American Philosophy

Catalog description

A distinctively American school of philosophy emerged in the early part of the nineteenth century and remains influential in the present day. American transcendentalism, philosophical applications of evolutionary theory (e.g., social Darwinism), the abolition of slavery (Garrison, Douglass), and equality for women (e.g. Grimké, Stanton, Fuller) dominated the early part of the nineteenth century. By far the most well-known philosophical movement in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century was pragmatism (Peirce, James, Dewey). Its proponents developed new approaches to a range of traditional philosophical topics, including truth and knowledge, ethics, the nature of reality and the mind, religion, and education. "American philosophy'" is characterized by its emphasis on the decisive value of practice and its guiding role in relation to theory; by its metaphysical pluralism, anti-Cartesian fallibilism, and rejection of intellectualism; its constructive criticism of racial and gender inequalities (e.g. Du Bois, Addams, Ladd-Franklin), and its commitment to a conception of experience ("radical empiricism") broad enough to embrace both science and religion. In more recent times, influential neopragmatists such as Richard Rorty and Robert Brandom have further advanced the tradition and demonstrated its continuing philosophical and social relevance. This course builds on its precursor (Phil 205), focusing on specific topics, works, or figures.