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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...
"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.
The present work treats of several aspects of American philosophy in their historical perspective. The author has interpreted philosophically the revolutionary changes that recent years have brought in the domain of education, church, politics, natural sciences etc. The reader will find herein that American Philosophy is the outgrowth of impacts of new life and new directions imported by waves of immigration. More conspicuous are the recent intellectual imports from Cambridge, Paris and Vienna. The philosophical analysis that grew up in Cambridge under the leadership of Whitehead, Russel and Moore, the sophisticated, modernized versions of Catholic scholasticism from Paris and the schools of...
Enrique Dussel is considered one of the founding philosophers of liberation in the Latin American tradition, an influential arm of what is now called decoloniality. While he is astoundingly prolific, relatively few of his works can be found in English translation - and none of these focus specifically on education. Founding members of the Latin American Philosophy of Education Society David I. Backer and Cecilia Diego bring to us Dussel's THE PEDAGOGICS OF LIBERATION: A Latin American Philosophy of Education, the first English translation of Dussel's thinking on education, and also the first translation of any part of his landmark multi-volume work Towards an Ethics of Latin American Liberat...
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
The Ideal of Rationality presents an evaluation of all the main varieties of rationalism, in clear and jargon-free language. Different notions of rationality - such as means-end, conception, hedonism, and the evil-avoidance view - are examined and rejected, in favor of the theory that to act rationally is to 'act for the best', a theory Nathanson characterizes as "critical pluralism". Among present-day thinkers whose ideas are scrutinized are Richard Brandt, Bernard Gert, Gilbert Harman, John Kekes, Robert Nozick, Karl Popper, and John Rawls.
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, novelis...
The Encyclopedia of American Philosophy provides coverage of the major figures, concepts, historical periods and traditions in American philosophical thought. Containing over 600 entries written by scholars who are experts in the field, this Encyclopedia is the first of its kind. It is a scholarly reference work that is accessible to the ordinary reader by explaining complex ideas in simple terms and providing ample cross-references to facilitate further study. The Encyclopedia of American Philosophy contains a thorough analytical index and will serve as a standard, comprehensive reference work for universities and colleges. Topics covered include: Great philosophers: Emerson, Dewey, James, Royce, Peirce, Santayana Subjects: Pragmatism, Progress, the Future, Knowledge, Democracy, Growth, Truth Influences on American Philosophy: Hegel, Aristotle, Plato, British Enlightenment, Reformation Self-Assessments: Joe Margolis, Donald Davidson, Susan Haack, Peter Hare, John McDermott, Stanley Cavell Ethics: Value, Pleasure, Happiness, Duty, Judgment, Growth Political Philosophy: Declaration of Independence, Democracy, Freedom, Liberalism, Community, Identity
Continuing his quest to bring American philosophy back to its roots, Bruce Wilshire connects the work of such thinkers as Thoreau, Emerson, Dewey, and James with Native American beliefs and practices. His search is not for exact parallels, but rather for fundamental affinities between the equally &"organismic&" thought systems of indigenous peoples and classic American philosophers. Wilshire gives particular emphasis to the affinities between Black Elk&’s view of the hoop of the world and Emerson&’s notion of horizon, and also between a shaman&’s healing practices and James&’s ideas of pure experience, willingness to believe, and a pluralistic universe. As these connections come into focus, the book shows how European phenomenology was inspired and influenced by the classic American philosophers, whose own work reveals the inspiration and influence of indigenous thought. Wilshire&’s book also reveals how artificial are the walls that separate the sciences and the humanities in academia, and that separate Continental from Anglo-American thought within the single discipline of philosophy.
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.