mold. But he resolves to restore them, as he immediately recognizes their importance. Not only does the library at West Wind contain handwritten notes from Whitman and inscriptions from Frost, but there are startlingly rare first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As Kaag begins to catalog and read through these priceless volumes, he embarks on a thrilling journey that leads him to the life-affirming tenets of American philosophy—self-reliance, pragmatism, and transcendence—and to a brilliant young Kantian who joins him in the restoration of the Hocking books. Part intellectual history, part memoir, American Philosophy is ultimately about love, freedom, and the role that wisdom can play in turning one’s life around.

American Philosophy

American Philosophy PDF Author: Nancy A. Stanlick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415689724
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
"What is it that makes American philosophy unique? {this book] answers this question by tracing the history of American thought from early Calvinists to the New England Transcendentalists and from contract theory to contemporary African American philosophy. ..."--Back cover.

Philosophy in the American West

Philosophy in the American West PDF Author: Josh Hayes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000092410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Philosophy in the American West explores the physical, ecological, cultural, and narrative environments associated with the western United States, reflecting on the relationship between people and the places that sustain them. The American West has long been recognized as having significance. From Crèvecoeur’s early observations in Letters from an American Farmer (1782), to Thoreau’s reflections in Walden (1854), to twentieth-century thoughts on the legacy of a vanishing frontier, "the West" has played a pivotal role in the American narrative and in the American sense of self. But while the nature of "westernness" has been touched on by historians, sociologists, and, especially, novelists and poets, this collection represents the first attempt to think philosophically about the nature of "the West" and its influence on us. The contributors take up thinkers that have been associated with Continental Philosophy and pair them with writers, poets, and artists of "the West". And while this collection seeks to loosen the cords that tie philosophy to Europe, the traditions of "continental" philosophy—phenomenology, hermeneutics, deconstruction, and others—offer deep resources for thinking through the particularity of place. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Philosophy, as well as those working in Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities more broadly.

America the Philosophical

America the Philosophical PDF Author: Carlin Romano
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0345804708
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 690

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Book Description
This bold, insightful book argues that America today towers as the most philosophical culture in the history of the world, an unprecedented marketplace for truth and debate. With verve and keen intelligence, Carlin Romano—Pulitzer Prize finalist, award-winning book critic, and professor of philosophy—takes on the widely held belief that the United States is an anti-intellectual country. Instead he provides a richly reported overview of American thought, arguing that ordinary Americans see through phony philosophical justifications faster than anyone else, and that the best of our thinkers ditch artificial academic debates for fresh intellectual enterprises. Along the way, Romano seeks to topple philosophy’s most fiercely admired hero, Socrates, asserting that it is Isocrates, the nearly forgotten Greek philosopher who rejected certainty, whom Americans should honor as their intellectual ancestor. America the Philosophical is a rebellious tour de force that both celebrates our country’s unparalleled intellectual energy and promises to bury some of our most hidebound cultural clichés.

Confucianism and American Philosophy

Confucianism and American Philosophy PDF Author: Mathew A. Foust
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438464754
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
A comparative analysis of Confucianism and the American Transcendentalist and Pragmatist traditions. In this highly original work, Mathew A. Foust breaks new ground in comparative studies through his exploration of the connections between Confucianism and the American Transcendentalist and Pragmatist movements. In his examination of a broad range of philosophers, including Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Peirce, William James, and Josiah Royce, Foust traces direct lines of influence from early translations of Confucian texts and brings to light conceptual affinities that have been previously overlooked. Combining resources from both traditions, Confucianism and American Philosophy offers fresh insights into contemporary problems and exemplifies the potential of cross-cultural dialogue in an increasingly pluralistic world. “Authoritative and insightful, this book fills two lacunae in East-West comparative studies. First, it rounds out several general thematic connections by taking a broad view, rather than focusing narrowly on just one figure from each tradition. And, in so doing, it sheds much needed light on Confucian comparisons that have been previously understated or completely unnoticed.” — Christopher C. Kirby, editor of Dewey and the Ancients: Essays on Hellenic and Hellenistic Themes in the Philosophy of John Dewey

The Spirit of American Philosophy

The Spirit of American Philosophy PDF Author: John Edwin Smith
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780873956505
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This revised edition of John E. Smith's classic details the phenomenal growth in American philosophy in the years since the book first appeared. Through the addition of a new chapter and the readdressing of earlier material, Smith advances his reflections on the present decade. The book also considers the impact of British linguistic philosophy and other currents of thought abroad on classical American philosophy.

Philosophy in America

Philosophy in America PDF Author: Max Black
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317853466
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This is Volume V of twenty-two of a collection on 20th Century Philosophy. Originally published in 1964, this collection contains original papers assembled and representative in their styles, methods, and preoccupations. The various problems here discussed where to the author both important and unsolved: if others are stimulated to make further progress in solving them, the main purpose of this collection will have been achieved.

American Philosophy Before Pragmatism

American Philosophy Before Pragmatism PDF Author: Russell B. Goodman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199577544
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Russell B. Goodman tells the story of the development of philosophy in America from the mid-18th century to the late 19th century. The key figures in this story, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, the writers of The Federalist, and the romantics (or 'transcendentalists') Emerson and Thoreau, were not professors but men of the world, whose deep formative influence on American thought brought philosophy together with religion, politics, and literature. Goodman considers their work in relation to the philosophers and other thinkers they found important: the deism of John Toland and Matthew Tindal, the moral sense theories of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and David Hume, the political and religious philosophy of John Locke, the romanticism of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant. Goodman discusses Edwards's condemnation and Franklin's acceptance of deism, argues that Jefferson was an Epicurean in his metaphysical views

Portraits of American Philosophy

Portraits of American Philosophy PDF Author: Steven M. Cahn
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 9781442260030
Category : Philosophers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In Portraits of American Philosophy eight of America's leading philosophers offer autobiographical narratives, reminding us that the life of a scholar is both a personal struggle and an adventure in ideas. Selected from the prestigious John Dewey Lectures, these reminiscences provide personal perspectives on how a generation of scholars faced barriers built on prejudices of religion, race, gender, and sexual orientation, while being affected by the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and feminism. Also explored are the major themes of post-World War II American philosophy, including the temporary dominance of logical positivism and then ordinary language philosophy; the animus between some supporters of the so-called analytic and Continental traditions; new approaches to a variety of subfields; and a deepened understanding of how the history of philosophy can be enriched through concentration on textual and contextual study. These unique remembrances of people, institutions, and issues not only chart the history of recent American philosophy but also present incisive accounts of the trajectory of American intellectual life as seen through the eyes of some of its most influential thinkers. Contributions by Nicholas Wolterstorff, J.B. Schneewind, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Richard J. Bernstein, Harry Frankfurt, Marilyn McCord Adams, and Claudia Card.

Decolonizing American Philosophy

Decolonizing American Philosophy PDF Author: Corey McCall
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438481942
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
In Decolonizing American Philosophy, Corey McCall and Phillip McReynolds bring together leading scholars at the forefront of the field to ask: Can American philosophy, as the product of a colonial enterprise, be decolonized? Does American philosophy offer tools for decolonial projects? What might it mean to decolonize American philosophy and, at the same time, is it possible to consider American philosophy, broadly construed, as a part of a decolonizing project? The various perspectives included here contribute to long-simmering conversations about the scope, purpose, and future of American philosophy, while also demonstrating that it is far from a unified, homogeneous field. In drawing connections among various philosophical traditions in and of the Americas, they collectively propose that the process of decolonization is not only something that needs to be done to American philosophy but also that it is something American philosophy already does, or at least can do, as a resource for resisting colonial and racist oppression.