In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 353-356 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Metaphysical Club The Metaphysical Club, by Louis Menand; xii & 546 pp. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001, $27.00. "They didn't just want to keep the conversation going; they wanted to get to a better place" (p. 440). So much for the most prominent contemporary pragmatist, Richard Rorty, who remains unmentioned (...) except in the acknowledgments. That better place is participatory democracy (a phrase that does not appear in the book), which "means that everyone is equally in the game, but it also means that no one can opt out" (p. 441). The true name of the game is skeptical tolerance. There are no unquestionable duties or inalienable rights, no immutable natural laws, no absolute moral rules, no highest principles, no inherent virtues, no absolute standards, no stasis, no absolutely certain truth. There are no individual destinies, because the social comes before the individual, and the individual is embedded within and cannot exist without society. Scientific knowledge is always probabilistic, not necessarily because nature is indeterministic, but because we can never know enough to calculate its regularities if they exist. To wit, there are no Platonic Ideas or unchanging universals. All is change, nothing that happens is ever repeated, our general ideas and laws of nature are merely tools for getting along in the world. Above all, ideas do not refer to things, only to other ideas. What expedites our thinking is true. What expedites our acting is right. Whenever we act according to principle, rule, or law, we are making a bet that events will turn out the way [End Page 353] we think they will. If we keep this always in mind, we will never succumb to violence or war in the name of belief or principle. Whatever we believe, it could be otherwise. Such is a general summary of pragmatism as it has filtered down to the textbooks. It is (again befittingly) more or less accurate. The can-do American seeks out cash value in practical life.Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, Charles Saunders Pierce, and John Dewey crafted the only indigenous philosophy that has so far been produced in America. Its roots are in Laplacean probability theory, Darwinian evolutionism, and Chauncey Wright's indeterminism. While James hoped to save a place for religion (if it works, go with it) and Pierce a place for God (he thought there had to be a designing intelligence to account for order), the pragmatic result is profoundly skeptical and secular. Neither Holmes nor Dewey thought that individuals imbedded in societies had any need of absolutes. Holmes said that people first decide on the basis of experience, then they deduce. Dewey said that people first behave commonsensically, then they rationalize.There is nothing as condensed as the above in Louis Menand's beautiful book on the ideas, personalities, and influence of Holmes, James, Pierce, and Dewey. I know of no clearer exposition of their ideas, and few biographers have made them come so alive. In particular, Menand's coverage of peripheral (but by no means insignificant) figures is very rich. He describes the development of graduate universities in America in detail from their autocratic beginnings to the institution of academic freedom as we know it today. University presidents, trustees, and administrators are presented luxuriously as the villains, and the professors gloriously as the heroes. Menand remarks with slight amazement that society bought the concept that professors were beholden to the public at large and not to the state or private university owners. He could have commented further on the fact that the concept of academic freedom has become virtually irrelevant in today's corporate research universities."It is a remarkable fact about the United States," Menand begins his book, "that it fought a civil war without undergoing a change in its form of government" (p. ix). This is a breathtaking fact, and I don't suppose Menand had any intent to explain it. "The Civil War swept away the slave civilization of the South, but it swept away almost the whole intellectual... (shrink)

The Metaphysical Club, a gathering of intellectuals in the 1870s associated with Harvard, is widely recognized as the crucible where pragmatism, America's distinctively original philosophy, was refined and proclaimed. Louis Menand's bestseller about the group was a dramatic publishing success. However, only three actual members - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Charles S. Peirce, and William James - appear in this book, alongside other thinkers such as John Dewey who were never in the Club. The Real Metaphysical (...) Club tells the full story of how this influential group shifted the course of philosophy in America. In addition to pioneering pragmatism, the group explored radical empiricism and idealism, and formulated personalism and process philosophy, equally important developments. This volume contains thirty-seven important writings dating from 1870 to 1885 by the real members of the Metaphysical Club. The first section centers on pragmatism and science; the second part collects writings of the lawyers; and the third part covers idealist and personalist philosophers. Many of these writings have never been reprinted before, and nothing like this impressive collection has ever been attempted. A general introduction provides a narrative history, and the editors' three introductions to the volume's sections vividly bring to life the intense meetings, sustained debates, and pioneering thought from the Metaphysical Club. (shrink)

The title of this book invites the question "what makes a metaphysical club real?" Overthinkers like myself may wonder whether metaphysical clubs can partake of varying degrees of reality or whether the distinction is, more likely, one between imposters and the genuine article. It only heightens the curiosity to read, in the general introduction to the book, that metaphysical clubs both preceded and followed the so-called "real" one and that the real one was itself divided into (...) two phases. Given, then, that there appear to have been more than one actual metaphysical club, what is the point of characterizing the subject of this anthology as real?The Real Metaphysical Club focuses entirely and thoroughly on the club... (shrink)

Reviews the book, The Metaphysical Club: A story of ideas in America by Louis Menand . In this highly entertaining and readable history, Menand examines the lives and thinking of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey, members of an informal discussion group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1872 that called itself the Metaphysical Club. Beginning with the Civil War and ending in 1919 with the Supreme Court decision in U.S. (...) v. Abrams, this insightful and thought-provoking book tells a story of the creation of the ideas and values that have shaped how Americans think and how we live. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the work of several positivists involved with the "Metaphysical Club" of Cambridge, MA in the early 1870s -- John Fiske, Chauncey Wright, and Francis Ellingwood Abbot. Like the logical positivists of the 1930s, these philosophers were forced to answer a key question: with so many of its traditional domains colonized by science and so many of its traditional questions dismissed as metaphysical or useless, what is left for philosophy to do? One answer (...) they gave was that philosophy could unify the sciences. As Fiske put it, "positive philosophy is science organized.". (shrink)

The Metaphysical Society was founded in 1869 at the instigation of James Knowles (editor of the Contemporary Review and then of the Nineteenth Century) with a view to 'collect, arrange, and diffuse Knowledge (whether objective or subjective) of mental and moral phenomena' (first resolution of the society in April 1869). The Society was a private dining and debate club that gathered together a latter-day clerisy. Building on the tradition of the Cambridge Apostles, they elected talented members from across (...) the Victorian intellectual spectrum: Bishops, one Cardinal, philosophers, men of science, literary figures, and politicians. The Society included in its 62 members prominent figures such as T. H. Huxley, William Gladstone, Walter Bagehot, Henry Edward Manning, John Ruskin, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. (shrink)

Putative examples of true contradictions in the social world have been given by dialetheists such as Graham Priest, Richard Routley, and Val Plumwood. However, we feel that it has not been decisively argued that these examples are in fact true contradictions rather than merely apparent. In this paper we adopt a new strategy to show that there are some true contradictions in the social world, and hence that dialetheism is correct. The strategy involves showing that a group of sincere dialetheists (...) can, given an appropriately formed institution, bootstrap contradictions into existence. We discuss objections and consider the implications of this finding for debates over logic. (shrink)

The Metaphysical Society was founded in 1869 at the instigation of James Knowles (editor of the Contemporary Review and then of the Nineteenth Century) with a view to "collect, arrange, and diffuse Knowledge (whether objective or subjective) of mental and moral phenomena" (first resolution of the Society in April 1869). The Society was a private club which gathered together a latter-day clerisy. Building on the tradition of the Cambridge Apostles, they elected talented members from across the Victorian intellectual (...) spectrum: Bishops, one Cardinal, philosophers, men of science, literary figures, and politicians. The Society included in its 62 members prominent figures such as T. H. Huxley, William Gladstone, Walter Bagehot, Henry Edward Manning, John Ruskin and Alfred Lord Tennyson. The papers they produced are key primary sources which shed new light on the ideas of their authors on the burning subjects of the day, ranging from the existence and personality of God to the nature of conscience or the existence of the soul. They are a legacy of a period when intellectuals were wondering how, and what, to believe in a time of social change, spiritual crisis, and scientific progress. The dissolution of the Society in 1880 did not diminish the value of the papers: they illustrate a tradition of private, open discussion among famous men of the most widely varying views; they offer detailed insight into the evolution of the relationships between different schools of Victorian scientific and religious thought; and they bring to light heretofore under-represented points of conflict and harmony. All 95 papers are included, accompanied by introductions and scholarly notes that set each paper into their proper context. (shrink)

Social groups, including racial and gender groups and teams and committees, seem to play an important role in our world. This article examines key metaphysical questions regarding groups. I examine answers to the question ‘Do groups exist?’ I argue that worries about puzzles of composition, motivations to accept methodological individualism, and a rejection of Racialism support a negative answer to the question. An affirmative answer is supported by arguments that groups are efficacious, indispensible to our best theories, and accepted (...) given common sense. Then, I turn to an examination of the features of social groups. I argue that social groups can be divided into two sorts. Groups of Type 1 are organized social groups like courts and clubs. Groups of Type 2 are groups like Blacks, women, and lesbians. While groups of both sorts have some features in common, they also have marked differences in features. Finally, I turn to views of the nature of social groups. I argue that the difference in features provides evidence that social groups do not have a uniform nature. Teams and committees are structured wholes, while race and gender groups are social kinds. (shrink)

The civilisation of space and the civilisation of time -- The breed of the evasive man -- The third sex -- Negrified America -- The decay of words -- The psychoanalysis of skiing -- The myth and fallacy of irrationalism -- The Olympian ideal and natural law -- The taste for vulgarity -- The laughter of the gods -- The concept of initiation -- Freedom of sex and freedom from sex -- Romanness, germanicness, and the 'light of the north' -- (...) Subliminal influences and 'intelligent stupidity' -- The myth of east and west and the 'meeting of religions' -- The youth, the beats, and right-wing anarchists -- Initiatic centres and history -- The metaphysics of sex and the 'one' -- What 'tradition' is. (shrink)

Spinoza’s recognition of the unpredictable fortunes of individuals, explicable through the interplay between their intrinsic natures and their susceptibility to external causes, informs his account of political success and – what for him is the same thing – political virtue. Thus, a state may thrive because it has a good constitution (an internal feature), or because it was fortunate not to be surrounded by powerful enemies. Normally, however, it is the combination of both luck and internal qualities that determines the (...) fate of things. What is true about the fate of states holds equally of the fate of other types of individual, both human and non-human. In a sense, even the fate of a theory is determined by the interplay between its intrinsic virtues, and mere historical luck. A quarter century ago, shortly after I began my graduate studies in philosophy at Yale, I started thinking about writing a dissertation on Spinoza’s philosophy. A good and caring friend in my graduate cohort advised me against the idea, which he believed was tantamount to “professional suicide” given the oddity of Spinoza’s thought. Indeed, the environment of analytic philosophy in the mid- and even late-1990s was not particularly auspicious for the academic study of Spinoza. Spinoza was – rightly – considered as having little commitment to commonsense, and commitment to commonsense – the most stubborn of prejudices – was (and still is) considered by many a minimal requirement for entry into the club of “decent” philosophers. Yet, things have changed over the past twenty-five years. So much so, that recently a (non-Spinozist) early modernist colleague of mine complained to me about the futility of changing the description of an event he planned from a ‘Spinoza workshop’ into an ‘early modern philosophy workshop,’ since “one way or another, most of the submitted abstracts are going to deal with Spinoza.” Indeed, in many ways, the interest and intensity of the study of Spinoza’s philosophy in the Anglo-American world has eclipsed that of almost all other early modern philosophers, and we seem to be facing a circumstance in which Spinoza is gradually competing with, if not replacing, Kant as the compass of modern philosophy. One can list many reasons for these dramatic developments: from Spinoza’s radical naturalism, to his dismissal of the fairytales of anthropomorphic and anthropocentric religion – while Kant on these issues could at best be said to kick the ghosts from the front door while inviting them back as ‘ideas’ or ‘postulates of practical reason’ through the back door –- to his unequivocal rejection of the illusions of humanism. Still, we lack a full explanation of the recent Spinozist upheaval in North American philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 81-96 [Access article in PDF] Pragmatism:The Unformulated Method of Bishop Berkeley Lesley Friedman 1. Introduction THOUGH WELL KNOWN AS A SCIENTIST, logician, and metaphysician, Charles Sanders Peirce is perhaps best remembered as the founder of Pragmatism. Surprisingly, Peirce attributes this way of thinking—often taken as a uniquely American contribution—to Bishop George Berkeley. According to Pierce, Berkeley should be regarded as the (...) author of that method of modern pragmatism (RFB, 96): 1 Pragmaticism is... a method of thinking.... Of those who have used this way of thinking Berkeley is the clearest example.... (CP, 8.206, c.1905) Berkeley on the whole has more right to be considered the introducer of pragmatism into philosophy than any other one man.... (1903 letter to William James)In a metaphysical Club, I used to preach this principle as a sort of logical gospel, representing the unformulated method followed by Berkeley, and in conversation about it I called it 'Pragmatism.' (CP, 6.482, 1908) [End Page 81]While it is acknowledged that Peirce believed Berkeley to be "a very distinguished master of the pragmatist mode of thinking," just why Peirce makes this claim is not altogether clear. In significant ways Berkeley blundered metaphysically, according to Peirce (MS, 322, c.1907). 2 He overlooked the reality of possibility (and thus realism about generals), misunderstood the nature of existence and the ordinary notion of matter, and had an inadequate view of perception. 3 In his early work, Peirce goes so far as to criticize what looks to be Berkeley's attempt at the pragmatic method: "A better rule [than Berkeley's] for avoiding the deceits of language is this: Do things fulfil the same function practically? Then let them be signified by the same word. Do they not? Then let them be distinguished" (CP, 8.33, 1871). Moreover, while Peirce cites the Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision as using the "medium of pragmatism," others have criticized Berkeley in this very work for drawing conclusions without any experimentation. 4 Since it is precisely the pivotal role of experience and experiment that distinguish the method of pragmatism, it is puzzling that Berkeley is chosen as worthy of the title that Peirce bestows on him. My hope in this paper is to shed some light on this question. I beginwith an explication of Peirce's pragmatism and then move on to offer an account ofhow Berkeley uses this method, though never formulates it. Next, I discuss the positions Peirce understood to be consequences of the view, including critical common-sensism, fallibilism, and scholastic realism. I suggest that, although he erred on several corollary positions, Berkeley foresaw the aims, purpose, and essential points of the methodological, though not the "metaphysical side" of pragmatism. 5 2. Peircean Pragmatism Pragmatism 6 is not a metaphysical doctrine: it does not aim to ascertain the truth of things; it does not attempt to throw any "positive light on any problem" (CP, 5.464, 1907). Rather, it offers a means of distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate [End Page 82] hypotheses, so that verbal disputes—those that so often arise simply because the disputants do not understand meanings in the same way—can be resolved. It is thus "only a method of thinking"(CP, 8.206, c.1905, emphasis added).... pragmatism proposes a certain maxim which, if sound, must render needless any further rule as to the admissibility of hypotheses to rank as hypotheses, that is to say, as explanations of phenomena held as hopeful suggestions; and furthermore, this is all that the [logical] maxim of pragmatism really pretends to do.... (CP, 5.195, 1903) Seeking to lay "the dust of pseudoproblems," pragmatism allows "us to discern what pertinent facts the phenomena may present. But this is a good half of the task of philosophy" (CP, 8.186, 1903). It is worth pausing to mention that philosophy, as Peirce understands it, does not stand apart from science in the way it does today, but rather is the second of the three sciences of discovery, all of which... (shrink)

Biographer Richardson has written a moving portrait of James--pivotal member of the Metaphysical Club and author of The Varieties of Religious Experience. The biography, ten years in the making, draws on unpublished letters, journals, and family records. Richardson paints extraordinary scenes from what James himself called the "buzzing blooming confusion" of his life, beginning with childhood, as he struggled to achieve amid the domestic chaos and intellectual brilliance of Father, brother Henry, and sister Alice. James was a beloved (...) teacher who taught courage and risk-taking, and served as mentor to W.E.B. Du Bois, Gertrude Stein, and many other Harvard outsiders. Richardson also illuminates James's hugely influential works. One of the great figures in mysticism here brought richly to life, James is a man "whose leading ideas are still so fresh and challenging that they are not yet fully assimilated by the modern world they helped to bring about."--From publisher description. (shrink)

This is the third of four volumes presenting all of Francis Ellingwood Abbot's major published articles. Any scholar or library interested in American philosophy, religious thought, and social and intellectual history should find this edition of his essays a useful addition to the collection. Francis E. Abbot was a noted American philosopher and champion of Free Religion. He was a member of C.S. Peirce's Metaphysical Club, the first American philosopher to support Charles Darwin, the founding editor of The (...) Index, a founder of the Free Religious Association, and the founding President of the National Liberal League of America. In addition to over six hundred articles, he was the author of Scientific Theism (1885), The Way Out of Agnosticism, Or The Philosophy of Free Religion (1890), and The Syllogistic Philosophy, or Prolegomena to Science (1906). (shrink)

Chauncey Wright (1830–1874) was one of the first American philosophers to explore the implications of Charles Darwin's work in evolutionary biology. Wright became a strong supporter of the idea of natural selection and a strong critic of the anti-selectionist and teleological arguments of St. George Jackson Mivart and Herbert Spencer, and he laid the groundwork for the field that is today called evolutionary epistemology. As the mentor of the original Cambridge "Metaphysical Club" (William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and (...) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.), Wright was also instrumental in the development of the American school of Pragmatism. Although his analytical brilliance was widely acknowledged, he never became professionally successful, and he died in 1874 in his 45th year. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Louis Agassiz and the Platonist Story of Creation at Harvard, 1795-1846David K. NartonisIn 1846, naturalist Louis Agassiz took Harvard College by storm with his idealist approach to nature. In his initial lectures, repeated in New York the following year, Agassiz announced, "We have that within ourselves which assures us of participation in the Divine Nature and it is a particular characteristic of man to be able to rise in (...) that way above material Nature, and to understand intellectual existences." He then made it clear that by intellectual existences he meant a divine plan of creation. "What naturalists intend when they speak of what they call 'types'... may be easily understood by comparison. We all know that architects construct our dwellings according to plans conceived by them before the erection of the edifice."1 There is no doubt that Agassiz valued the careful collection of observational data. "It has only been step by step that man has acquired an insight into this plan."2 But his empiricism, if that is the right term, was entirely subordinate to apprehension of divine ideas, which alone deserved to be called science. In one recent account, The Metaphysical Club, which contains an excellent discussion of Agassiz's American career, author Louis Menand accurately describes this dual emphasis on observation and intuition. But Menand leaves unstated the problem of [End Page 437] Agassiz's welcome at Harvard, attributing his instant popularity to force of character.3A fuller explanation of Agassiz's welcome is to be found in the Scottish textbooks that dominated the Harvard philosophy curriculum prior to his arrival.4 Like Agassiz, textbook authors Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, and Thomas Brown recognized observation and intuition as twin sources of human knowledge. According to them, we observe our own moral tendencies and interpret them in the light of intuited ethical principles that even God must obey. Similarly, we observe nature and interpret its workings with the aid of intuited principles of common sense.5 There is no doubt that this dual emphasis on observation and intuition was entirely consistent with Agassiz's idealist biology. But his definition of species and genera as intellectual existences in the divine mind was not to be found in the official Scottish texts. In fact, Dugald Stewart, who governed the philosophy curriculum after 1820, insisted that there are "no existences in nature corresponding to general terms, and the objects of our attention in all our general speculations are not ideas but words."6 This was "long misunderstood by philosophers, who imagined that a generic word expresses an actual existence distinct from the individuals of which the genus is composed."7 Similarly, Thomas Brown lamented, "One fundamental error... as long as it retained its hold of the understanding, must have rendered all its energies ineffectual, by wasting them in search of objects, which had no real existence... I allude to... the various orders of universals."8 In this one respect, Stewart and Brown were in agreement with Alexander Pope when he counseled his many American readers "presume not God to scan" and ridiculed those who would "soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere."9But Harvard students and faculty were also reading books that promoted the intellectual existences that Agassiz saw behind nature and the Scots did [End Page 438] not. Chief among these books were Plato's Works (ca. 360 BCE), Philo's De Opificio Mundi (20 BCE to 50 CE), Ralph Cudworth's The True Intellectual System of the World (1678), and John Norris's An Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intellectual World (1701–04). These combined with such widely popular literature as John Milton's Paradise Lost (1668) and the prose works of Samuel Coleridge to form a kind of unofficial curriculum that ultimately made Agassiz's idealist view of nature especially welcome at Harvard.10 Modest at first, Harvard interest in intellectual existences bloomed with the appearance of books by Romantic writers on campus. In order to illustrate this long development, I will bolster my explanation with data from Harvard College library borrowing records—handwritten lists of the books borrowed by each library user during a one- or two-year period... (shrink)

Frederic Kellogg has already published several works on legal pragmatism and on Oliver Wendell Holmes in particular.1 In this volume, he focuses on the early history of Holmes' views, on his readings in law and philosophy, and his interests in science in the years of the Metaphysical Club. Drawing on sources like Francis Bacon, John Stuart Mill and Chauncey Wright, Holmes developed an inductive approach to common law reasoning; eventually, as I discuss below, this approach needed refinement when (...) he engaged with constitutional interpretation. Other parts of the book focus on contemporary issues like legal indeterminacy, hard cases, the role of politics in legal interpretation, Rorty's neopragmatism, liberalism and... (shrink)

Western civilization has experienced the birth of many philosophical movements. Most of these have had their origin in a particular geographical area. One usually refers to the "Continental Rationalists." the "British Empiricists." and the "American Pragmatists." Just as "Rationalism" is said to have been created in Great Britain, it is usually said that "Pragmatism" was born in America. One speaks of pragmatism as "characteristically American." The date of birth of pragmatism in America has been pin-pointed. Its genesis came about during (...) the early part of "The Classical Period in American Philosophy," a period extending from about 1870 to 1910. Both Perry and Wiener 2 have stated that in the United States the movement arose during the 1870's due in part to conversations held by James, Peirce, Wright, Holmes, Fiske, and others at the meetings in Cambridge of an organization called "The Metaphysical Club." At these gatherings the main scientific and philosophical ideas of the day were discussed, and these men produced "American Pragmatism," in part from these discussions, and in part from independent work. Although the birth of pragmatism in America has been quite thoroughly examined, the genesis of pragmatism in Europe has been only sparsely written about. There were many writers in Europe who were associated with the pragmatic movement. In Italy there were... (shrink)

In the following text I reexamine the connotations of the term habit from the perspective of Peirce’s pragmatism. I start by tracing back the roots of the term in the Metaphysical Club’s discussions of Alexander Bain’s theory of belief. By stressing the relative overlap between belief and habit I am also proposing that the latter term transcends the boundaries of empirical psychology. Peirce’s well-known antipathy to psychologism in logic raised the status of habit to a universal concept that (...) participates in the unlimited process of interpretation. Habit, therefore, falls into a new lineage of meaning that can be traced back to antiquity and turns into a generative notion with extensive connotations. As a result it becomes an inseparable part of Peirce architectonic philosophy, capable to shed new light on his evolutionary cosmology and metaphysics. Conceiving of habit as an operative element in the evolution of all phenomena in the universe is the main objective of this article. (shrink)

Western analytic philosophers tend to confine themselves almost exclusively to a discussion of William James’s pragmatism, when thirty years ago John McDermott determined that the core of James’s metaphysics was actually radical empiricism. James, in fact, developed a tripartite metaphysics of pragmatism, pluralism, and radical empiricism, which constituted the actualization of his philosophical legacy inherited through Henry James Sr’s Swedenborgianism and Ralph Walled Emerson’s transcendentalism, both of which he opposed, which he tempered through his contacts with Charles Sanders Pierce, Chancy (...) Wright, and others in the early years of the Metaphysical Club, until his own ideas began to come to maturity by the late 1890s. It is conjectured that, seeing as how James frequently built some of his major ideas by retailing the more cryptic philosophy of Peirce, the tripartite nature of James’s metaphysics was an attempt to model Peirce’s three categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. The international success of pragmatism, however, prevented James from articulating the full nature of his philosophy, which he tried to do in the closing decade of his life, but alas, he left us with only an unfinished arch. There is enough there, however, to state emphatically that if modern psychologists and philosophers persist in talking only about James’s pragmatism without reference to pluralism and radical empiricism, they are not really talking about William James. (shrink)

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 philosphers 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. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism, new and newer : Anthony Appiah -- Noam Chomsky's golden rule -- Blaming the system : Immanuel Wallerstein -- The sweatshop sublime -- Edward Said and effort -- Intellectuals in public, or elsewhere -- War without belief : Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club -- Comparative national blaming : W.G. Sebald and the bombing of Germany.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Pragmatism's Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy by Trevor PearceAlexander KleinTrevor Pearce. Pragmatism's Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 384. Paperback, $35.00.Pragmatist pioneers were young lions in the days of Darwin. Evolutionary-biological thinking infused this philosophical movement from the start. And yet the last time a major monograph appeared on classic pragmatism and evolutionary biology—Philip Wiener's Evolution and (...) the Founders of Pragmatism (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1949)—the author could personally thank Ralph Barton Perry, William James's junior colleague and eventual biographer. John Dewey himself wrote the foreword.Almost seventy-five years later, we have Trevor Pearce's painstakingly researched Pragmatism's Evolution. The author has graduate training in both biology and philosophy and is a former student of William Wimsatt and Robert Richards's (343). The book offers an intricate portrait of how debates about evolutionary biology informed the thinking of a loose-knit group of pragmatists between the years 1860 and 1910. While a remarkable variety of figures are discussed, ten pragmatists command the most attention: Chauncey Wright, C. S. Peirce, Francis Ellingwood Abbot, John Fiske, William James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey, Jane Addams, G. H. Mead, and W. E. B. Du Bois (18). Call them "the American Ten."Without downplaying Darwin, an overarching theme is the special significance of Herbert Spencer. Despite many specific disagreements with him (see e.g. 74, 207–8, 253–54, 281), the American Ten all accepted something more fundamental from Spencer: an intellectual framework that explains mind and morality in terms of functional relationships between organism and environment.After an introduction outlining what Pearce identifies as four chronological "cohorts" of pragmatists (more on this concept below), he examines the 1860s and 1870s reception of Darwin (chapter 1) and Spencer (chapter 2), showing how senior pragmatists like Wright, Peirce, and James defended evolution during this period. In chapter 2, we meet the Metaphysical Club's arch Spencerian, John Fiske, and we get a reading of James's critique of Spencer's psychology and sociology. Chapter 3 gives a highly detailed, reference-work-like portrait of the second cohort's training in evolutionary biology during the 1880s—chiefly Royce, Dewey, Addams, Mead, and Du Bois. In chapter 4, we learn that in the 1880s and 1890s, idealists like Edward Caird, Samuel Alexander, David George Ritchie, and Josiah Royce all co-opted ideas from evolutionary biology, which they apparently thought compatible with Hegelian dialectics. Chapter 5 shows that central planks of Peirce's metaphysics and Dewey's ethics are responsive to an 1890s dispute over the causes of the biological variation upon which selection acts (the so-called "factors" debate). The final two chapters show how pragmatist ethics (chapter 6) and epistemology (chapter 7) were infused with substantive ideas about evolution and about scientific experiment more generally.The depth and use of historical scholarship on offer here are both remarkable. On depth, Pearce draws from nineteen special collections and archives housed at institutions from California to Manchester, UK. The reference list (published on Pearce's website) runs [End Page 160] to 118 pages and was apparently too long for inclusion in the book. Archival research and lengthy bibliographies are to be expected in today's history of philosophy. But the sheer range of sources Pearce draws from is, by any measure, impressive.The use to which he puts those sources is provocative. Close reading, and in particular argument reconstruction, is usually the stock in trade for historians of philosophy. Pearce takes a different approach (7), seeking interpretive insight through a kind of philosophical network analysis. The nodes are mainly philosophers, scientists, and social critics. Unlike digital network analyses, Pearce connects his nodes by hand, via a great multiplicity of social, educational, and intellectual relations. We learn who studied evolution where, with whom, and when; what specific texts were assigned in classes taken, in classes taught; who attacked whom, who sided with whom; and so on.The resulting networks are rich, though they can be difficult to track due to their complexity. At its best, the book uses networks to produce genuine insights that... (shrink)

William James (1842-1910) influenced the American intellectual history of the second half of the xix century and the beginning of the xx in various fields, due to his activity as a writer, a teacher and experimentalist. William James was a participant in the germinal, legendary meetings of the “Metaphysical Club,” in 1872, together with C. S. Peirce, Chauncey Wright, O. W. Holmes Jr., and others, in conversations that would lead to the first formulas, close to the future “pragmatism,” (...) regardi... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Uncertain Beginnings Common Tendencies.

This chapter contains sections titled: Religious Thought as American Three Elements of American Religious Thought A Brief History The Waning of American Philosophy of Religion.

The paper examines the ramifications of naturalism with regard to the question of individuality in economics and biology. Economic theory has to deal with whether households, firms, and states are individuals or are mere entities such as clubs, networks, and coalitions. Biological theory has to deal with the same question with regard to cells, organisms, family packs, and colonies. To wit, the question of individuality in both disciplines involves three separate problems: the metaphysical, phenomenist, and ontological. The metaphysical (...) problem is concerned with purposeful action: Is the firm or organism exclusively the product of efficient causality (optimization) or is it motivated by final causality (purposefulness)? The phenomenist problem is interested in the substantiality of essences: Is the firm''s or organism''s scheme of institutions/traits deep or is it extraneous to identity? The ontological problem is related to the issue of reductionism: Is the behavior of lower-level organization governed by a pre-constituted entities or is it context-sensitive? The paper finds that theoretical differences run along the naturalist/anti-naturalist divide rather than along disciplinary specialization. Also, the paper finds that it is not inconsistent for the same theorist to be naturalist with regard to one problem and anti-naturalist with respect to the other two problems. (shrink)

This paper introduces a persistence puzzle involving two sports clubs with a somewhat intertwined history. As one might assume, the implications of the puzzle go far beyond a mere plea for a precise metaphysical analysis of certain perplexing quandaries regarding sports clubs and represents a challenge for our everyday understanding of social groups. To overcome the supposed impediment to the puzzle, as a starting point, I will accept the assumption that these entities are both social groups and abstract artifacts (...) and will further argue that they are _temporal abstract objects_. Since temporal objects are in time, it will be determined that the cause of the conundrum is the seeming inability to correctly account for the I-relation between the temporal parts, and I will elaborate on why such an explanation is required. Ultimately, I’ll introduce the notion of _I-shifting_, which will explain how temporal abstract objects persist through time and consequently solve the puzzle. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a view of groups, things like teams, committees, clubs and courts. I begin by examining features all groups seem to share. I formulate a list of six features of groups that serve as criteria any adequate theory of groups must capture. Next, I examine four of the most prominent views of groups currently on offer—that groups are non-singular pluralities, fusions, aggregates and sets. I argue that each fails to capture one or more of the (...) criteria. Last, I develop a view of groups as realizations of structures. The view has two components. First, groups are entities with structure. Second, since groups are concreta, they exist only when a group structure is realized. A structure is realized when each of its functionally defined nodes or places are occupied. I show how such a view captures the six criteria for groups, which no other view of groups adequately does, while offering a substantive answer to the question, “What are groups?”. (shrink)

Two major questions have dominated work on the metaphysics of social groups: first, Are there any? And second, What are they? I will begin by arguing that the answer to the ontological question is an easy and obvious ‘yes’. We do better to turn our efforts elsewhere, addressing the question: “What are social groups?” One might worry, however, about this question on grounds that the general term ‘social group’ seems like a term of art—not a well-used concept we can analyze, (...) or can presuppose corresponds to a real kind we can investigate. But while the general notion of ‘social group’ may be a term of art, our terms for clubs and courts, races and genders, are not. It is worth stepping back to ask what function these social group concepts serve. I will argue that individual social group concepts function to give normative structure to our lives together. Paying attention to the role of norms in social groups, I will argue, can enable us to provide a unified understanding of the importance of core social groups, while still respecting the great differences among social groups of different kinds. (shrink)

In his Christian Theology and Natural Science , E. L. Mascall refers to a criticism by Elizabeth Anscombe of C. S. Lewis's well-known argument against determinism that appears in his Miracles . Both Lewis's argument and Anscombe's response appeared originally as papers delivered in the 40s to the Oxford Socratic Club. A certain historical interest attaches to that exchange in that Lewis seems to have been ‘deeply disturbed’ by it. 2 I think he need not have been. But, more (...) importantly, the sequence of Lewis's article followed by Anscombe's reply and then Mascall's comments on both, provides a suggestive presentation and examination of a certain kind of argument against determinism. Essentially it is a negative rebuttal of a retortive kind, such as Aristotle uses against the sceptic in the Metaphysics . But its treatment by these three writers indicates a metaphysical insight that could possibly furnish a positive refutation of any kind of radical determinism. (shrink)

It is natural to think that social groups are concrete material particulars, but this view faces an important objection. Suppose the chess club and nature club have the same members. Intuitively, these are different clubs even though they have a common material basis. Some philosophers take these intuitions to show that the materialist view must be abandoned. I propose an alternative explanation. Social groups are concrete material particulars, but there is a psychological explanation of nonidentity intuitions. Social groups (...) appear coincident but nonidentical because they are perceived to be governed by conflicting social norms. (shrink)

Deep ecology is an ecological philosophy that promotes an ecocentric lifestyle to remedy the problems of depleting resources and planetary degradation. An integral part of this ecosophy is the process of forming a metaphysical connection to the earth, referred to as self-realisation; an unfolding of the self out into nature to attain a transcendental, non-egoic state. Findings from our research indicate that secondary school students in environment clubs align with the principles of deep ecology, and show a capacity to (...) become student eco-philosophers, and they report empathy for becoming ecocentric beings. This study explores the capacity for students to engage in environmental philosophy. (shrink)

As witnessed by recent films such as _Fight Club_ and _Identity_, our culture is obsessed with multiple personality—a phenomenon raising intriguing questions about personal identity. This study offers both a full-fledged philosophical theory of personal identity and a systematic account of multiple personality. Gunnarsson combines the methods of analytic philosophy with close hermeneutic and phenomenological readings of cases from different fields, focusing on psychiatric and psychological treatises, self-help books, biographies, and fiction. He develops an original account of personal identity and (...) offers a provocative interpretation of multiple personality: in brief, "multiples" are right about the metaphysics but wrong about the facts. (shrink)

Grace de Laguna’s philosophical work was bold and original. She was also able to connect together seemingly disparate strands of the pragmatic, metaphysical and psychological research going on around her, as Joel Katzav shows in his paper. This commentary gives some historical background to her academic career in an attempt to explain how she could have been forgotten as a philosopher. Social and institutional factors led to her work not being recognized when she wrote and thus sinking into obscurity (...) in philosophical circles afterwards. Although her work was initially widely read, her research seems not to have had any continuing direct impact on later developments in philosophy. However, it is crucial to restore her thought to its rightful place in the history of our subject. (shrink)

Picturing Knowledge is a collection of papers on scientific illustration written by historians and philosophers of science. While the philosophers of science tend to focus on the question whether illustrations are more than helpful aids to symbolic proofs and linguistic explications, the historians are interested in the presuppositions attaching to particular modes of representation—the decision what to depict and how to depict it. David Knight discusses the conventions determined what were appropriate and relevant illustrations for textbooks of chemistry. He calls (...) attention to their increasing depersonalization, as pictures of the alchemical laboratory with its furnace and flasks, and then of elegantly clad, unmussed aristocrats gave way to pictures of molecules. Robert J. O’Hara shows how metaphysical assumptions about the organization of nature, in particular the assumption that there existed a system of visible analogies and correspondences across groups of plants and animals, persisted from Linnaeus’s time even into post-Darwinian biology. Stephanie Moser argues that artists’ depictions of australopithecine hominids in semi-popular illustrated magazines of the 1940s and 1950s first reflected, but then entrenched, a view of their mode of life featuring nuclear families, wooden clubs, and homey caves, subsequently rejected as improbable. Other historians investigate the history and problems of scientific representation itself. Bert Hall provides a brief survey of botanical, anatomical, and mechanical illustration, and considers the competing demands of elegance and informativeness. Martin Kemp considers the very different requirements of anatomical and astronomical depictions. Anatomical illustration lends itself to what he calls a “rhetoric of reality” aimed at convincing the viewer that the illustration is what he would see inside an actual human body, while astronomical illustration is unconcerned with the appearances of the heavens, and is a translation of measurements into a scheme representing what cannot literally be seen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:460 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY accurate understanding of the mind of Aristotle. Nifo's shift on the question of Aristotle and immortality thus represents a noteworthy chapter in the history of Renaissance Aristotelianism.6x EDWAKDP. MAHONEY Duke University 6x I should like to thank the United States Government for a Fulbright fellowship during 1962-1963; the National Foundation for the Humanities for a fellowship during 1968-1969; and the Duke UniversityResearch Council for grants (...) for microfilms. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF JACOB LOEWENBERG Compiled by Edwin S. Budge It is hoped that all of Professor Loewenberg's published writings, exclusive of his many book reviews, are listed herein. His unpublished doctoral dissertation, "The Genesis of Hegel's Dialectical Method" (1911), is available on loan from Harvard University, although the "gist" of this, as Dr. Loewenberg has indicated, may be found in the introduction to the first item cited in the bibliography. Dr. Loewenberg, it might be added, also translated a short work by Gilbert Chinard, France for the Soldier (Berkeley: University of California, 1918), and quite likely was consulted by his wife Kate in the course of her translation of Emile Meyerson's Identity and Reality (New York: Macmillan Company, 1930; reprinted by Dover, 1962, and Peter Smith, 1963). Jacob Loewenberg's personal papers are in the possession of his daughter, Mrs. Jeannot Nyles, of Berkeley, California. 1912 1916 BIBLIOGRAPHYOF THE WRITINGSOF JACOBLOEWENBERG "Vorwort," pp. v-vi; "Einleitung: 'Die jugendlichen Denkversuche Hegels'," pp. vii-xxii; in Hegels Entwiir/e zur Enzyklopiidie und Propiideutik nach den Handschri/ten der Harvard-Universitiit. Mit einer Handschri[tprobe. By Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Herausgegeben yon Dr. J. Ltwenberg. Leipzig: Verlag von Felix Meiner, I912. xxiv, 59 pp. (Hegel-Archiv. Herausgegeben von Georg Lasson. Band I, Heft 1.) "Interpretation as a Self-Representative Process," The Philosophical Review, Vol. XXV, No. 3 (May, 1916), 420-423. "Mysticism and Idealism," University o/ California Chronicle, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (January, 1916), 72-91. "An address before the Philosophical Union of the University of California, December 10, 1915." 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 461 "The Spirit of Hegel's Philosophy," University of California Chronicle, Vol. XVIII, No. 3 (July, 1916), 373-393. "The Teachings of Royce," The California Alumni Fortnightly, Vol. IX, No. 14 (September 30, 1916), 216-217. "Classic and Romantic Trends in Plato," The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. X, No. 3 (July, 1917), 215-236. "An address before the Philosophical Union of the University of California, February 23, 1917." "Josiah Royce: Interpreter of American Problems," University of California Chronicle, Vol. XIX, No. 1 (January, 1917), 39-47. "The Prophetic Songs of Swinburne," University of California Chronicle, Vol. XX, No. 10anuary, 1918), 106-115. "Preface," pp. vii-xii in Lectures on Modern Idealism. By Josiah Royce. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919. Pp. 259. (Semicentennial Publications of the University of California, 1868-1918.) "Ethics and the War," Mills Quarterly, Vol. I, No. 4 0anuary, 1919), 6-9. "An address delivered at Mills College, October 18, 1918." "Multiplicity and the Social Order," The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. XII, No. 2 (April, 1919), 137-164. "President Wilson's Americanism," University of California Chronicle, Vol. XXI, No. 1 (January, 1919), 1-15. "Introduction," pp. 3-37 in Fugitive Essays; with an Introduction by Dr. J. Loewenberg. By Josiah Royce. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920. Pp. 429. (Semicentennial Publications of the University of California, 1868-1918.) "Philosophy and Humanism," University of California Chronicle, Vol. XXIH, No. 3 (July, 1921), 298-318. "Read before the Kosmos Club of the University of California, April 4, 1921." "The Apotheosis of Mind in Modern Idealism," The Philosophical Reviewj Vol. XXXI, No. 3 (May, 1922), 215-236. "A fragment of a larger essay." "The Idea of Mutability in Literature," University of California Chronicle, Vol. XXIV, No. 2 (April, 1922), 129-151. "The Metaphysics of Critical Realism," pp. 167-194 in Issues and Tendencies in Contemporary Philosophy. Edited by George P. Adams and J. Loewenberg. 462 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Berkeley: University of California, 1923, Pp. 224. (University of California Publieations in Philosophy, VoL IV.) Read before the Philosophical Union of the University of California, March 30, 1923. "'The Metaphysics of Modern Scepticism," The Philosophical... (shrink)

In 1728, when the sixteen-year-old Hume, still apparently ‘at college’, was beginning, all unknown to his family, to turn his attention to philosophy, Edinburgh and Glasgow were swarming with earnest metaphysicians, many of them not much older than Hume himself. ‘It is well known’, the Ochtertyre papers relate, ‘that between the years 1723 and 1740 nothing was in more request with the Edinburgh literati, both laical and clerical, than metaphysical disquisitions’, and Locke, Clarke, Butler and Berkeley are mentioned as (...) the chief subjects for debate. Moreover, it is clear enough from the records that this surge of intellectual interests was chiefly the work of a younger generation, wearied alike of Calvinist theology and of Jacobite politics. Indeed to begin with it was the students’ societies which took the lead, and a plain enough hint of their serious critical attack is given in one sour entry in the diary of the Calvinist minister Woodrow for 1726. ‘These student clubs are like to have a very ill influence; they declare against reading and cry up thinking.’. (shrink)

Making a history of the principle of inertia, as of any other principle or concept, is a complex but still possible operation. In this work it has been chosen to make a back story which seemed the most natural way for a reconstruction. On the way back, it has been decided to stop at the 6th century CE with the contribution of Ioannes Philoponus. The principle he stated, although very different from the modern one, is certainly associated with it. Going (...) back in time it is still possible and of course one could proceed to the origins of the homo sapiens who perhaps posed the problem of why a club thrown with his hand could go so far from him. But the similarities that one can find with the modern principle are very vague, too perhaps. Without going so far one could see an embryonic idea of the principle of inertia in the atomistic theory of Democritus in the 5th century BCE. The motion of atoms whirling with no apparent reason can suggest the idea that a body can also move with no reason. But the transition from the atom, a metaphysical being, to the body, an empirical being, is far from immediate. (shrink)

(For English, scroll down) Der Text präsentiert drei miteinander verbundene Thesen. (1) Philosophie der Musik modifiziert philosophische Grundbegriffe. (2) Eine gemeinsame Eigenschaft in der Vielfalt der Musikformen liegt im Effekt einer Wahrnehmungsveränderung: oft subtil, unterschwellig und zuweilen als ekstatisch erlebte Selbst- und Welt-Transformation. (3) Strenggenommen nehmen wir nicht Töne wahr, sondern a) unsere Hör-Physiologie wandelt Schwingungsfrequenzen ab circa 18 Hz in Tonhöhen um und damit Zeit-Organisation in ein Raum-Äquivalent. (Musik mit tiefen Tönen an der Grenze zur Wahrnehmung, etwa mittels großer (...) Orgelpfeifen in Kathedralen oder Ton-Anlagen in Nachtclubs, inszeniert genau diesen physiologischen Umschlag, mit potentiellen Transzendenz-Effekten.) b) Wir nehmen einfache Frequenzverhältnisse wie 1:2, 2:3 etc. als (relativ) konsonant wahr, komplexere Verhältnisse als (relativ) dissonant. Die Folge: c) Musikhören verbindet uns mit physikalischem Verhalten von Materie, einschließlich unserer selbst. Hierin gründen rare, musikalisch herausgehobene Eindrücke von Erkenntnis und Enthüllung: das Universum betreffend und unsere Stellung in ihm. -/- The text presents three related claims. (1) Music as a topic of philosophy alters key philosophical concepts; (2) In spite of their vast cultural, historical and contextual differences, all forms of music share the effect of a transformation of perception: ranging from subtle and subliminal to the (rare) experience of ecstatic world- and self-transformations; (3) Strictly speaking, we do not perceive sounds. Rather, a) our hearing-physiology translates frequencies (impulses) of more than 18 Hz into pitch and thus temporal events into quasi-spatial perceptions. Compositions containing very deep sounds (e.g. in cathedrals or in night-clubs) stage exactly this physiological conversion: with potentially ‘transcendence’-like effects. b) We hear simple frequency-ratios such as 1:2, 2:3, 3:4 etc. as (relative) consonances and more complex ones as (relative) dissonances. Thus, c) musical compositions make laws of physical behaviour of matter affectively perceptible. This allows for the occasional impression of musical revelations: regarding the universe, its laws, and our place in it. -/- . (shrink)

As mathematics departments in the United States began to shift toward standards of original research at the end of the nineteenth century, many adopted journal clubs as forums to engage with new periodical literature. The Bryn Mawr Mathematics Journal Club, maintained episodically between 1896 and 1924, began as a supplement to the graduate course offerings. Each semester student and professor participants focused on a single disciplinary area or surveyed what had been published lately. The Notebooks containing these reports were (...) stored on the open shelves of the college library. These collectively composed documents record ways in which graduate students transcribed and interpreted contemporary literature from the front to the back of mathematics. This article will consider the entries of a single student in which published mathematics was rewritten for a local audience and how the process of relocation animated research at Bryn Mawr. (shrink)

Very close analysis of Baruch Spinoza's wording in describing individuals rather than things. Individuals, but not collections such as a political state or club, each have their own specific conatus, or essence. Collectivities, like nations or institutions, fail to meet this necessary condition of individuation.

It is frequently forgotten just how important Hegel was on the American scene during the post-Civil War period when American philosophy was in its formative stages. Stimulated initially by the immigration of German intellectuals, there were informal "Hegel Clubs" and groups such as the St. Louis and Ohio Hegelians. The first professional philosophic journal in the United States, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, was founded by the Hegelian W. T. Harris, who later became U. S. Commissioner of Education. Although the (...) journal published articles by Dewey, Peirce, and James, one of its primary purposes was to encourage the exploration of Hegelian themes. (shrink)