The term “American Philosophy,” perhaps surprisingly, has been somewhat vague. While it has tended to primarily include philosophical work done by Americans within the geographical confines of the United States, this has not been exclusively the case. For example, Alfred North Whitehead came to the United States relatively late in life. On the other hand, George Santayana spent much of his life outside of the United States. Until only recently, the term was used to refer to philosophers of (...) European descent. Another focus for defining, or at least characterizing, American Philosophy has been on the types of philosophical concerns and problems addressed. While American philosophers have worked on traditional areas of philosophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology, this is not unique to American Philosophy. Many scholars have highlighted American philosophers’ focus on the interconnections of theory and practice, on experience and community, though these, too, are not unique to American Philosophy. The people, movements, schools of thought and philosophical traditions that have constituted American Philosophy have been varied and often at odds with each other. Different concerns and themes have waxed or waned at different times. For instance, the analysis of language was important throughout much of the twentieth century, but of very little concern before then, while the relation between philosophy and religion, of great significance early in American Philosophy, paled in importance during much of the twentieth century. Despite having no core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and shaping collective American identity over the history of the nation. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: The Span of Early American Philosophy The Context of Early American Thought The Trajectory of Early American Philosophy Seventeenth‐Century Puritanism Early Eighteenth Century Later Eighteenth Century Conclusion.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

A final chapter is devoted to twentieth-century American Moral Philosophy. The book is specifically designed to be used as a text for courses in American philosophy.

While recognizing its origins and scope, Alejandro A. Vallega offers a new interpretation of Latin American philosophy by looking at its radical and transformative roots. Placing it in dialogue with Western philosophical traditions, Vallega examines developments in gender studies, race theory, postcolonial theory, and the legacy of cultural dependency in light of the Latin American experience. He explores Latin America’s engagement with contemporary problems in Western philosophy and describes the transformative impact of this encounter on contemporary (...) thought. (shrink)

The contributors examine the distinctive aspects of American philosophy, cultural and historical experience.

This anthology promotes a new vision: American Philosophy as complex and constantly changing, enlivened by historically marginalized, yet never silent, voices.

Professional philosophers have tended either to shrug off American philosophy as negligible or derivative or to date American philosophy from the work of twentieth century analytical positivists such as Quine. Russell Goodman expands on the revisionist position developed by Stanley Cavell, that the most interesting strain of American thought proceeds not from Puritan theology or from empirical science but from a peculiarly American kind of Romanticism. This insight leads Goodman, through Cavell, back to Emerson (...) and Thoreau and thence to William James and John Dewey, as they assimilated to American circumstances and intellectual habits the currents of European thought from Kant to Wittgenstein. (shrink)

John McCumber's Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era provides a compelling account of a repressed part of philosophy's history and its tragic consequences for subsequent decades of philosophic practice in the U.S. Political values and interests originating in McCarthyism got encoded within abstract conceptual frameworks, propelling analytic philosophy to an undeserved position of authority while depriving it of critical self-understanding. This comment identifies residues of McCarthyism still playing out in the Science Wars, (...) and the career of critical philosophic projects in both other disciplines and philosophy's feminist and multicultural fringes. (shrink)

A volume of lectures in American philosophy by leading authorities in the field. The leading American philosophers from Jonathan Edwards to Morris Cohen are covered and further contributions discuss American legal philosophy and the background to the American constitution. The contributors examine the distinctive aspects of American philosophy and bring out its relation to American cultural and historical experience. An extensive bibliography of the subject is also provided.

[Recipient of the 2024 Inter-American Philosophy Award] Philosophers have recently debated whether the social identity category "Latinx" picks out a race (Alcoff 2006), an ethnicity (Gracia 2008), or something else altogether (Arango and Burgos 2021). Rather than defending one or several of these ways of understanding US Latinx as a political or social group, my paper focuses on the personal social identity turmoil young US Latinx people feel and explores the history of inter-American thought to seek a (...) remedy for it. Three prominent American philosophers – José Martí, Alain Locke, and Emilio Uranga – combine to teach us that, while the US Latinx strives for belonging, they find themselves in a situation of unbelonging. The tension that results from the desire to belong but the reality of unbelonging produces a deep-seated anxiety that has come to characterize the US Latinx condition. I suggest that an effective tool for coping with this anxiety, affirming our identity, and building community is the activity of doing inter-American, Latin American, and Latinx Philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:American Philosophy: The Basics by Nancy StanlickPeter [email protected] Stanlick. American Philosophy: The Basics. London: Routledge, 2013. 174 pp with index.In 174 pages American Philosophy: The Basics covers the American philosophical tradition from its European roots to some of its contemporary leanings. The stated goal of the book is to give an overview of American philosophy and “explain what makes (...) American philosophy a national or cultural philosophical tradition.” This is a particularly tall order for such a short book, and it might be understandable if Stan-lick necessarily omits numerous thinkers from the canon. Overall, the book succeeds at giving a quick overview of the history of American philosophy.The text covers a fairly diverse selection of philosophers. Starting from Jonathan Edwards’ Calvinist theology, the book moves through early American social and political thought, and the European enlightenment ideals that underwrite them, as found in revolutionary era thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin [End Page 578] Franklin. The rest of the chapters quickly address New England transcendentalism and classical pragmatism. The book ends with two quick summaries of “recent” developments in American philosophy split between metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science; and a second section on social, political, and ethical writings. The latter section includes summaries of recent writings on feminist ethics and African American social thought. Although these themes are particularly welcome, the book would have benefited by addressing feminist and African American contributions not just to ethics or social thought, but also to debates in epistemology or the philosophy of science.The author’s intended audience is undergraduates taking an American philosophy course or those wholly uninformed about the American philosophical tradition. Although the book serves as a helpful summary of various views in the American intellectual tradition, it would need to be supplemented by a substantial amount of primary texts to provide enough course material for a semester. The text does not contain enough critical commentary to function as a secondary resource by itself, but could function alongside additional secondary material.This last point is particularly telling about the book’s goals. Stanlick manages to introduce and explain numerous classic philosophical problems throughout the text (e.g., the mind-body problem, the problem of freewill, arguments for God’s existence, etc…) and provides a glossary at the end of the book, but does not do much to explore any of the issues in-depth. In part this is because of the overview nature of the text, but additional explanations, as well as a longer list of secondary sources, would have gone a long way in strengthening the author’s overall approach. This is an interesting, and I think helpful, approach for a lower-level philosophy text: it provides clear exposition of philosophical terminology while never straying from the overall goal of exploring the American philosophical tradition.One initial problem is the author’s narrative commitment to what makes American philosophy uniquely American. Stanlick argues that what is indicative of American philosophy is more of an emphasis on “what we can do with theories, principles, and arguments” than with theoretical or abstract problems. While we may be able to see this emphasis in some of the classical pragmatists and early American intellectuals, I think it’s difficult to claim that such an emphasis is indicative of all American philosophy.Additionally, seemingly major American philosophers are simply absent. Though discussions of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty compose the pragmatism chapter, no mention is made of C.I. Lewis or Sidney Hook. Recent pragmatists, outside of W.V.O Quine and Rorty, are missing from both the pragmatism chapter and later chapters on contemporary developments in American philosophy. It seems reasonable to expect some mention of [End Page 579] Robert Brandom’s analytic pragmatism, the contemporary revival of Peirce’s philosophy, Cheryl Misak’s extensive work on American pragmatism (although one of her edited volumes is mentioned in a “further readings” sections), Susan Haack’s epistemology, or Richard Shusterman’s work on embodiment and pragmatism. Although not American in genesis, 19th Hegelianism (as especially seen in the St. Louis and Ohio Hegelians) does not appear... (shrink)

Exploring the possibilities of American philosophy from the perspective of translation, and in turn elucidating the dynamism and tension within American philosophy, this book invokes the idea of philosophy as translation as human transformation and presents a broader concept of translation as internal to the nature of language and of human life.

_American Philosophy: The Basics_ introduces the history of American thought from early Calvinists to the New England Transcendentalists and from contract theory to contemporary African American philosophy. The key question it asks is: what it is that makes American Philosophy unique? This lively and compelling book moves through key periods in the development of American thought from the founding fathers to the transcendentalists and pragmatists to contemporary social commentators. Readers are introduced to: Some (...) of the most important thinkers in American history including Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Paine, Charles Sanders Pierce, Thomas Kuhn, Cornel West and many more Developments in five key areas of thought: epistemology, metaphysics, religion and ethics, social philosophy, and political philosophy The contributions of American women, African-Americans and Native Americans. Featuring suggestions for further reading and assuming no prior knowledge of philosophy, this is an ideal first introduction for anyone studying or interested in the history of American thought. (shrink)

Introduces contemporary American philosophy of technology through six of its leading figures. The six American philosophers of technology whose work is profiled in this clear and concise introduction to the field--Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Andrew Feenberg, Donna Haraway, Don Ihde, and Langdon Winner--represent a new, empirical direction in the philosophical study of technology that has developed mainly in North America. In place of the grand philosophical schemes of the classical generation of European philosophers of technology (including Martin (...) Heidgger, Jacques Ellul, and Hans Jonas), the contemporary American generation addresses concrete technological practices and the co-evolution of technology and society in modern culture. Six Dutch philosophers associated with Twente University survey and critique the full scope and development of their American colleagues' work, often illustrating shifts from earlier to more recent interests. Individual chapters focus on Borgmann's engagement with technology and everyday life; Dreyfus's work on the limits of artificial intelligence; Feenberg's perspectives on the cultural and social possibilities opened by technologies; Haraway's conception of the cyborg and its attendant blurring of boundaries; Ihde's explorations of the place of technology in the lifeworld; and Winner's fascination with the moral and political implications of modern technologies. American Philosophy of Technology offers an insightful and readable introduction to this new and distinctly American philosophical turn. (shrink)

Goodman’s book is neither a survey, nor a comprehensive history of American philosophy before pragmatism emerged in the late nineteenth century in the works of Charles S. Peirce and William James, nor does it explore undiscovered depths of American thought possibly overlooked or lost to time. Rather, Goodman’s treatment of five men—-Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau—attempts to follow James’s understanding of what philosophies are and to “convey each writer’s feel (...) for the ‘whole push’ of things”. In that regard, Goodman succeeds and gives the reader a sense of each man’s motivations. Each is given his own chapter, including an interlude and an... (shrink)

Introduces contemporary American philosophy of technology through six of its leading figures. The six American philosophers of technology whose work is profiled in this clear and concise introduction to the field—Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Andrew Feenberg, Donna Haraway, Don Ihde, and Langdon Winner—represent a new, empirical direction in the philosophical study of technology that has developed mainly in North America. In place of the grand philosophical schemes of the classical generation of European philosophers of technology, the contemporary (...) American generation addresses concrete technological practices and the co-evolution of technology and society in modern culture. Six Dutch philosophers associated with Twente University survey and critique the full scope and development of their American colleagues’ work, often illustrating shifts from earlier to more recent interests. Individual chapters focus on Borgmann’s engagement with technology and everyday life; Dreyfus’s work on the limits of artificial intelligence; Feenberg’s perspectives on the cultural and social possibilities opened by technologies; Haraway’s conception of the cyborg and its attendant blurring of boundaries; Ihde’s explorations of the place of technology in the lifeworld; and Winner’s fascination with the moral and political implications of modern technologies. American Philosophy of Technology offers an insightful and readable introduction to this new and distinctly American philosophical turn. Contributors are Hans Achterhuis, Philip Brey, René Munnik, Martijntje Smits, Pieter Tijmes, and Peter-Paul Verbeek. (shrink)

After presenting a brief history of philosophy in Hispanic-America since the XVI century, we discuss whether the idea of province and empire is applicable to contemporary Hispanic-American philosophy, investigate the form these ideas adopt in this region, and inquire into the ways in which provincialism i s present in philosophical work. We conclude that there are three main groups that understand their peripheral position in different ways, with different views on the way in which they should insert (...) into the mainstream of Western philosophy. (shrink)

In Portraits of American Philosophy, eight of America’s most prominent philosophers offer autobiographical narratives that remind us that the life of a scholar is both a tale of personal struggle and an adventure in ideas.

In previous works such as Thinking Through the Imagination: Aesthetics in Human Cognition and Idealism, Pragmatism, and Feminism: The Philosophy of Ella Lyman Cabot, John Kaag firmly established his "street cred" as a scholar and interpreter of American philosophy. His name will also be familiar to readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, and sundry other publications as he endeavors to impact a larger audience, off campus, to serve as a public intellectual, one (...) we need now more than ever—Richard Hofstadter's 1964 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life is all too relevant as challenges cloud our democratic vistas.An ambitious work, American... (shrink)

What have Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Sanders Pierce, William James, John Dewey, Josiah Royce, George Santayana and Willard Van Orman Quine contributed to American philosophy? Edwards is without rival as the greatest philosopher/theologian of colonial America. Before Emerson, no other thinker remotely approaches Edwards in intellectual endowment, range of interests, or depth and subtlety of treatment of a variety of philosophical topics. Emerson and Thoreau together represent the high point of American transcendentalism. (...) Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey--the Big Three of American pragmatism--form a constellation of philosophers whose like has been seen neither before nor since their time. The brilliant, irascible Peirce may well be the greatest philosopher America has produced. Philosophical idealism reached its American zenith in Josiah Royce, a thinker whose vast erudition and formidable intelligence breathed new life into a point of view widely thought to be moribund. George Ssantayana is, with Emerson, the poet of American philosophy. Quine is one of America’s most distinguished living philosophers and very proudly the most influential. (shrink)

Russell 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 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.

No descriptive material is available for this title.

This anthology brings together a selection of historical and contemporary writings on topics in African-American Philosophy. Questions regarding a wide range of issues--including slavery and freedom, social progress, self-respect, alienation, sexuality, cultural identity, nationalism, feminism, Marxism and violence--are critically examined from different perspectives by well-known philosophers and by non-philosophers from many disciplines. It emphasizes the historical significance of the philosophical arguments within very specific social and political contexts. Features substantial extracts, and in some cases complete works by important (...) 19th- and 20th-century social and political thinkers--organized under sections on Antebellem Critical Thought, Emigrationist and Diaspora Thought, Assimilation and Social Uplift, Contemporary Black Feminist Thought, Civil Rights and Civil Disobedience, Marxism and Social Progress, Rebellion and Radical Thought, Social Activism Reconsidered, Black Women Writers on Rape, and Alienation and Self-Respect. For anyone interested in the African-American experience and American history. (shrink)

This article systematically surveys the history of Anglo-American philosophy in Taiwan since the late nineteenth century. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it argues that pragmatism remained influential given the dominance of continental philosophy in Japanese colonized Taiwan, where the universal values assumed by pragmatists were used to resist the Empire’s ideology, after WWII, immigrated Chinese scholars brought in more novelty to Taiwanese philosophy than the Vienna circle diasporas brought to their Anglo-American counterparts, in which liberal scholars’ (...) emphasis on science and democracy challenged Chiang’s dictatorship and Chinese nationalism, and analytic philosophy thrived with the advance of democratizing in the 1980s, which, in turn, diversified the philosophy in 1990s Taiwan. Accordingly, Anglo-American philosophy was never confined to the academic ivory tower but had positive impacts on Taiwan’s centennial social transformation. (shrink)

The essays in this book analyze significant perspectives of the recent past in American philosophy; they represent some of the major trends of this period. Alfred North Whitehead is included with the recent American philosophers since his major philosophic ideas were fully developed in this country. There has been no attempt to deal comprehensively with this period. Several philosophers of equal importance who also deserve attention-C. l. Lewis, A. O. Love joy, W. F. Montague, R. B. Perry, (...) F. J. E. Woodbridge, and others have not been discussed. Most of the essays were published at various times in various journals. Though all of the perspectives are presented with sympathetic understanding, they are also critically evaluated. 2 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY OF THE RECENT PAST But even more than individual philosophers and schools of philos ophy the larger background of contemporary American life has nour ished the empirical spirit. Science as the most pervasive climate of our intellectual and practical activity has enhanced the empirical attitude. The great development, in this country, of business and technological industry has encouraged the pragmatic, empirical outlook. Empiricism, however, is an ambiguous term, and its different meanings have different philosophic consequences. For some it means that only concrete personal experience can be accepted as reality; for others it means the succession of sense-impressions. The more recent usage, the one that has been dominant in American philosophy, identifies empiricism with objectively and socially verifiable pronounce ments, that is, with experimentalism, or confirmation through demon strable evidence. (shrink)

Given as an address to the American Philosophical Association on the occasion of its centennial, this paper examines the character and standing of American philosophy now and at the outset of the twentieth century as seen (then and now) from a British point of view. A century ago Britain was itself the unquestioned leader of Anglo-Saxon thought. Now, however, as in so many areas, the US is the pre-eminent world power. This status brings prestige and various benefits (...) but it also carries responsibilities. In considering the latter I recall some virtues of an earlier generation of American philosophers, especially as they were possessed by William James. (shrink)

Rebecca Farinas takes seven major figures from the American philosophical canon and examines their relationship with an artistic or scientific interlocutor. In so doing, she provides a unique insight into the origins of American philosophy and, through case studies such as the friendship between Alain Locke and the biologist E.E. Just and the collaboration between Jane Addams and George Herbert Mead, sheds new light on these thinkers' ideas.

From American Empire to América Cósmica through Philosophy: Prospero’s Reflection is the culmination of MacMullan’s research on a broader conception of American Philosophy. The expanded notion of “American” Philosophy not only makes sense, but it is one of the most promising present ventures in dealing with the lives and problems of people across the Americas. The book opens an important dialogue between the American pragmatist traditions and Latin American philosophers who have been (...) ignored, such as Vaz Ferreira, Pedro Albizu Campos, and Risieri Frondizi. More importantly, it introduces the perspective of these philosophers on both the virtues and the vices of the United States. This is the much-needed critical... Read More. (shrink)

To be human is to humanize; a radically empirical aesthetic, by J. J. McDermott.--Dream and nightmare; the future as revolution, by R. C. Pollock.--William James and metaphysical risk, by P. M. Van Buren.--Knowing as a passionate and personal quest; C. S. Peirce, by D. B. Burrell.--The fox alone is death; Whitehead and speculative philosophy, by A. J. Reck.--A man and a city; George Herbert Mead in Chicago, by R. M. Barry.--Royce; analyst of religion as community, by J. Collins.--Human experience (...) and God; Brightman's personalistic theism, by D. Callahan.--William James and the phenomenology of religious experience, by J. M. Edie.--Pragmatism, religion, and experienceable difference, by R. W. Sleeper.--How is religious talk justifiable, by J. W. McClendon, Jr. (shrink)

Wide-ranging examination of American philosophy's ties to settler colonialism and its role as both an object and a force of decolonization.

American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present by Erin McKenna and Scott Pratt is an introduction to the history of American Philosophy from the period of 1894 to the present, grounded in an outlook informed by classical pragmatism. Spanning thirty-two chapters and covering dozens of figures, the text is as comprehensive a survey of American Philosophy as I have ever come across. While the book includes a list of the usual suspects with chapters (...) devoted to figures like Emerson, James, and Dewey, the book is also a veritable Who's Who of who is missing from the American canon. For those working in the American tradition with a predilection toward pluralism, this characteristic is particularly noteworthy. The... (shrink)

Latin America - its people, its politics, its economy - has burst upon the world scene with powerful images that have captured the curiosity of many English-speaking North Americans. The strategic importance of this vast region to the stability of the Wes.

Contemporary developments in American epistemology, by R. M. Chisholm.--Contemporary metaphysics in the United States, by D. F. Gustafson.--Philosophy of physics, by H. Putnam--The influence of continental philosophy on the contemporary American scene: a summons to autonomy, by G. A. Scharader, Jr.--The influence of the later Wittgenstein on American philosophy, by J. O. Nelson.--Philosophy of mind, by F. H. Donnell, Jr.--Some remarks on the philosophy of language, by J. A. Fodor.--Ethics in the United (...) States today, by D. Kading.--Social philosophy; philosophy of social science, by P. Diesing. (shrink)

For undergraduate/graduate courses in Latin American Philosophy, Latin American Thought, Multicultural Philosophy, Latino Culture and Civilization, and Hispanic Culture and Civilization in the Departments of Philosophy, Latin American Studies, Political Science, Romance Languages, and Chicano Studies. The most comprehensive anthology in its field, 'Latin American philosophy' offers the reflections of Latin American thinkers on the nature of philosophy, justice, human rights, cultural identity, and other issues that have faced them from (...) the colonial period to the present day. Most of the essays are short and easy to read making them accessible to students with little or no philosophical background. (shrink)

Introduction -- Defining pluralism : Simon Pokagon, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Thomas fortune -- Evolution and American Indian philosophy -- Feminist resistance : Anna Julia Cooper, Jane Addams, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- Labor, empire and the social gospel : Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Jane Addams -- A new name for an old way of thinking : William James -- Making ideas clear : Charles Sanders Peirce -- The beloved community and its discontents : Josiah Royce and (...) the realists -- War, anarchism, and sex : Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger -- Democracy and social ethics : John Dewey -- Naturalism and idealism, fear, and conventionality : Mary Whiton Calkins and Elsie Clews Parsons -- Race riots and the color line : W. E. B. du Bois -- Philosophy reacts : Hartley Burr Alexander and Morris R. Cohen -- Creative experience : Mary Parker Follett -- Cultural pluralism : Horace Kallen and Alain Locke -- War and the rise of logical positivism : Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap -- Mccarthyism and American empiricism : Jacob Loewenberg, Henry Sheffer, C. I. Lewis, and Charles Morris -- The linguistic turn : Gustav Bergmann, May Brodbeck, and W. V. O. Quine -- Resisting the turn : Donald Davidson, Wilfrid Sellars, and the pluralist rebellion -- Philosophy outside : John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Rachel Carson -- Economics and technology : Lewis Mumford, C. Wright Mills and John Kenneth Galbraith -- Politics : John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Michael Sandel, Martha Nussbaum, and Noam Chomsky -- Civil rights : Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Wright and James Baldwin -- Black power : Malcolm X, James Cone, Audre Lorde, Bell Hooks, Angela Davis, and Cornel West -- Latin American American philosophy -- Red power, indigenous philosophy : Vine Deloria, Jr. and contemporary American Indian thought -- Feminism -- Engaged philosophy and the environment -- American philosophy today -- Recovering and sustaining the American tradition -- American philosophy revitalized -- The spirit of American philosophy in the new century. (shrink)

This essay fills in some historical, conceptual, and pedagogical gaps that appear in the most visible and recent professional efforts to “revive” Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL). I present “American Philosophy and Self-Culture” as an advanced undergraduate seminar that broadens who counts in and what counts as philosophy by immersing us in the lives, writings, and practices of seven representative U.S.-American philosophers of self-culture, community-building, and world-changing: Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), William (...) Ellery Channing (1780–1842), Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), Henry Bugbee (1915–1999), and Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004). Students enter the class with preconceptions about who philosophers are, what they do, how they write, and the languages in which they write. Students walk out with new senses of self, place, and language that emerge through new ways of seeing, doing, and writing philosophy. (shrink)

This two-part paper reconstructs the analytic turn in American philosophy through a comparative, longitudinal study of philosophy departments at three major universities: Princeton, Yale, and Columbia. I trace their hiring policies, tenure decisions, and curriculum designs and the external pressures that forced them to continuously adapt their strategies, and I use those analyses to distill some of the factors that contributed to the rapid growth of analytic philosophy between 1940 and 1970. In this first part, I (...) show that philosophers at Princeton, Yale, and Columbia actively tried to promote a “humanistic” conception of philosophy until the early 1950s. I argue that logical positivism and related “scientific” approaches were seen as a fundamental threat to the discipline and that this opposition influenced decision-making at all three institutions. Although many students and recent graduates saw philosophy as a scientific discipline, senior members of the community deplored the decline of the humanities and appointed mostly humanistic philosophers. I show that this generational conflict was reinforced by demographic, political, and economic developments and argue that these discriminatory practices helped forge a coalition between logical empiricists, scientific pragmatists, and ordinary language philosophers, who all began to identify as “analytic” philosophers after the war. (shrink)

Part I Philosophic Traditions Introduction to Part I 3 1 Philosophy and the Afro-American Experience 7 CORNEL WEST 2 African-American Existential Philosophy 33 LEWIS R. GORDON 3 African-American Philosophy: A Caribbean Perspective 48 PAGET HENRY 4 Modernisms in Black 67 FRANK M. KIRKLAND 5 The Crisis of the Black Intellectual 87 HORTENSE J. SPILLERS Part II The Moral and Political Legacy of Slavery Introduction to Part II 107 6 Kant and Knowledge of Disappearing Expression (...) 110 RONALD A. T. JUDY 7 Social Contract Theory, Slavery, and the Antebellum Courts 125 ANITA L. ALLEN AND THADDEUS POPE 8 The Morality of Reparations II 134 BERNARD R. BOXILL Part III Africa and Diaspora Thought Introduction to Part III 151 9 “Afrocentricity‘: Critical Considerations 155 LUCIUS T. OUTLAW, JR. 10 African Retentions 168 TOMMY L. LOTT 11 African Philosophy at the Turn of the Century 190 ALBERT G. MOSLEY Part IV Gender, Race, and Racism Introduction to Part IV 199 12 Some Group Matters: Intersectionality, Situated Standpoints, and Black Feminist Thought 205 PATRICIA HILL COLLINS 13 Radicalizing Feminisms from “The Movement Era‘ 230 JOY A. JAMES 14 Philosophy and Racial Paradigms 239 NAOMI ZACK 15 Racial Classification and Public Policy 255 DAVID THEO GOLDBERG 16 White Supremacy 269 CHARLES W. MILLS Part V Legal and Social Philosophy Introduction to Part V 285 17 Self-Respect, Fairness, and Living Morally 293 LAURENCE M. THOMAS 18 The Legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson 306 MICHELE MOODY-ADAMS 19 Some Reflections on the Brown Decision and Its Aftermath 313 HOWARD McGARY 20 Contesting the Ambivalence and Hostility to Affirmative Action within the Black Community 324 LUKE C. HARRIS 21 Subsistence Welfare Benefits as Property Interests: Legal Theories and Moral Considerations 333 RUDOLPH V. VANTERPOOL 22 Racism and Health Care: A Medical Ethics Issue 349 ANNETTE DULA 23 Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition 360 ANGELA Y. DAVIS Part VI Aesthetic and Cultural Values Introduction to Part VI 373 24 The Harlem Renaissance and Philosophy 381 LEONARD HARRIS 25 Critical Theory, Aesthetics, and Black Modernity 386 LORENZO C. SIMPSON 26 Black Cinema and Aesthetics 399 CLYDE R. TAYLOR 27 Thanatic Pornography, Interracial Rape, and the Ku Klux Klan 407 T. DENEAN SHARPLEY-WHITING 28 Lynching and Burning Rituals in African-American Literature 413 TRUDIER HARRIS-LOPEZ 29 Rap as Art and Philosophy 419 RICHARD SHUSTERMAN 30 Microphone Commandos: Rap Music and Political Ideology 429 BILL E. LAWSON 31 Sports, Political Philosophy, and the African American 436 GERALD EARLY. (shrink)

Twenty-two leading Latin American philosophers are featured in this complete anthology on the human condition, values, and the search for identity. Bibliography.