The Soul of Classical American Philosophy

Richard P. Mullin

Description

The Soul of Classical American Philosophy is an introduction to the thought of William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Peirce, particularly in terms of the ethical and the spiritual. Writing for the nonspecialist in a straightforward style, Richard P. Mullin brings together the central ideas of these three key figures of classical American Pragmatism and explores their engagement with issues of truth, the meaning of self, free will, moral values, community, scientific thinking, and the relationship with the transcendent. He also addresses the growing international interest in American philosophy and sheds light on a defining movement in its history.
Introduction

            Purpose of this Work
            Personal Note

List of Abbreviations

Part I. William James

1. Meaning and Truth

            Pragmatism
            Radical Empiricism

2. Body and Mind

            Materialism versus Dualism
            Neither Dualism nor Materialism
            A Radical Empiricist View of Mind and Body

3. Free Will

            Psychology and the Subjective Experience of Free Will
            Indeterminism and the Physical Possibility of Free Will
            A Late Twentieth-Century Adaptation of James’s Concept of Free Will       

4. William James and Moral Philosophy

            The Task of the Moral Philosopher
            James’s Moral Ideals
            The Adequacy of James’s Theory

5. Rationality and Religious Faith

            Faith in the Salvation of the World
            The Meaning of Rationality
            The Reasonableness of Theism
            William James’s Personal Faith
            Human Immortality

6. Human Nature and the Life of the Spirit

            Spirituality Defined and Placed in a Metaphysical Context
            Naturalism and Spirituality
            The How and Why of Spirituality
            A Worldview Compatible with Spirit 

Part II. Josiah Royce

7. The Idealism of Josiah Royce

            Ideas and Reality
            TheFirst and Second Conceptions of Being: Realism and Mysticism
            The Third Conception of Being: Critical Rationalism
            The Fourth Conception of Being: Royce’s Idealism

8. Josiah Royce’s Concept of the Self

            The Ambiguity of the Self
            The Self as an Ethical Category
            The Individual and the Whole

9. Josiah Royce’s Philosophy of Loyalty as the Basis for Ethics

             Royce’s Idea of Loyalty
            The American Problem
    &nbs

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Pragmatism
• History of philosophy
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791480014
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The
Soul of
Classical
American
Philosophy
The Ethical and Spiritual
Insights of William James,
Josiah Royce, and
Charles Sanders Peirce
Richard P. MullinThe Soul of
Classical American PhilosophyThe Soul of
Classical American Philosophy

The Ethical and Spiritual Insights of William James,
Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Peirce
Richard P. Mullin
State University of New York PressTo Marian
Contents
Introduction xi
Purpose of this Work xi
Personal Note xiv
List of Abbreviations xvii
Part I. William James
Chapter 1. Meaning and Truth 3
Pragmatism 3
Radical Empiricism 5
Chapter 2. Body and Mind 11
Materialism versus Dualism 11
Neither Dualism nor Materialism 13
A Radical Empiricist View of Mind and Body 19
Chapter 3. Free Will 21
Psychology and the Subjective Experience of Free Will 21
Indeterminism and the Physical Possibility of Free Will 24
A Late Twentieth-Century Adaptation of James’s
Concept of Free Will 26
Chapter 4. William James and Moral Philosophy 31
The Task of the Moral Philosopher 31
James’s Moral Ideals 37
The Adequacy of James’s Theory 40
Chapter 5. Rationality and Religious Faith 41
Faith in the Salvation of the World 42
The Meaning of Rationality 44
The Reasonableness of Theism 46
William James’s Personal Faith 49
Human Immortality 51
vii viii Contents
Chapter 6. Human Nature and the Life of the Spirit 55
Spirituality Defined and Placed in a Metaphysical Context 56
Naturalism and Spirituality 58
The How and Why of Spirituality 59
A Worldview Compatible with Spirit 61
Part II. Josiah Royce
Chapter 7. The Idealism of Josiah Royce 67
Ideas and Reality 68
The First and Second Conceptions of Being:
Realism and Mysticism 71
The Third Conception of Being: Critical Rationalism 73
The Fourth Conception of Being: Royce’s Idealism 75
Chapter 8. Josiah Royce’s Concept of the Self 81
The Ambiguity of the Self 81
The Self as an Ethical Category 83
The Individual and the Whole 85
Chapter 9. Josiah Royce’s Philosophy of Loyalty
as the Basis for Ethics 89
Royce’s Idea of Loyalty 89
The American Problem 91
The Contemporary Problem 92
The Practicality of Roycean Loyalty 93
Ethics and the Full-Breasted Richness of Life 96
Chapter 10. The Religious Insights of Josiah Royce 103
Individual Experience 105
Social Experience 106
Reason 107
Will 109
Loyalty 110
Sorrow 111
Unity of the Spirit 113
What James Missed 114
Part III. Charles Sanders Peirce
Chapter 11. Peirce and the Origin of Pragmatism 119
Peirce’s Pragmatism 121
Peirce’s Critique of Nominalistic Pragmatism 124Contents ix
Chapter 12. Charles Sanders Peirce on the Human Person 127
Peirce’s Critique of the Separated Self 127
The Illusory Self and the Authentic Self 131
Chapter 13. Ethics and the Purpose of Human Life 133
Reasons for the Incompatibility of Practical and Theoretical Ethics 133
The Place of Ethics in Peirce’s Architectonic 137
Love and Evolution 141
Deriving a Virtue Ethic from Peirce’s Theoretical Ethics 145
Continuity of Practical and Theoretical Ethics 148
Conclusion 149
Notes 153
Bibliography 161
Index 165Introduction

n describing the soul of American Philosophy, this work presents three
key figures who created magnificent philosophical works in the last part
of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth centuries, the eraIof classical American Pragmatism. It features William James (1842–
1910), Josiah Royce (1855–1916), and Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914),
and focuses on the thought of these three philosophers as they dealt with
issues that would be treated under the name of soul in traditional philosophy.
These issues include: the search for truth; the meaning of whatever we call
our “self,” especially in relation to our bodily existence; free will; moral
values; community, and our relationship with the Transcendent.
Purpose of this Work
This book has a twofold purpose. First, it aims to make the key ideas of
these philosophers accessible to readers who are not specialists in this area or
in philosophy in general. The book is relatively free of jargon and hopefully of
all obscurity. It emphasizes the larger ideas rather than the knotty problems
that often occupy philosophers when commenting on other philosophers.
Second, it will not stress negative criticism with an eye to searching for
shortcomings, but rather it will illuminate the positive side of the ideas as they
apply to thought and to life. As William James said of philosophy:
Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human
pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and opens the widest vistas...and
repugnant as its manners, its doubting and challenging, its quibbling and
dialectics, often are to common people, no one of us can get along without
1the far-flashing beams of light it sends over the world’s perspectives.
xi xii Introduction
This work will look for the “far-flashing beams of light” and keep the
quibbling to a minimum.
People often misunderstand pragmatism. In conversation, they often
associate it with a lack of principle that permits anyone to do whatever seems
expedient. This description does not fit the lives or the philosophical thought
of the philosophers who invented and developed pragmatism. Of the
philosophers presented in this book, James and Royce led exemplary lives. Peirce
stumbled early in life, but his moral, social, and financial mistakes did not
result from lack of principle; his mistakes were ironically due to a lack of
practical sense. In the last decade of his life, however, he comported himself
as a loving husband to his wife, who suffered chronic poor health, and the
two lived in extreme poverty as Peirce dedicated himself to the work that he
believed God created him to do. Each of these three philosophers gave ethics
top priority.
The reputation of pragmatism suffers distortion not only from popular
misconceptions, but also from contemporary philosophers who write under
2the banner of neo-pragmatism. The project of the classical pragmatists was
to re-think the issues of knowledge, truth, and value. Some neo-pragmatists
rejected these as having no basis in reality, and they developed a view based
on relativism and subjectivism. This book does not propose to analyze or
evaluate the neo-pragmatists, but to clearly present the vision of the
classical pragmatists.
The essential characteristic of pragmatism abides in the conviction that
our actions follow from our beliefs. The only propositions that we really
believe are those that we are willing to act on. This philosophy produced as
its main outcome, a worldview that is scientific without being materialistic
and reductionist, and which gives a proper place to the communal and
spiritual aspects of human existence.
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were marked by a
decline in traditional religion, by a rapidly expanding industrialization, an
increasing hold of science and technology over the minds of educated people,
the centrality of Darwinian evolution to the worldview of intellectuals, and a
sense of the futility of philosophy. These factors called into question the
ability of the human person to believe in free will, the idea of community as
anything other than a network of economic relations, and any meaning of
human existence beyond acquisitive materialism. The pragmatists attempted
to fill the intellectual and spiritual void. They created an interlocking,
although sometimes conflicting, constellation of worldviews that integrate
the progress in science with deeper and more general human needs.
Nevertheless, the problems which they addressed continue to plague
industrial and post-industrial society, and I will argue that these philosophers’
insights continue to be part of the solution of our problems.Introduction xiii
Charles Peirce’s method, which he called “pragmatism,” emphasizes the
active role of the self in thinking and knowing. He rejects the notion of the
mind as a passive spectator that receives clear and distinct ideas. His notion
of the self connects closely to his method because the mind does not function
apart from the self with its interests and plans. At a time when most scientists
and philosophers saw the world as determined by mechanistic necessity,
Peirce affirmed the reality of chance events and taught that the purpose of
scientific thinking and all other thinking is to organize the world into an
order favorable for survival and growth of the thinker. This task does not
take place in solipsistic loneliness, but in community with other thinkers.
Peirce defined truth as the belief which a community of investigators is
destined to agree to in the long run.
William James adopted the method of pragmatism, which he used for
testing the meaning of all ideas including scientific and philosophical ideas. He
defined a true idea as one that enables the person who accepts it to get in
touch with reality. He saw reality as a “semi-chaos” which is somewhat
malleable and can, to some extent, bend to the interests of the thinking and acting
person. We humans create our world by our interaction with reality. But we
cannot create it any way we wish, because reality acts as a constraint to which
we must yield. And yet several possible worlds can be created out of the same
reality, depending partly on our evolutionary and cultural inheritance, and
partly on our own interests. Free will means that we can choose what we pay
attention to and thereby choose our actions and to some extent our world. The
concept of free will takes a central place in James’s personal life as well as in his
philosophy. James took on as his intellectual and moral ideal the task of
establishing a “republic of ideas” in which we would never consider a philosophical
or ethical system finished until all persons have had their say.
Many descriptions of American pragmatists do not include Josiah Royce
who identified himself as a philosophical idealist. However, the founder of
the pragmatist movement, Charles Peirce, referred to Royce as the only true