- American Philosophy

Catalog description

An exploration of America's indigenous philosophical tradition, this course seeks to understand how various native thinkers have sought to develop modes of thought that both supersede and improve upon European models and which are adequate to the American experience in its diversity, originality, and totality. Starting with Ralph Waldo Emerson and continuing with such philosophers as C.S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Alain Leroy Locke, and Susanne Langer, this course will examine a history of such attempts, their philosophical methods, and their conclusions. In addition to gaining an understanding of various American philosophers' independent contributions to the discipline and their relationship to the Western philosophical tradition, this course will situate American philosophy within the post-Civil War cultural and scientific context that gave rise to that most characteristic of American philosophies: pragmatism.