One enduring legacy of the twentieth century will be the slow, certain transformation of the world from insular civilizations to interactive societies enmeshed in global systems of electronic communication, economics, and politics. Financial news from Thailand or Brazil is often more important globally than political events in the old centers of power. Some bemoan the uncertainty and flux of all this. However, the mutual definition of the world’s societies presents an extraordinary opportunity to humanize a situation that all too quickly (...) could degenerate into a Weberian ‘iron cage’ of truly global proportions. What contribution can the world’s great philosophical traditions make toward humanity’s common task of civilizing the rise of globalization? Here the ancient concept of paideia walks upon the stage of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

One enduring legacy of the twentieth century will be the slow, certain transformation of the world from insular civilizations to interactive societies enmeshed in global systems of electronic communication, economics, and politics. Financial news from Thailand or Brazil is often more important globally than political events in the old centers of power. Some bemoan the uncertainty and flux of all this. However, the mutual definition of the world’s societies presents an extraordinary opportunity to humanize a situation that all too quickly (...) could degenerate into a Weberian ‘iron cage’ of truly global proportions. What contribution can the world’s great philosophical traditions make toward humanity’s common task of civilizing the rise of globalization? Here the ancient concept of paideia walks upon the stage of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

One enduring legacy of the twentieth century will be the slow, certain transformation of the world from insular civilizations to interactive societies enmeshed in global systems of electronic communication, economics, and politics. Financial news from Thailand or Brazil is often more important globally than political events in the old centers of power. Some bemoan the uncertainty and flux of all this. However, the mutual definition of the world’s societies presents an extraordinary opportunity to humanize a situation that all too quickly (...) could degenerate into a Weberian ‘iron cage’ of truly global proportions. What contribution can the world’s great philosophical traditions make toward humanity’s common task of civilizing the rise of globalization? Here the ancient concept of paideia walks upon the stage of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Introduction: Conversion and the practice of transformation -- The philosophical structure of Jonathan Edwards's religious affections -- Habit, habit change, and conversion in C.S. Peirce -- Reconstructing faith : religious overcoming in Dewey's pragmatism -- Transforming obligation in William James -- Dwelling in absence: the reflective origin of conversion -- Creative transformation : the work of conversion -- The evasion of conversion in recent American philosophy.

This inclusive, cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering, development, and culture. It offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary perspectives on how the philosophies of today’s cultural triumvirate—American, European and Chinese—are shaped and given nuance by the cross-fertilization of engineering and development. Scholars from the humanities and social sciences as well as engineers themselves reflect on key questions that arise in this relational context, such as how international development work affects the professional views, identities, practice and ethics (...) of engineers. The first volume to offer a systematic and collaborative study that cuts across continental boundaries, the book delineates the kinds of skills and competences that tomorrow’s engineering success stories will require, and analyzes fascinating aspects of the interplay between engineering and philosophy, such as how traditionally Chinese ways of thinking can influence modern engineering practice in the world’s most populous country. China’s problematic mix of engineering woes and wonders, from the high-profile crash on its high-profile rail network to its ‘bird’s nest’ Olympic stadium, adds to the urgency for reform, while Europe’s Enlightenment-informed legal frameworks are contrasted with Chinese mechanisms in their governance of the field of nanotechnology, a crucial element of future technical evolution. Fascinating and compelling in equal measure, this volume addresses one of the topics at the leading edge of humanity’s quest to survive, and to thrive.​. (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)

_Practicing Philosophy as Experiencing Life: Essays on American Pragmatism_ is a collection of essays by top international experts on American philosophy who study pragmatism in the context of a philosophy of life.

The American way of Renaissance and the Humanistic Tradition of Greece -- The Aristotelian tradition in American naturalism -- George Santayana and Greek philosophy -- Frederick J.E. Woodbridge and the Aristotelian tradition -- John Dewey and ancient philosophies -- John H. Randall Jr.'s interpretation of Greek philosophy -- The ontology of Herbert W. Schneider -- Ernest Nagel's pragmatism and Aristotle's principle of contradiction -- The naturalistic metaphysics of Justus Buchler -- Naturalism and the platonic tradition.

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 (...) class='Hi'>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)

In this engaging book, Douglas Anderson begins with the assumption that philosophy—the Greek love of wisdom—is alive and well in American culture. At the same time, professional philosophy remains relatively invisible. Anderson traverses American life to find places in the wider culture where professional philosophy in the distinctively American tradition can strike up a conversation. How might American philosophers talk to us about our religious experience, or political engagement, or literature—or even, popular music? Anderson’s second aim (...) is to find places where philosophy happens in nonprofessional guises—cultural places such as country music, rock’n roll, and Beat literature. He not only enlarges the tradition of American philosophers such as John Dewey and William James by examining lesser-known figures such as Henry Bugbee and Thomas Davidson, but finds the theme and ideas of American philosophy in some unexpected places, such as the music of Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette, and Bruce Springsteen, and the writingsof Jack Kerouac.The idea of “philosophy Americana” trades on the emergent genre of “music Americana,” rooted in traditional themes and styles yet engaging our present experiences. The music is “popular” but not thoroughly driven by economic considerations, and Anderson seeks out an analogous role for philosophical practice, where philosophy and popular culture are co-adventurers in the life of ideas. Philosophy Americana takes seriously Emerson’s quest for the extraordinary in the ordinary and James’s belief that popular philosophy can still be philosophy. (shrink)

American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner aspires to raise Steiners profile by digging into just one field of inquiry: philosophy. Before he became known to the world as a transmitter of clairvoyant wisdom, Steiner was an academic philosopher, editor of the scientific writings of Goethe and author of a foundational work in philosophy, The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern Worldview, published in 1894. That book expressed in philosophical terms many of the ideas that would later emerge as (...) integral to the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. (shrink)

American Continental Philosophy is the first anthology to gather a representative selection of the most important and original thinkers from the continental tradition in the U.S. The essays reflect the diverse directions and methodologies that have emerged from this influential field. This state-of-the-art sampler showcases the richness and scope of American continental philosophy and will be of value to the entire philosophical community.

Through the back door: the problem of history and the African American philosopher/philosophy -- The problem of philosophy: metaphilosophical considerations -- The search for values: axiology in ebony -- Philosophy of science: African American deliberations -- Mapping the disciplinary contours of the philosophy of religion: reason, faith, and African American religious culture.

Taking Emerson as his starting point, Cornel West’s basic task in this ambitious enterprise is to chart the emergence, development, decline, and recent resurgence of American pragmatism. John Dewey is the central figure in West’s pantheon of pragmatists, but he treats as well such varied mid-century representatives of the tradition as Sidney Hook, C. Wright Mills, W. E. B. Du Bois, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling. West’s "genealogy" is, ultimately, a very personal work, for it is imbued throughout with (...) the author’s conviction that a thorough reexamination of American pragmatism may help inspire and instruct contemporary efforts to remake and reform American society and culture. "West... may well be the pre-eminent African American intellectual of our generation."—The Nation "_The American Evasion of Philosophy_ is a highly intelligent and provocative book. Cornel West gives us illuminating readings of the political thought of Emerson and James; provides a penetrating critical assessment of Dewey, his central figure; and offers a brilliant interpretation—appreciative yet far from uncritical—of the contemporary philosopher and neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty.... What shines through, throughout the work, is West's firm commitment to a radical vision of a philosophic discourse as inextricably linked to cultural criticism and political engagement."—Paul S. Boyer, professor emeritus of history, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Wisconsin Project on American Writers Frank Lentricchia, General Editor. (shrink)

In this essay, after a brief decolonial analysis of the concept of “poetry” in Indigenous communities, I will investigate the poetic-philosophical implications of Cherokee culture, more specifically the poetic essence of the Cherokee language, the poetic aspects of Cherokee myth (pre-history) and post-myth (history), and the poetic-philosophical powers of Cherokee ritual. My first section analyzes the poetic essence, structure, special features, and historical context of the Cherokee language, drawing on Ruth Holmes and Betty Sharp Smith’s language textbook, Beginning Cherokee. My (...) second section considers poetic aspects of the pre-history and history of the Cherokee Nation considered as a text, using Robert J. Conley’s The Cherokee Nation: A History. And my third section investigates the poetic nature of the Cherokee rituals’ myth-ontological background and its existential psychological implications, via J. T. Garrett & Michael Tlanusta Garrett’s The Cherokee Full Circle: A Practical Guide to Ceremonies and Traditions. Collectively, these analyses will suggest that, just as the Cherokee and other tribes are the slandered, disenfranchised, suppressed and covered-over Indigenous peoples of the North American continent, so poetry writ large (including Indigenous philosophy) is the slandered, disenfranchised, suppressed and covered-over arche of western philosophy (as I have previously explored via a new interpretation of Nietzsche). In short, I will argue that both poetry and Cherokee culture can be understood as indigenous “absences” which are in truth vital and enduring presences. (shrink)

I argue that Classical American Pragmatists—Royce, James, Dewey, Perice, Addams, Du Bois, and Locke subscribed to this view and practiced philosophy by focusing on experience and directing a critical eye to major problems in living. Thus Royce and Dewey explored the nature of genuine community and its role in developing a flourishing individual life but also a public, democratic life. Royce and James engaged in a phenomenological analysis of human experience including religious experience developing a rich understanding of human (...) psychological, social, and religious development. Dewey, Royce and Perice applied the lessons of the scientific communal experience to problem solving in everyday life. Dewey explored life’s aesthetic dimensions. Addams, Du Bois and Locke applied philosophy to problems of living with discrimination as an immigrant or an African American. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Our Philosophy The Problem of Latino Philosophy Historiographical Characterizations of Philosophy Latino Conceptions of Latino Philosophy Latino Philosophy as Ethnic Philosophy Latino Philosophy and “Scientific” Philosophy Universalism, Culturalism, and Critical Philosophy Revisited American Philosophy Latino and American Philosophy.

This collection of essays aims to mark a place for American philosophy as it moves into the twenty-first century. Taking their cue from the work of Peirce, James, Santayana, Dewey, Mead, Buchler, and others, the contributors assess and employ philosophy as an activity taking place within experience and culture. Within the broad background of the American tradition, the essays reveal a variety of approaches to the transition in which American philosophy is currently engaged. Some of the pieces (...) argue from an historical dialogue with the tradition, some are more polemically involved with American philosophy’s current status among the contemporary philosophical "schools," and still others seek to reveal the possibilities for the future of American philosophy. In thus addressing past, present, and future, the pieces, taken together, outline a trajectory for American philosophy that reinvents its importance from a new angle of vision. (shrink)

This volume is a comprehensive collection of critical essays on The Taming of the Shrew, and includes extensive discussions of the play's various printed versions and its theatrical productions. Aspinall has included only those essays that offer the most influential and controversial arguments surrounding the play. The issues discussed include gender, authority, female autonomy and unruliness, courtship and marriage, language and speech, and performance and theatricality.

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

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)

Here, in a single volume, is a comprehensive and definitive account of pragmatism and classical American philosophy. Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy, now revised and expanded in this second edition, presents the essential writings of the major philosophers of this tradition: Charles S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead. Illuminating introductory essays, written especially for this volume by distinguished scholars of American philosophy, provide biographical and cultural context as well as (...) original critical and interpretive perspectives. This edition also includes all new selections and interpretive essays that situate pragmatism and classical American philosophy in a wider American philosphical context, including: Ralph Waldo Emerson and transcendentalism; Jane Addams, feminism, and writings of American women; Borden Parker Bowne, personalism, and idealism; Alain Locke and Afro-American thought; and John Herman Randall, Jr., nationalism and realism. Up-to-date suggestions for further reading will benefit both introductory and advanced readers. This American intellectual tradition speaks insightfully, creatively, and critically to our contemporary global society and its pressing problems. In unmatched quality and quantity, Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy provides the resources necessary to understand and act on these insights. (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.

The prelims comprise: On the Analytic Revolt Against Idealism Analysis, Analyticity, and Analytic Philosophy Moore, Russell, and Early Analytic Philosophy On Wittgenstein Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and Ordinary Language Philosophy Analytic Philosophy in the US.

In contemporary philosophical debates in the United States "redefining pragmatism" has become the conventional way to flag significant philosophical contests and to launch large conceptual and programmatic changes. This book analyzes the contributions of such developments in light of the classic formulations of Charles S. Peirce and John Dewey and the interaction between pragmatism and analytic philosophy. American pragmatism was revived quite unexpectedly in the 1970s by Richard Rorty's philosophical heterodoxy and his running dispute with Hilary Putnam, who, like (...) Rorty, is a professed Deweyan. Reinventing Pragmatism examines the force of the new pragmatisms, from the emergence of Rorty's and Putnam's basic disagreements of the 1970s until the turn of the century. Joseph Margolis considers the revival of a movement generally thought to have ended by the 1950s as both a surprise and a turn of great importance. The quarrel between Rorty and Putnam obliged American philosophers, and eventually Eurocentric philosophy as a whole, to reconsider the direction of American and European philosophy, for instance in terms of competing accounts of realism and naturalism. (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.

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)

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.

Charles S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead: each of these individuals is an original and historically important thinker; each is an essential contributor to the period, perspective, and tradition of classical American philosophy; and each speaks directly, imaginatively, critically, and wisely to our contemporary global society, its distant possibilities for improvement, and its massive, pressing problems. From the initiative of pragmatism in approximately 1870 to Dewey's final work after World War II, (...) classical American philosophy has come to represent the critical articulation of attitudes, outlooks, and forms of life imbedded in the culture from which it arose. John Stuhr brings together the works of these foremost thinkers to present a comprehensive collection in American philosophy. Extensive introductory essays, written especially for this volume by leading scholars of the subject, provide not only the bibliographical and cultural contexts necessary to a full appreciation of each thinker, but also original critical and interpretive philosophical observations. (shrink)

Written in the American tradition, American Modern: The Path Not Taken describes how four major American thinkers practiced philosophy non-reductively by incorporating the arts and other human activities. Tejera provides a detailed analysis of Peirce, Dewey, Santayana, and Buchler, showing that the importance they placed on the human can cure what is missing in recent philosophy. American Modern will interest philosophers, historians of philosophy, and scholars of American intellectual history.

The _Encyclopedia of American Philosophy_ provides coverage of the major figures, concepts, historical periods and traditions in American philosophical thought. Containing over 600 entries written by scholars who are experts in the field, this _Encyclopedia_ is the first of its kind. It is a scholarly reference work that is accessible to the ordinary reader by explaining complex ideas in simple terms and providing ample cross-references to facilitate further study. The _Encyclopedia of American Philosophy_ contains a thorough analytical (...) index and will serve as a standard, comprehensive reference work for universities and colleges. Topics covered include: Great philosophers: Emerson, Dewey, James, Royce, Peirce, Santayana Subjects: Pragmatism, Progress, the Future, Knowledge, Democracy, Growth, Truth Influences on American Philosophy: Hegel, Aristotle, Plato, British Enlightenment, Reformation Self-Assessments: Joe Margolis, Donald Davidson, Susan Haack, Peter Hare, John McDermott, Stanley Cavell Ethics: Value, Pleasure, Happiness, Duty, Judgment, Growth Political Philosophy: Declaration of Independence, Democracy, Freedom, Liberalism, Community, Identity. (shrink)

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)

No descriptive material is available for this title.

_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)

This article examines Gloria Anzaldúa’s critical appropriation of Mexican philosophical sources, especially in the writing of Borderlands/La Frontera. We argue that Anzaldúa effectively contributed to la filosofía de lo mexicano by developing an Inter-American Philosophy of Mexicanness. More specifically, we recover “La Mexicana en la Chicana” by paying careful attention to Anzaldúa’s Mexican sources, both those she explicitly cites and those we have discovered while conducting archival research using the Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers at the Benson Latin American (...) Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. The eight Mexican philosophical sources we examine and discuss here are: José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), Miguel León-Portilla (1926-2019), Juana Armanda Alegría (1938- ), Octavio Paz (1914-1998), Samuel Ramos (1897-1959), Rosario Castellanos (1925-1974), Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (1648-1695), and Jorge Carrión (1913-2005). (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.