Gerald Birney Smith is an all too neglected figure among the luminaries of the early Chicago School. No less than the others—Shailer Mathews, George Burman Foster, Shirley Jackson Case, Edward Scribner Ames, et al.—he is worthy of attention. For one thing, Smith is a unique figure in bridging the historical concerns of his Chicago contemporaries and the more philosophical concerns of the next generation of Chicago theologians, especially Bernard E. Meland and Henry Nelson Wieman. Indeed, Meland saw his early “mystical (...) naturalism” as a continuation of a project that Smith, his mentor, called by that term in his later works. Quite apart from being a bridge figure, Smith deserves attention in his own.. (shrink)

Naturalism is the label for the thesis that the tools we should use in answering philosophical problems are the methods and findings of the mature sciences—from physics across to biology and increasingly neuroscience. It enables us to rule out answers to philosophical questions that are incompatible with scientific findings. It enables us to rule out epistemological pluralism—that the house of knowledge has many mansions, as well as skepticism about the reach of science. It bids us doubt that there are facts (...) about reality that science cannot grasp. It gives us confidence to assert that by now in the development of science, absence of evidence is prima facie good grounds for evidence of absence: this goes for God, and a great deal else. (shrink)

"Deserves to be as widely read as were the originals when they were first published."—Biological Journal of the Linneas Society. Includes five chapters from The Origin of Speices,complete and unabridged; significant extracts from the works that precede and develop the theory of evolution: The Voyage of the Beagle, The Descent of Man, and The Variations of Animals and Plants; scientific papers, travel writings, letters, and a family memorial; plus a chronology and biography.

Overview * Part I: Introduction * Philip Appleman, Darwin: On Changing the Mind * Part II: Darwin’s Life * Ernst Mayr, Who Is Darwin? * Part III: Scientific Thought: Just before Darwin * Sir Gavin de Beer, Biology before the Beagle * Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population * William Paley, Natural Theology * Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet Lamarck, Zoological Philisophy * Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology * John Herschell, The Study of Natural Philosophy (...) * William Whewell, Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology * Alfred Russel Wallace, On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type * Part IV: Selections from Darwin’s Work * The Voyage of the Beagle * o Chapter I. St. Jago-Cape de Verd Island o Chapter XVII. Galapagos Archipelago * On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; and On the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection * o I. Extract from an unpublished Work on Species, by C. Darwin, Esq.... o II.of Letter from C. Darwin, Esq., to Prof. Asa Gray, Boston, U.S., dated Down, September 5th, 1857 * An Historical Sketch of the Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species, previously to the : Publication of This Work The Origin of Species * o Introduction o Chapter I. Variation under Domestication o Chapter II. Variation under Nature o Chapter III. Struggle for Existence o Chapter IV. Natural Selection o Chapter VI. Difficulties on Theory o Chapter IX. On the Imperfections of the Geological Record o Chapter XIII. Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings: Morphology: Embryology: Rudimentary Organs o Chapter XIV. Recapitulation and Conclusion * The Descent of Man * o Introduction o Chapter I. The Evidence of the Descent of Man from Some Lower Form o Chapter II. On the Manner of Development of Man from Some Lower Form o Chapter III. Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals o Chapter VI. On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man o Chapter VIII. Principles of Sexual Selection o Chapter XIX. Secondary Sexual Characters of Man o Chapter XX. Secondary Sexual Characters of Man-continued o Chapter XXI. General Summary and Conclusion * Part V: Darwin’s Influence on Science * THE VICTORIAN OPPOSITION TO DARWIN * o David L. Hull, Darwin and His Critics o Adam Sedgwick, Objections to Mr. Darwin’s Theory of the Origin of Species o Sir Richard Owen, Darwin on the Origin of Species o Fleeming Jenkin, Review of the Origin of Species * VICTORIAN SUPPORTERS OF DARWIN * o Joseph Dalton Hooker, Flora Tasmaniae o Thomas Henry Huxley, On the Relations of Man to the Lowe Animals o Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology o Alfred Russel Wallace, The Debt of Science to Darwin * DARWIN AND THE SHAPING OF MODERN SCIENCE * o Scientific Method in Evolution o National Academy of Sciences, Evolution and the Nature of Science o Richard Dawkins, Explaining the Very Improbable o Lewis Thomas, On the Uncertainty of Science o Noretta Koetge, Postmodernisms and the Problem of Scientific Literary o Richard Dawkins, Science and Sensibility o The Neo-Darwinian Synthesis o Peter Bowler, The Evolutionary Synthesis o The Human Genealogy o Adam Kuper, The Chosen Primate o Ian Tattersall, Out of Africa Again... and Again? o Stephen Jay Gould, The Human Difference o Punctuated Equilibrium o Stephen Jay Gould, [On Punctuated Equilibrium] o Niles Eldredge, The Great Stasis Debate o Rethinking Taxonomy o Kevin Padian, Darwin’s Views of Classification o David L. Hull, Cladistic Analysis o Kevin Padian and Luis M. Chiappe, Cladistics in Action: The Origin of Birds and Their Flight o Evolution as Observable Fact o James L. Gould and William T. Keeton with Carol Grant Gould, How Natural Selection Operates o Peter r. Grant, Natural Selection and Darwin’s Finches o John A. Endler, Natural Selection in the Wild * Part VI: Darwinian Patterns in Social Thought * COMPETITION AND COOPERATION * o Richard Hofstadter, The Vogue of Spencer o Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth o Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid o Martin A. Nowak, Robert M. May, and Karl Sigmund, The Arithmetics of Mutual Help * NATURE AND NURTURE * o Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis o Stephen Jay Gould, Biological Potentiality vs. Biological Determination o Barbara Ehrenreich and Janet McIntosh, The New Creationism: Biology under Attack * EVOLUTION AND GENDER * o Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman’s Bible o Nancy Makepeace Tanner, On Becoming Human o Evelleen Richards, Darwin and the Descent of Woman o James Eli Adams, Woman Red in Tooth and Claw * EVOLUTION AND OTHER DISCIPLINES * o Edward O. Wilson, [On Consilience] o Randolph H. Nesse and George C. Williams, Evolution and the Origin of Disease o Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works o Steve Jones, The Set within the Skull * Part VII: Darwinian Influences in Philosophy and Ethics * John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy * Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Natural Selection as an Algorithmic Process * Michael Ruse Darwinian Epistemology * Thomas Henry Huxley, Evolution and Ethics * Julian Huxley, Evolutionary Ethics * Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson, The Evolution of Ethics * Frans de Waal, Good Natured: The Origin of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals * Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue * Part VIII: Evolutionary Theory and Religious Theory * MAINSTREAM RELIGIOUS SUPPORT FOR EVOLUTION * o Pope John Paul II, Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences o Central Conference of American Rabbis, On Creationism in School Textbooks o United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Evolution and Creationsim o The Lutheran World Federation, [Statement on Evolution] o The General Convention of the Episcopal Church, Resolution on Evolutionism and Creationism o Unitariuan Universalist Association, Resolution Opposing "Scientific Creationism" * FUNDAMENTALIST CREATIONISM * o Eugene C. Scott, Antievolution and Creationism in the United States o The Scopes Trial o Thomas McIver, Orthodox Jewish Creationists o Harun Yahya, [Islamic Creationism] o Seami Srila Prabhupada, [A Hare Krishna on Darwinian Evolution] o Institute for Creation Research, Tenets of Creationism o Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism o Thomas J. Wheeler, Review of Morris o Richard D. Sjolund and Betty McCollister, Evolution at the Grass Roots o Richard D. Sjolund, [Creationism versus Biotechnology] o Betty McCollister, [The Politics of Creationism] o Molleen Matsumara, What Do Christians Really Believe about Evolution? o National Center for Science Education, Seven Significant Court Decisions Regarding Evolution/Creation Issues * PERSONAL INCREDULITY AND ANTIEVOLUTIONISM * o Richard Dawkins, [The Argument from Personal Incredulity] o Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial o Eugenie C. Scott, Review of Johnson o Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box o Robert Dorit, Review of Behe o Michael Ruse, Darwin’s New Critics on Trial * SCIENTISTS’ OPPOSITION TO CREATIONISM * o American Association for the Advancement of Science, Forced Teaching of Creationist Beliefs in Public School Science Education o American Institute of Biological Sciences, Resolution Oposing Creationism in Science Courses o National Association of Biology Teachers, Statement on Teaching Evolution o National Academy of Sciences, Frequently Asked Questions about Evolution and the Nature of Science * FUNDAMENTALIST CREATIONISM AND THE VALUE OF SATIRE * o Michael Shermer, Genesis Revisted: A Scientific Creation Story o Philip Appleman, Darwin’s Ark * Part IX: Darwin and the Literary Mind * DARWIN’S LITERARY SENSIBILITY * o Charles Darwin, Autobiography o L. Robert Stevens, Darwin’s Humane Reading o George Levine, Darwin and Pain: Why Science Made Shakespeare Nauseating o Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots * DARWIN’S INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE * o Lionel Stevenson, Darwin among the Poets o George Levine, Darwin among the Novelists o Joseph Wood Krutch, The Tragic Fallacy o Herbert J. Muller, Modern Tragedy o Philip Appleman, Darwin-Sightings in Recent Literature. (shrink)

In this collection of closely interrelated essays, Robert Young emphasizes the scope of the nineteenth-century debate on 'man's place in nature' at the same time as he engages with the approaches of scholars who write about it. He is critical of the separation of the writing of history from writing about history, historiography, and of the separation of history from politics and ideology, then or now. Dr Young challenges fellow historians for reimposing the very disciplinary boundaries that the nineteenth-century debate (...) showed were in the service of ideological forces in that culture. Rather, he proposes that the full weight of the contending forces should be made apparent and debated openly so that neither nineteenth-century nor contemporary issues about the role of science in culture should be treated in a narrow perspective. (shrink)

Estudio preliminar. I. La era de Darwin. II. Las coordenadas españolas de la polémica darwinista. III. Algunos datos sobre la introducción del darwinismo en España. IV. Breve historia de la controversia ideológica. V. Implicaciones filosóficas e ideológicas del darwinismo. Nota sobre los textos. ANTOLOGÍA DE TEXTOS. I. Un debate largo y virulento. I.1. Defensores. I.2. Adversarios. I.3. Posturas conciliadoras. II. Tres acontecimientos polémicos. II.1. El drawinismo en Granada. II.2. El I Congreso Católico Español. II.3. El cementerio del nacimiento de Darwin. (...) III. Darwinismo social. IV. Darwinismo y socialismo. IV.1. Anarquismo. IV.2. Socialismo marxista. V. La muerte de Darwin en la Prensa. V.1. Prensa católico-tradicional. V.2. Prensa liberal. V.3. Prensa obrera. Bibliografía y cronología del darwinismo en España [1859-1900]. (shrink)

The British idealists made significant and lasting contributions to the social and political thought of the nineteenth century. They contributed to the evolution debate in insisting that the social organism could not be understood in naturalistic terms, but instead had to be conceived as an evolving spiritual unity. In this respect the British idealists developed a distinctive view of the state constitutive of the individual and they are commonly acknowledged as the forerunners of modern communitarian theory. Furthermore the idealists contributed (...) to the major debates of their day, including evolution, democracy, the role of the state, education and international relations. In his introduction, David Boucher develops the themes illustrated in the writings of the British idealists. This volume also contains biographies of the British idealists which incorporate their principal works. (shrink)

This book traces the further development and emergence of American philosophy, particularly Naturalism and Pragmatism, against the backdrop of still-dominant Hegelian philosophy, during the third decade of the 20th century, through the addresses and biographies of the presidents of its oldest and largest philosophical society. Of special interest is the previously unpublished presidential address of Henry Walgrave Stewart, second president of the Pacific Division of The American Philosophical Association. The work contains the biographies, photographs, and addresses of 24 past presidents, (...) and photographs and addresses of others. No other publication has collected the presidential addresses of this, the largest society of philosophers, during its third decade of existence, and in no other publication are the biographies and photographs of all of its presidents available. While some histories of this period in 20th century American philosophy have been written, and while some collections of articles by philosophers exist which include writings of some of these individuals, none has concentrated on a representation of the leadership of. (shrink)

This text examines the intellectual partnership of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Paul Rée (1849-1901), combining biography with philosophy to give an account of a friendship that made major contributions to modern thought"--Provided by publisher.

An icon of philosophy and psychology during the first half of the 20th century, Dewey is known as the father of Functional Psychology and a pivotal figure of the Pragmatist movement as well as the progressive movement in education. This concise and critical look at Dewey’s work examines his discourse of "right" and "wrong," as well as political notions such as freedom, rights, liberty, equality, and naturalism. The author of several essays about thought and logic, Dewey’s legacy remains not only (...) through the works he left us, but also through the institutions he founded, which include The New School for Social Research in New York City and the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Hildebrand’s biography brilliantly interweaves the different strands of Dewey's thought, and examines the legacy he left behind. (shrink)

Ukrainian science and its terminology in the nineteenth century experienced a number of twists and turns. Divided between two empires, it lacked institutions, scholars pursuing it, and a unified literary language. One could even say that until the late nineteenth century there was a possibility for two communities with two literary languages to emerge – Ruthenian and Ukrainian. Eventually, both communities and languages merged. This article tracks the meanderings of this process, arguing that scholarly publications played a crucial role in (...) shaping the standard for the scientific language. The article follows the biography of the naturalist Ivan Verhrats’kyi, the author of the first dictionaries of naturalist terminology in Ruthenian in 1860, a translator and author of textbooks, and the head of the Mathematical–Naturalist–Medical Section of the Shevchenko Society in L’viv. He thus shaped many Ruthenian, and then Ruthenian–Ukrainian scholarly projects. Initially successful with his approach to making the Ruthenian scientific language vernacular, in the 1890s his approach was losing ground to the internationalization of vocabulary and to the growing pressure toward the unification of Ruthenian and Ukrainian. Finally, in the beginning of the twentieth century, Verhrats’kyi became marginalized within the Ukrainian scholarly community. By discussing the history of a minority language within imperial structures, I argue that the media in which scholarly work was published requires special attention. In the Ruthenin–Ukrainian case, they determined the standard for scientific language. Lacking professional journals, Ruthenian scholars published in the 1860s–late 1880s in popular newspapers and in school textbooks, requiring them to use a language that was near to the spoken tongue of the Habsburg province. Once the political situation changed, favoring Ruthenian–Ukrainian unification, and scholarly journals appeared and transgressed the imperial boundary, the favored language had to be transimperial, ousting out the vernacular. (shrink)

One and a half months after Victor Hugo died in 1885, Beşir Fuad published a biography of him, in which Fuad defended Emile Zola’s naturalism and realism against Hugo’s romanticism. This resulted in the most important dispute in nineteenth-century Turkish literary history, the hakikiyyûn and hayâliyyûn debate, with the former represented by Beşir Fuad and the latter represented by Menemenlizâde Mehmet Tahir. This article focuses on the form of this debate rather than its content, and this focus reveals how (...) the tension between classical and post-classical Islamic intellectual history had become deeply embedded in Ottoman Turkish literary history by the late 1800s. This particular event demonstrates two points: that dialectical disputation was viewed negatively as a return to the seemingly primitive practices of an antiquated mentality, as opposed to the relatively enlightened apodictic argumentation ; and that trajectories of Ottoman Turkish literary history can be understood within the context of general Islamic intellectual history. (shrink)

This portrait proceeds from the hypothesis that an actress should be studied as a distinct subject and that, in this sense, Giacinta Pezzana is representative because of her artistic choices and feminism, resting on friendship among women. In this article the author proposes a theoretical biography in nuce, which identifies the contexts and the problematical issues of Pezzana’s history, in the interweaving of the public and personal spheres, favouring the use of epistolary sources. Her lifetime witnessed the coexistence of (...) the Grande attore tradition, issues of Naturalism, Duse’s revolutionary art and industrial standardization. Pezzana stood out for her ethical sense and strong emphasis on expressivity, which disposed her to populist developments. Hence, her interest in popular and experimental theatre, renewable through linguistic and dramaturgic inventions. This brings about a double identity as writer and actress and an original twofold repertoire: the warhorses – such as Zola’s Teresa Raquin – and the ‘intellectual luxuries’, such as the Serate Dantesche, where she appears as a precursor of one-woman-shows. (shrink)

Jean Piaget, connu comme créateur d'une théorie du développement de l'intelligence chez l'enfant, fut un naturaliste précoce. En 1912, à l'âge de seize ans, il prononça une conférence sur « La vanité de la nomenclature » dans le cadre des activités d'un club de jeunes naturalistes; le manuscrit de cette conférence a été retrouvé récemment. L'introduction à la présente édition du manuscrit essaie de montrer l'importance de ce dernier pour une biographie historique de Piaget. D'une part, « La vanité » (...) est à la fois l'expression la plus synthétique de l'intégration de son auteur au champ de l'histoire naturelle, et le premier signal de sa réorientation vers la biologie philosophique qui jouerait un rôle crucial dans son oeuvre ultérieure. D'autre part, le texte du jeune Piaget illustre la persistance du nominalisme dans la problématique post-darwinienne de l'espèce, et certaines relations entre cette problématique et la philosophie de Henri Bergson. Long before becoming the well-known creator of a theory of the development of intelligence in children, Jean Piaget was a naturalist. In 1912, at the age of sixteen, and as member of a young naturalists' club, he gave a talk called « The Vanity of Nomenclature », the manuscript of which was recently discovered. The introduction to the present edition of that manuscript aims at suggesting its significance for a historical biography of Piaget. On the one hand, Piaget's text is the best exponent of his integration into the field of natural history; however, it is also the first sign of his reorientation towards the philosophical biology that would play a fundamental role in his later work. On the other hand, « The Vanity » illustrates the persistence of nominalism in post-Darwinian thinking about the species, and reveals certain relations between Henry Bergson's philosophy and the history of biology. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper examines the effort that was involved in sustaining the nineteenth-century middle-class ideological fabrication of the image of the working-class scientific autodidact. The construction and reception of Samuel Smiles’ biography of the Scottish cobbler and naturalist Thomas Edward provides a way to investigate this process in detail and to show how Smiles’ conception of the scientific persona related to the “politics of character” in mid-Victorian Britain. Edward’s own response to the biography offers an unusual opportunity to analyze (...) the making of a Victorian scientific hero, who, in the process of being fitted to Smiles’ notion of a scientific persona, came to feel that he had been robbed of his life. (shrink)

It is ironic that, with few exceptions, the now vast body of critical literature about Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas fails to link knowledge to understanding—fails to relate the encyclopedic knowledge we have acquired of its numerous details to a convincing understanding of the painting as a whole. Las Meninas is imposing and monumental; yet a large portion of the literature devoted to it considers only its elements: aspects of its nominal subjects, their biographies, and their roles in the household of (...) the queen or the king. Niceties of court etiquette; concerns about clothing, and shoes , and the small cup of water offered to the Infanta Margarita .This increasingly intimate discussion of the painting’s details is not altogether beside the point; some of this information deserves to be integrated into descriptions of the painting as a whole. But a reader of these descriptive accounts soon begins to suspect they are offered in the hope that some new details might provoke an understanding of the entire painting, might prove to be the key to our comprehension of it. In fact, Las Meninas invites such analysis. Some nineteenth-century critics called it “photographic” in its naturalism , in the profusion of its detail, and in the alleged “snapshot” quality of its composition.1 The underlying motive of this understanding ought not to be dismissed, even thought the photography analogy is clearly grotesque, in terms both of history and visual sensibility. Although we know a great deal about the contention, in seventeenth-century Spanish art theory, that a major function of art is the perfecting of nature according to ideal standards, Las Meninas nonetheless is most commonly taken to be a pure spectacle memorializing an incidental moment, seemingly explicable solely in terms of what is apparent in it. 1. Gustav Waagen, paraphrased in Carl Justi, Diego Velazquez and His Times , p. 419; William Stirling-Maxwell, quoted in ibid. Joel Snyder is associate professor of humanities and of art and design and is chairman of the Committee on General Studies in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. He is currently working on a book about the foundations of perspective. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “Photography, Vision, and Representation,” written with Neil Walsh Allen , “Picturing Vision” , and “Reflexions on Las Meninas: Paradox Lost,” written with Ted Cohen. (shrink)

Ego psychology, more existential than scientific in tone, has made psychoanalytic theory more congenial to historical studies, especially when they deal with creative and conflicted leaders. Erikson's concept of the identity crisis points to the intersection of family-centered conflicts with social and cultural history. It also orients the historian to the reanimation of problems in earlier stages of the life-cycle, the importance of work to identity formation, and the neurotic function of over-identification with a troublesome parent. Phenomenologically descriptive rather than (...) causally explanatory, psycho-biography mediates between Freud's naturalism and Collingwood's idealism by relating conscious and unconscious purposes. It establishes congruences and resonances, helping to explain in narrative form the meaning, timing, and urgency of a leader's characteristic ideas. (shrink)

I dedicate this essay to the memory of the late Wolfgang Mommsen—the subject would have been congenial to him. It is one of a series of offshoots from a central project: a scholarly edition of Max Weber's Protestant Ethic with commentary. When I first told Prof. Mommsen of my plan in 1994 he looked me full in the face and gave a characteristic growl: “All that work!” Here was a man who knew what he was about. My thanks to Ross (...) McKibbin and Keith Tribe for reading this paper in draft. The article begins by examining Max Weber's relations with Lujo Brentano, much the most important “precursor” to Weber in the field of economics. In particular, Brentano conducted a form of parallel inquiry into the rise of ‘the spirit of capital’ in England 35 years before Weber looked for the origins of “spirit” of capitalism there, and the contrast between these two ideas casts much light both on Brentano and on Weber's Protestant Ethic. This personal history leads into a broader history of the transition in German economic thought between the 1860s – the formative decade for Brentano but also the era of Marx's Capital – and that of Weber's generation coming to maturity c.1890. Marx and Weber remain the two great canonical thinkers and original minds; but any authentic historical comparison between Marx and Weber must take in Brentano. The essence of the contrast between the generations is that between Weber's novel conception of an ethical ‘capitalism’, and the materialism and naturalism underpinning Brentano's and Marx's ‘capital’, although Weber and Brentano are alike as liberals, democrats and bourgeois. ☆ Some abbreviations for Weber: AfSS for Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik; GARS for Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (Tübingen, 1920) vol. i; WL for Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tübingen, 1968); Grundriss for Grundriss zu den Vorlesungen über Allgemeine (“theoretische”) Nationalökonomie [1898], repr. Tübingen, 1990; MWG for Max Weber Gesamtausgabe ed. Horst Baier et al. (Tübingen, 1984); Briefe for letters by Weber in this edition; ‘Nachlaß Max Weber’ for unpublished letters from the Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Berlin-Dahlem, VI. HA Nachlaß Max Weber. Lebensbild for Marianne Weber, Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild (Tübingen, 1926); Zohn for idem, Max Weber. A Biography (New Brunswick, 1988) tr. Harry Zohn. For Brentano: Der wirtschaftende Mensch for Der wirtschaftende Mensch in der Geschichte (Leipzig, 1923); Konkrete Grundbedingungen for Konkrete Grundbedingungen der Volkswirtschaft (Leipzig, 1924); Der tätige Mensch for Der tätige Mensch und die Wissenschaft von der Wirtschaft (Marburg, 2006) ed. R. Bräu, H.G. Nutzinger. ‘Die Entwickelung der Wertlehre’ for ‘Die Entwickelung der Wertlehre’, Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-philologische und historische Klassen. Jahrgang 1908, 3. Abhandlung (15 Feb. 1908), 1–84; ‘Theorie der Bedürfnisse’ for ‘Versuch einer Theorie der Bedürfmisse’, ibid., 10. Abhandlung (5 Dec. 1908), 1–79; ‘Die Malthussche Lehre’ for ‘Die Malthussche Lehre und die Bevölkerungsbewegung der letzten Decennien’ [1909], Abhandlungen der historischen Klasse der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften XXIV (1906–1909), 565–625, 1*–39*. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Joseph Priestley's Criticisms of David Hume's Philosophy RICHARD H. POPKIN ONE OF HUME'S MOST FAMOUS CRITICS, the great scientist Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), is scarcely mentioned or studied in the Hume literature.' Perhaps because of the course philosophy followed after Hume, the Scottish Common Sense critics and the German ones connected with Kant are given almost all of the attention. In this paper 1 shall try to correct this oversight, (...) and examine the background of Priestley's critique of Hume, both in terms of Priestley's scientific and religious views and in terms of Hume's influence at the time. I shall then evaluate the merits of Priestley's critique and attempt to determine whether it deserves further study or should be returned to the obscurity it has been in for almost two centuries. 2 Joseph Priestley was a nonconforming minister whose progressively radical views caused him to lose various posts. Eventually he became a millenarian, convinced that crucial signs of the end of the world were at hand: the events of the French Revolution; the purported discovery of the Lost Tribes in Afghanistan by Sir William Jones; plans or hopes for the Jews to return to Palestine and join forces with the Christians. After years of religious wanderings Priestley ended up a millenarian Unitarian, much in the tradition of Sir Isaac Newton, whose religious writing he used extensively, and of Newton's successor, William Whiston? Priestley taught science in various schools and was immensely influenced by David Hartley's Observations on Man. He found in Hartley's theory of association of ideas a naturalistic way of explaining human mental life. And in Hartley's millenarian views he located the sort of theology he was seeking. Priestly later reedited Hartley, including introductory essays about some of the more difficult aspects of his mechanistic psychology.' (Coleridge, who was deeply impressed by ' T. E. Jessop, A Bibliography of David Hume and of the Scottish Philosophy from l-)'ancis Hutcheson to Lord Balfour (New York, 1966), lists the titles of Priestley's works relevant to Hume. However, there appear to be no discussions of Priestley on Hume listed in this work or in Roland Hill, A Bibliography of David Hume from 1930 (York, 1971). E. C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume (Edinburgh, 1954), mentions Priestley's criticisms of Hume, but only as these were made in connection with criticisms of Beattie. Joseph Priestley, Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley to the Year 1795, written by Himself, with a Continuation to the time of his decease by his son, Joseph Priestley, ed. T. Cooper (London, 1806). It is also of some interest that Priestley attacked Reid, Beattie, and Oswald a few years before challenging Hume. He seemed to think that he had disposed of the Scottish Philosophy for all time. Thus Priestley was certainly no part of the mainstream of Hume's opponents in Britain. See Memoirs, pp. 78-79n, and n. 16 below. ' On Priestley's career, see his Memoirs. Modern biographies deal principally with his scientific achievements and ignore or play down his theological concerns. For an extended discussion of Priestley's millenarian views, see Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly (Baltimore, 1975), pp. 126-143. " Priestley, Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind, on the Principle of the Association of Ideas... (London, 1775). [437] 438 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Hartley, probably read Priestley's edition of his works.) For the most part, Priestley wrote long and controversial works on theology. His scientific achievements stem from his friendship with Benjamin Franklin and Richard Price, who encouraged him to write a history of discoveries in electricity. Franklin provided the resources for making the equipment. On the basis of the new material in his work, Priestley was nominated to the Royal Society by Franklin and Price. s Priestley's most famous scientific works came thereafter--his discovery of oxygen and his work on how the human body used oxygen. Later still, he became entangled in a controversy with Lavoisier over the phlogiston theory, Priestley upholding it, the French chemist opposing it. 6 Priestley was also active in politics, supporting radical causes. He supported John Wilkes, of whom Hume thoroughly disapproved, and was an early... (shrink)

Scholarship historicizing John Rawls has put paid to the view that his work was without precedent. This article sets out to find out why, then, A Theory of Justice stirred such philosophical excitement, even among British philosophers in a position to recognize its antecedents. I advance the view that his work is helpfully understood as fulfilling the promise of the “naturalist” revival in ethics begun at Oxford by Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe. After briefly surveying the development of analytic philosophy, (...) I argue that Rawls's contribution was to reconceive ethics so that it was an investigation neither of an independent ethical reality nor of the logic of moral language. Rather, it was concerned with a class of facts about ourselves. Rawls's practice of ethics adopts as its central focus the ongoing human practice of justification. I place Rawls's turn from religious faith to justification between persons alongside similar shifts in Plato's Euthyphro and in the biographies of Kant and Sidgwick. I try to show the distinctiveness of Rawls's focus by contrasting his search for human self-understanding with the project of R. M. Hare, his most prominent non-naturalist critic, who charged Rawls with offering an inadequate account of the authority of ethics. (shrink)

A critical introduction to the major areas of John Dewey's philosophical thought: psychology, epistemology, ethics, politics, education, aesthetics, and philosophy of religion. -/- Publisher: A ground-breaking introduction to one of America's most prominent philosophers -/- An icon of philosophy and psychology during the first half of the 20th century, Dewey is known as the father of Functional Psychology and a pivotal figure of the Pragmatist movement as well as the progressive movement in education. -/- This concise and critical look at (...) Dewey’s work examines his unique take on morality, art, and religion, his naturalistic approach to science and psychology, and his contribution to political thought. The author of over forty books across a range of topic, Dewey’s legacy remains not only through the works he left us, but also through the institutions he founded, which include The New School for Social Research in New York City and the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Hildebrand’s biography brilliantly interweaves the different strands of Dewey's thought, and examines the legacy he left behind. Source: Publisher. (shrink)

The late Frank M. Turner’s revisionist biography, John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion has caused controversy. This essay considers one of Turner’s controversial contentions, namely, that Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine is a naturalistic account of the history of the Christian church—an account devoid of the presence of Providence.

In many eighteenth‐century agricultural texts, peasants were depicted as an impediment to agrarian improvement, superstitious and resistant to novelty. That was the stereotype one often encountered, in any case, in more programmatic writing about agriculture from this period. A closer look at the era's technical literature tells a more complicated story, however. Much as traveling European naturalists relied on local intermediaries in far corners of the globe, elite agricultural improvers back home relied on local rural knowledge as they drafted (...) a new technical literature on farming. This article looks at Jacob Guyer (also known as Kleinjogg), a Swiss farmer who became an enlightened celebrity after the Zurich doctor Hans Caspar Hirzel published a biography of him in 1761. Hirzel called Kleinjogg a “philosophical farmer”; the article explores the implications of this title, and examines the various ways that elite eighteenth‐century authors used contact with rural people and direct experience of farming as a source of authority. (shrink)

This study provides evidence of the significant life experiences , which influence advocates for nonhuman animals to develop sensitivity toward animals. Thirty-nine humane educators participated in an online survey. Findings indicate that having a relationship with a companion animal in adulthood is the most important life experience, followed by having a childhood experience with an animal, being exposed to a positive role model in childhood, and reading about animals and animal issues. The study did not find age and gender related (...) differences in life experiences. This paper compares the results from this study to two previous studies. The first study examined the SLEs of animal advocate leaders through analysis of autobiographies, biographies, oral histories, and written interviews. The second study examined the SLEs of animal rescuers through an open-ended survey. This paper discusses similarities and differences among these three groups. (shrink)

Nietzsche and Re is about the intellectual partnership of Friedrich Nietzsche and Paul Re . Robin Small combines biography with philosophy to give the first full-length account of a friendship that made major contributions to modern thought before it ended in intellectual differences and a painful breakdown of personal relations. Drawing on a wealth of original scholarship, Small presents an absorbing and often dramatic story, shedding valuable new light on of one of the most important of modern thinkers.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Catharine Macaulay's Republican Enlightenment by Karen GreenAlan CoffeeKaren Green. Catharine Macaulay's Republican Enlightenment. London: Routledge, 2020. Pp. 276. Hardback, $160.00.Though she was once one of the most recognizable and celebrated public intellectuals in Britain and was read avidly in both revolutionary America and France, after her death in 1791, Catharine Macaulay's work fell into almost total obscurity for around two hundred years. This began to change in the (...) 1990s, since which time interest in Macaulay from historians, philosophers, and feminist scholars has gathered pace. In the last decade and a half, no one has likely done more to advance this scholarship than Karen Green, who has published numerous journal articles and book chapters probing deeply into Macaulay's thought and intellectual context, and who helpfully edited The Correspondence of Catharine Macaulay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), which had not previously been easily available to readers. As one would expect, Green's Catharine Macaulay's Republican Enlightenment builds on this depth of research. For a relatively slim volume, this is the most complete and detailed intellectual biography of Macaulay that I know of, an impressive feat given Macaulay's voluminous output.The aims of the book are twofold: first, to provide a narrative biography following Macaulay's life and the development of her works as they unfolded across her life, and second, to offer an overview and exposition of her ideas in their social and political context (4). These aims are important to bear in mind, since they establish what the book [End Page 158] is able to do and what it stops short of giving us. The volume is organized chronologically, divided into seven main chapters, each representing a short period in Macaulay's life, with an introduction and concluding chapter that considers her legacy, bringing the total chapters to nine. In each of the substantive chapters, Green mixes a biographical account of Macaulay's life with an often detailed analysis of one or more of her main works written during that period, as well as an assessment of how these works both engaged with, and were received within, some of the political and intellectual debates at the time. This is expertly done, with Green drawing on her intimate acquaintance with Macaulay's correspondence with many of the key figures of the period. The book, therefore, would make an excellent companion to anyone reading through the Correspondence as well as for those studying any of Macaulay's historical volumes, treatises, and tracts.An especially strong aspect of Green's book is the way she weaves an ongoing dialogue between Macaulay and several influential figures from her intellectual world across the chapters. One of these is David Hume, who, like Macaulay, had written an ideologically situated—even if both authors claimed impartiality—multivolume History of England. Though Hume's series was completed before Macaulay's had begun, hers can be seen as a philosophical and political rival to his. While the two would only correspond directly once on the subject, Green compares the impact that their respective philosophies have on their resulting political positions. In the 1760s, Green argues, Hume's naturalism, empiricism, and skepticism gave rise to a social conservative politics, whereas Macaulay's theological rationalism provided the basis for her optimistic and radical politics (50). By the 1790s, however, when Macaulay was writing her Letters on Education, Green detects some elements of a Humean philosophy of mind coming to influence Macaulay, albeit likely through David Hartley, particularly concerning the importance of sympathy on our moral psychology, even if there remain important differences between them (180–82). Green also analyzes Macaulay's engagement with Thomas Hobbes in her Loose Remarks and her two formal Observations on writings by Edmund Burke. Of particular value to historians of republicanism is Green's tracing and examination of Macaulay's ongoing intellectual relationship with key political figures, such as John Wilkes in Britain; Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, John and Abigail Adams, James Otis, Mercy Otis Warren, and George Washington in America; Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot and Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville in France, among many others. Though Macaulay's reputation as an influential political writer... (shrink)

This paper focuses on the biography of the Portuguese naturalist Francisco de Arruda Furtado, born on São Miguel Island, in the Azorean archipelago, in 1854, who became part of an international network of naturalists. Despite his short life, he produced original research on malacology, and from his youth Furtado claimed to be a disciple of Darwin. Informed by recent literature reflecting on the resurgence of biography in the history of science, the narrative of Furtado’s life will take (...) into consideration what it meant to be, and the implications of considering oneself, a disciple of Darwin in the nineteenth-century natural sciences. In the history of science, the concept of disciple has often been associated with research schools, but Darwin did not create one and never surrounded himself with young apprentices. In this paper we argue that in Furtado’s case, and in all probability in many others, in addition to being a scientific theory, evolution had the status of a doctrine. As such, Darwinian evolution had a strong ideological and political dimension. By propagating it among lay people it had the potential of changing attitudes individually and socially, while at the same time it provided the scientific foundations for social and political transformation. Consequently, in addition to scientific research based on Darwin’s theory, Furtado deeply engaged in proselytizing the natural sciences and Darwinian evolution, becoming representative of the importance of Darwin’s disciples in Furtado’s sense, in the reception and endorsement of evolution around the world, with repercussions beyond natural history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:112 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Gallie's Peirce and Pragmatism (1952). She believes that the translation of Peirce's theory of the categories into the conceptual framework of British empiricism and naturalism misrepresents Peirce's cosmology which had very peculiar traits--traits which the author associates with the Platonic tradition. She shows in detail how Peirce tried at first (1868) to relate his three categories to the Scotist, Scholastic, concepts of "essence" and "substance," (...) and how, in his various phaneroscopic experiments, he gradually repudiated the Scholastic languages and by 1902 was ready to interpret his three categories as an adequate ontology. What led Peirce in this direction was his critique of perceptual judgment. He realized that subject and object are in dynamical, social, and historical relation to each other. A logical object is, therefore, also a "dynamic object" or objective. This insight led him at first to regard his doctrine of signs and their interpretation as a humanist or idealist doctrine, for the idealists had also recognized objects as objectives. Nynfa Bosco is quick to appreciate that this interpretation of acts of knowing is closely related to Gentile's idealism. But gradually a more ontological and Platonic interpretation emerges in Peirce, until in the end "thirdness" is a modernist version of the reality of universals. She believes Peirce's greatest achievement was his exposition of "thirdness" as an ontological mediation between modern idealism and Scholastic realism and his theory of evolution as a continuity of physical and mental events. The volume closes with chapters on Peirce's mathematics, ethics, esthetics, philosophy of religion, theology, and psychology. Those chapters are not mere expositions but critical evaluations. To review Nynfa Bosco's criticisms would take us far beyond the limits of an historical review. Suffice it to say that her criticisms are acute as well as sympathetic, and that they reflect well some of the differences between Italian and American tendencies in philosophical analysis. For several reasons, in short, this work deserves to be known internationally. It probably deserves also to be translated, though a translator would find it difficult to maintain the liveliness of her Italian style, which makes reading the book a pleasure as well as an instruction. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, Calilornia L'Iddalism de Lachelier. By Gaston Mauchaussat. (Paris: Presses Universitaires, Biblioth6que de Philosophie Contemporaine [N.F. 18], 1961. Pp. 224.) This is really an intellectual biography of Jules Lachelier (1832-1918); it traces the development of his idealism from 1866 to 1913 and of his moral BOOK REVIEWS I13 philosophy from 1868 to 1918. According to Lachelier himself, there was a significant change in his thinking when, in 1875, he ceased being a teacher, but M. Mauchaussat finds significant elements of the later development even in his earliest works. In general, according to this account, there was a continuous development from subjective to Platonic idealism and from empirical ethics to his axiological theodicy. The documentation and exposition are detailed and precise. The figure of Lachelier emerges as an important historical link between the romantic idealism of the early nineteenth century and the objective value theory or "philosophie de l'esprit" of the twentieth. Though Lachelier himself seems to have forgotten or discounted the early influence on him of Maine de Biran, the author of this biography finds good evidence that his early "Berkeleyan" idealism was derived largely from Maine de Biran and led him to make a careful study of the empirical psychology of thinking and of the importance of habit. D~s 1858, lisant l'introduction du M6moire de Maine de Biran sur l'influence de I'habitude, il en tire cette cons6quence que les esprits ne peuvent d6velopper leurs diverses puissances que par leur union avec le corps et qu'en somme l'homme pense parce qu'il parle (p. 13). It is evident that Lachelier's primary concern was to find in an empirical idealism a mediator between dogmatic naturalism and the equally dogmatic "spiritualism" which the school of Victor Cousin had established in academic circles. It was Ravaisson who guided him in this search. His course at the Ecole Normale Superieur, to which he was called in 1864, gave him an opportunity to work... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:112 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Gallie's Peirce and Pragmatism (1952). She believes that the translation of Peirce's theory of the categories into the conceptual framework of British empiricism and naturalism misrepresents Peirce's cosmology which had very peculiar traits--traits which the author associates with the Platonic tradition. She shows in detail how Peirce tried at first (1868) to relate his three categories to the Scotist, Scholastic, concepts of "essence" and "substance," (...) and how, in his various phaneroscopic experiments, he gradually repudiated the Scholastic languages and by 1902 was ready to interpret his three categories as an adequate ontology. What led Peirce in this direction was his critique of perceptual judgment. He realized that subject and object are in dynamical, social, and historical relation to each other. A logical object is, therefore, also a "dynamic object" or objective. This insight led him at first to regard his doctrine of signs and their interpretation as a humanist or idealist doctrine, for the idealists had also recognized objects as objectives. Nynfa Bosco is quick to appreciate that this interpretation of acts of knowing is closely related to Gentile's idealism. But gradually a more ontological and Platonic interpretation emerges in Peirce, until in the end "thirdness" is a modernist version of the reality of universals. She believes Peirce's greatest achievement was his exposition of "thirdness" as an ontological mediation between modern idealism and Scholastic realism and his theory of evolution as a continuity of physical and mental events. The volume closes with chapters on Peirce's mathematics, ethics, esthetics, philosophy of religion, theology, and psychology. Those chapters are not mere expositions but critical evaluations. To review Nynfa Bosco's criticisms would take us far beyond the limits of an historical review. Suffice it to say that her criticisms are acute as well as sympathetic, and that they reflect well some of the differences between Italian and American tendencies in philosophical analysis. For several reasons, in short, this work deserves to be known internationally. It probably deserves also to be translated, though a translator would find it difficult to maintain the liveliness of her Italian style, which makes reading the book a pleasure as well as an instruction. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, Calilornia L'Iddalism de Lachelier. By Gaston Mauchaussat. (Paris: Presses Universitaires, Biblioth6que de Philosophie Contemporaine [N.F. 18], 1961. Pp. 224.) This is really an intellectual biography of Jules Lachelier (1832-1918); it traces the development of his idealism from 1866 to 1913 and of his moral BOOK REVIEWS I13 philosophy from 1868 to 1918. According to Lachelier himself, there was a significant change in his thinking when, in 1875, he ceased being a teacher, but M. Mauchaussat finds significant elements of the later development even in his earliest works. In general, according to this account, there was a continuous development from subjective to Platonic idealism and from empirical ethics to his axiological theodicy. The documentation and exposition are detailed and precise. The figure of Lachelier emerges as an important historical link between the romantic idealism of the early nineteenth century and the objective value theory or "philosophie de l'esprit" of the twentieth. Though Lachelier himself seems to have forgotten or discounted the early influence on him of Maine de Biran, the author of this biography finds good evidence that his early "Berkeleyan" idealism was derived largely from Maine de Biran and led him to make a careful study of the empirical psychology of thinking and of the importance of habit. D~s 1858, lisant l'introduction du M6moire de Maine de Biran sur l'influence de I'habitude, il en tire cette cons6quence que les esprits ne peuvent d6velopper leurs diverses puissances que par leur union avec le corps et qu'en somme l'homme pense parce qu'il parle (p. 13). It is evident that Lachelier's primary concern was to find in an empirical idealism a mediator between dogmatic naturalism and the equally dogmatic "spiritualism" which the school of Victor Cousin had established in academic circles. It was Ravaisson who guided him in this search. His course at the Ecole Normale Superieur, to which he was called in 1864, gave him an opportunity to work... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche and Rée: A Star FriendshipDaw-Nay N. R. Evans Jr.Robin Small. Nietzsche and Rée: A Star Friendship. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Pp. xxiv + 247. Cloth, $45.00.Nietzsche attracts a wide range of scholarly enthusiasts. There are those who take Nietzsche seriously as a philosopher and study his works for their own sake, while others seek to mine his works for philosophical gold to determine what he might have (...) to offer their particular area of specialization (and sometimes these objectives overlap). On the other hand, there are those who seek to sensationalize Nietzsche by making him out to be a caricature or buffoon of sorts—far less deserving of the kind of seriousness we reserve for other figures such as Descartes or Kant. Instead, Nietzsche's philosophical legacy is colored by his ill health, alleged homosexuality, or "madness." Some recent biographies have only perpetuated the caricature. Fortunately, Small's book is not one of them.Small aims to explain the philosophical relationship between Nietzsche and Rée. Nietzsche's background is well known, while Rée's life has received only slight attention from scholars. Although he did not self-identify as Jewish, Rée was born into a wealthy Jewish family, which afforded him the luxury of attending several different German universities. After studying law, psychology, and physiology, he finally settled on philosophy. By the time Rée met Nietzsche, he had already defended a dissertation on Aristotle's ethics and published his first book, Psychological Observations, in 1875.Throughout the book, Small subtly fuses the personal with the philosophical without weakening the philosophical substance of Nietzsche's or Rée's ideas. In explaining Rée's influence on Nietzsche during the seven years of their friendship, Small accomplishes several objectives.First and foremost, Small illuminates the development of Nietzsche's thought from 1875 until 1882. It was during these years that Nietzsche published Human, All Too Human (1878; the first supplement to the book was published in 1879 and the second in 1880), Daybreak (1881), and The Gay Science (1882). More importantly, Small demonstrates the nexus between these works and Rée's Psychological Observations (1875) and The Origin of Moral Sensations.During the winter of 1876–77, Nietzsche and Rée lived together. At this time Nietzsche began writing Human, All Too Human, while Rée wrote The Origin of Moral Sensations. Nietzsche turned to Rée's Psychological Observations for headings for his own Human, All Too Human. Thus, "'On Religious Things' became 'The Religious Life,' while 'On Woman, Love and Marriage' became 'Woman and Child'" (28). As Nietzsche continued work on Human, All Too Human, Rée's The Origin of Moral Sensations was published and Nietzsche drew inspiration from this book as well. In section 40 of The Wanderer and His Shadow (the second supplement to Human, All Too Human), Nietzsche provides an abbreviated version of the core argument of that work, namely that the move away from utility and towards socially accepted norms as the determining factor in behavior is what led to morality. For these reasons, it is no surprise that Nietzsche referred to the "Rée-ness" of his work, and dubbed books like Human, All Too Human as "Réealism" (x, 33, 65). [End Page 672]Second, Small makes clear the shared philosophical sympathies that made their relationship possible. Their mutual admiration for Schopenhauer, denial of free will, skepticism about morality and metaphysics, and adherence to philosophical naturalism created a friendship that nurtured their philosophical development generally and their philosophical projects more specifically.Third, Small sheds light on how Nietzsche integrated Rée's aphoristic style into his own philosophical writings. This is helpful because it contextualizes Nietzsche's writing style during the time when his strict preoccupation with philological matters had ended and he began exhibiting contempt for morality and extolling the virtues of scientific knowledge.Fourth, Small discusses Nietzsche's break with Rée, the central tension of which he locates in Nietzsche's willingness to move beyond Rée's merely descriptive approach to moral phenomena towards a life-affirming philosophy. To be sure, Nietzsche envisioned Human, All Too... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John DeweyFrank X. RyanJames A. Good A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John Dewey Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006. xxx + 288 pp.Among the revelations of Dewey's rare moments of autobiographical reflection, none has generated more curiosity and investigative zeal than his 1930 claim to have (...) "drifted" from Hegel in the decade following his move from Michigan to Chicago in 1894. Beginning with Morton White's Origin of Dewey's Instrumentalism (1943), biographers have divided on the question of whether Dewey's later philosophy was more strongly influenced by William James's experimental psychology or F. J. E. Woodbridge's Aristotelian naturalism. Despite their differences, both approaches are essentially empirical and realistic, and thus the majority of sympathetic commentators have agreed that Dewey was a realist, albeit of a decidedly unorthodox stripe. For them the notion that Dewey retained any significant commitment to idealism, given its virtual eradication at the beginning of the twentieth century, would damage his influence and legacy.It has been something of a puzzle, accordingly, that in the same autobiographical essay Dewey alludes to a "permanent Hegelian deposit." For years Richard Rorty has claimed this differentiates a "good" Dewey committed to "social flourishing" from a "bad" Dewey prone to metaphysical dalliance. But the first systematic inquiry into Dewey's enduring Hegelianism is John R. Shook's Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality (2000). Shook argues convincingly that Dewey never abandoned idealism, but rather transformed it into an experimental naturalism by doing away with both "mind-stuff" and equally noxious "things-in-themselves." In many ways James Good's A Search for Unity in Diversity is a bookend to Shook's project, though Good further differentiates Anglo-American Neo-Hegelianism from Hegel himself. According to Good, Dewey endorsed a Humanistic/Historicist interpretation of Hegel rooted in the reciprocal engagement of individuals and societies, rather than the supernatural and architectonic absolute championed by Neo-Hegelians such as T. H. Green, and F. H. Bradley. With [End Page 216] top-notch scholarship and scrupulous attention to detail, A Search for Unity in Diversity is both an excellent intellectual biography and a penetrating plea for a radical reinterpretation of Dewey's contribution to philosophy. I'll briefly sketch the historical account before addressing the more controversial claims about the "permanent Hegelian deposit."Even readers familiar with the half-dozen book-length treatments of Dewey's development will find this account refreshing and informative. Good's professional credentials as a historian shine as he recreates the rough and bustling Burlington of Dewey's youth. In the 1870s, German idealism was considered the epitome of political liberalism and progressive education, and Dewey's journey toward the "inclusive philosophical idea" of the social began in an environment swirling with the crosscurrents of Kant, Hegel, and Schelling. At the White Street Congregational Church, Lewis Barstow preached a liberal orthodoxy that was essentially "man-building" (102), and Good presents a convincing case for the likelihood that even in boyhood Dewey never viewed God as an aloof law-giver or cosmic architect, but as a process unifying the individual and the social within a natural world of unlimited potential. At the University of Vermont Dewey encountered a struggling rural college transformed into the first bastion of American transcendentalism by James Marsh, who inspired a "Burlington philosophy" that rejected atomistic empiricism for a holistic integrity of knowing and doing, facts and values, and pure and practical reasons (57–59).In noting the influence of the "St. Louis Hegelians" upon Dewey, most biographers have focused on W. T. Harris, the prominent founder of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy who published Dewey's earliest submissions and offered encouragement that led to his pursuit of graduate work at Johns Hopkins. Good augments this familiar tale with fascinating depictions of equally influential yet lesser-known Hegelians such as H. C. Brokmeyer, Denton Snider, and Thomas Davidson. At a time when European Hegelianism was polarized between, on the one hand, reactionary apologists for traditional Christianity and Prussian militarism and, on the other, radical... (shrink)