American Philosophy

by John Kaag

  When I spent time at Holden in 2008, I was obsessed with the bones—how easily, abruptly, meaninglessly life could end. James was not blind to this possibility. However, he wasn’t resigned to it either. To the question of life’s worth in the face of its abiding difficulties, James responds: Maybe. Maybe life is a hollow waste, but maybe it could, even in the face of inevitable destruction, be something more. James suggests that we stake our lives on that chance. “For such a half-wild, half-saved universe,” James contends, “our nature is adapted.”

  Anatomy classes are no longer held at Holden. Today it houses the Harvard Glee Club. In the fall, as the ground grows cold and the days short, the choir begins to practice the “Gloria” from William Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices. The small building practically quivers with the sound.

  In the medieval era it was not uncommon to bury the bones of the dead in buildings—for example, in the floors and walls of chapels across the British Isles. It is believed that these remains not only served as safeguards against demons but also had a more practical function: They were good for the acoustics. The songs of the living, reverberating through these dead remains, could escape the earthen walls and begin their ascent. These chapels would ring with the strange mix of the tragic and the spiritual—with the perfect pitch of a maybe.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUGGESTED READING

  Addams, J. Newer Ideals of Peace. New York: Macmillan, 1911.

  ______. Twenty Years at Hull-House. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

  ______. Democracy and Social Ethics. Edited by C. H. Seigfried. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002.

  Alexander, T. M. John Dewey’s Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature: The Horizons of Feeling. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987.

  Anderson, D. R. Creativity and the Philosophy of C. S. Peirce. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1987.

  ______. Philosophy Americana: Making Philosophy at Home in American Culture. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006.

  Anderson, D. R., and C. R. Hausman. Conversations on Peirce: Reals and Ideals. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.

  Anderson, D. R., and C. S. Peirce. Strands of System: The Philosophy of Charles Peirce. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1995.

  Barzun, J. A Stroll with William James. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.

  Bernstein, R. J. John Dewey. New York: Washington Square Press, 1966.

  ______. Praxis and Action. London: Duckworth, 1971.

  Boisvert, R. D. Dewey’s Metaphysics. New York: Fordham University Press, 1988.

  Boydston, J. John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899–1924. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976–83.

  Buck, P. S. The Good Earth. New York: Washington Square Press, 1931.

  ______. East Wind: West Wind: The Saga of a Chinese Family. New York: Open Road Media, 2012.

  ______. The Goddess Abides: A Novel. New York: Open Road Media, 2013.

  Carus, P. Buddhism and Its Christian Critics. Chicago: The Open Court, 1897.

  Cavell, S. Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005.

  ______. Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006.

  Child, L. M. The History of the Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations. London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1835.

  ______. The American Frugal Housewife. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1844/1999.

  ______. Letters of Lydia Maria Child: With a Biographical Introduction by J. G. Whittier and Appendix by W. Phillips. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882.

  Clendenning, J. The Life and Thought of Josiah Royce. 2nd ed. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999.

  Colapietro, V. M. Peirce’s Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.

  Coleridge, S. T. Aids to Reflection. Burlington, MA: Chauncey Goodrich, 1840.

  Cudworth, R. The True Intellectual System of the Universe. Port Chester, NY: Adegi Graphics, 1820/2001.

  ______. Collected Works of Ralph Cudworth. New York: G. Olms, 1979.

  Dewey, J. John Dewey on Experience, Nature, and Freedom. Representative Selections. Edited, with an Introduction, by Richard J. Bernstein. New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1960.

  ______. The Essential Dewey: Volume 1. Edited by L. A. Hickman and T. M. Alexander. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

  ______. The Correspondence of John Dewey, 1871–1952, three volumes. Edited by Larry Hickman. Electronic Edition. Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Corporation, 2005.

  Edel, L. Henry James: The Middle Years, 1882–1895. London: Hart Davis, 1963.

  Emerson, R. W. Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ten volumes. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.

  Esposito, J. L. Evolutionary Metaphysics: The Development of Peirce’s Theory of Categories. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1980.

  Foust, M. A. Loyalty to Loyalty: Josiah Royce and the Genuine Moral Life. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.

  Frost, R. A Boy’s Will. New York: Henry Holt, 1915.

  Fuller, M. Woman in the Nineteenth Century: And Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition and Duties, of Woman. Boston: J. P. Jewett, 1860.

  Gale, R. M. The Divided Self of William James. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

  Gavin, W. J. William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.

  Gilman, C. P. The Yellow Wallpaper. Boston: Small, Maynard, 1899.

  Good, J. A. A Search for Unity in Diversity: The “Permanent Hegelian Deposit” in the Philosophy of John Dewey. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006.

  Haack, S. Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic: Beyond the Formalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974/1996.

  Hickman, L. A. John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

  Hobbes, T. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, collected and edited by W. Molesworth. London: John Bohn, 1840.

  Hocking, W. E. The Meaning of God in Human Experience: A Philosophic Study of Religion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1912.

  ______. Re-Thinking Missions: A Laymen’s Inquiry After One Hundred Years. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932.

  ______. Living Religions and a World Faith. New York: Macmillan, 1940.

  ______. The Coming of World Civilization. New York: Harper, 1956.

  Hookway, C. Peirce. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.

  Huxley, T. H. Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature. New York: D. Appleton, 1863.

  ______. Darwiniana: Essays by Thomas H. Huxley. New York: D. Appleton, 1896.

  James, H., and W. James. The Literary Remains of Henry James. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1885.

  James, W. “The Sentiment of Rationality.” Mind 4:317–46, 1879.

  ______. Are We Automata? Gloucester, UK: Dodo Press, 1879/2008.

  ______. The Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Holt, 1890.

  ______. Psychology: Briefer Course. New York: Henry Holt, 1892.

  ______. The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New York: Longmans, Green, 1897.

  ______. Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898.

  ______. Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals. New York: Henry Holt, 1899.

  ______. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Longmans, Green, 1902.

  ______. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1907/1975.

  ______. A Pluralistic Universe. New York: Longmans, Green, 1909.

  ______. The Meaning of Truth. Rockville, MD: Arc Manor, 1909/2008.

  Kant, I. The Critique of Judgement. Radford, VA: Wilder, 2008.

  ______. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. New York: Start Publishing, 2012.

&nb
sp; Karcher, C. The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.

  Kestenbaum, V. The Phenomenological Sense of John Dewey: Habit and Meaning. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1977.

  Knight, L. W. Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

  Koopman, C. Pragmatism as Transition: Historicity and Hope in James, Dewey, and Rorty. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

  Krieg, J. P. Whitman and the Irish. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000.

  Leopold, A. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. New York: Oxford University Press, 1949.

  Locke, J. Two Treatises of Government. London: Whitmore and Fenn, C. Brown, 1821.

  Lowell, J. R., and C. E. Norton. The Complete Writings of James Russell Lowell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904.

  Lysaker, J. T. Emerson and Self-Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.

  Marcel, G. The Mystery of Being. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964.

  ______. Homo Viator: Introduction to the Metaphysic of Hope. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2010.

  McDermott, J. The Drama of Possibility: Experience as Philosophy in Culture. Edited by D. Anderson. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007.

  Mill, J. S. On Liberty. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863.

  Muller, F. M. The Sacred Books of the East in 50 Volumes. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1895/2001.

  Oppenheim, F. M. Royce’s Voyage Down Under: A Journey of the Mind. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1980.

  O’Reilly, J. B. Selected Poems of John Boyle O’Reilly. Boston: H. M. Caldwell, 1904.

  Palmer, G. H. The English Works of George Herbert. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905.

  Pappas, G. F. John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.

  Parnell, F. The Hovels of Ireland. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 1880/2010.

  Peirce, C. S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Edited by C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, and A. W. Burks. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1931–58.

  Putnam, H. Mind, Language, and Reality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

  Raposa, M. L. Peirce’s Philosophy of Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.

  Richardson, R. D. Emerson: The Mind on Fire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

  Rorty, R. The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.

  Rosenbaum, S. E. Pragmatism and the Reflective Life. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009.

  Royce, J. The Basic Writings of Josiah Royce. Edited by J. J. McDermott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

  Sarton, M. I Knew a Phoenix. New York: W. W. Norton, 1954.

  ______. Journal of a Solitude. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973.

  Sartwell, C. The Six Names of Beauty. New York: Routledge, 2004.

  Schelling, F.W.J. Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006.

  Schneider, H. W. A History of American Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1946.

  Schopenhauer, A. The Works of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life and Other Essays. New York: Walter J. Black, 1935.

  Shelley, P. B. Poems Selected from Percy Bysshe Shelley, with Preface by R. Garnett. London: C. Kegan Paul, 1880.

  Simon, L. Genuine Reality: A Life of William James. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998.

  Smith, J. E. Royce’s Social Infinite: The Community of Interpretation. New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1950.

  Smyth, R. A. Reading Peirce Reading. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.

  Spencer, H. First Principles of a New System of Philosophy. New York: D. Appleton, 1898.

  Stuhr, J. J., ed. 100 Years of Pragmatism: William James’s Revolutionary Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

  Talisse, R. B., and S. F. Aikin, eds. The Pragmatism Reader: From Peirce Through the Present. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.

  Thoreau, H. D. The Selected Works of Thoreau. Edited by W. Harding. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975.

  Traubel, H. With Walt Whitman in Camden: March 28–July 14, 1888. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1961.

  Tunstall, D. A. Yes, but Not Quite: Encountering Josiah Royce’s Ethico-religious Insight. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009.

  Tuttle, H., and J. M. Peebles. The Year Book of Spiritualism for 1871. Boston: William White, 1871.

  Warren, H. C. Buddhism in Translation: Passages Selected from the Buddhist Sacred Books. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 1915/2003.

  West, C. Prophetic Thought on Postmodern Times. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1993.

  Whately, R. The Elements of Logic. 2nd ed. London: W. Clowes, 1827.

  Whitehead, A. N. Science and the Modern World. New York: Macmillan, 1925.

  ______. Process and Reality. New York: Harper & Row, 1960.

  Whitehead, A. N., and B. Russell. Principia Mathematica. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1912.

  Whitman, W. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

  Wilshire, B. Fashionable Nihilism: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to thank my editor, Ileene Smith. Much of what is beautiful or right about this book can be attributed to the guidance that she and her team at FSG provided; many of the places that remain rough or stilted represent moments when I chose to ignore her advice. I cannot thank Ileene, her colleague John Knight, and my agent, Markus Hoffmann, enough for believing in the project, for seeing it through to completion.

  I would like to thank Douglas Anderson. I met Doug when I was seventeen, in my first term at college. Over the next decade, he exposed me to the meaning and spirit of American philosophy—its openness, its diversity, its hidden origins, and its existential depth. He had visited Ernest Hocking at West Wind in the 1980s and had passed on the knowledge of the library many years before I discovered it for myself. He was my closest friend as I went through my early months at West Wind. There are many moments of experience that should have made it into the book, but didn’t—building a fire with Doug on the upper fields above the Hocking library is one of them. We talked through the night, about Holden Chapel and Pauline Goldmark and all the other things that “good philosophers” are meant to outgrow. Mark Johnson, John J. McDermott, Scott Pratt, Erin McKenna, Victor Kestenbaum, Marilyn Fischer, David Leary, Claire Katz, Dan Conway, and Michael Raposa joined Doug as my trusted teachers and mentors in the American philosophical tradition. I thank each of them for reading early drafts of this manuscript and providing invaluable feedback.

  The transition from academic scholarship to writing for a general audience is not an easy one. If you are trained as a professional philosopher (and expected to master the jargon that often comes with it), it is especially difficult. At least it was for me. I would like to thank a number of individuals who made this transition easier: Jean Tamarin, Alex Kafka, Peter Catapano, Simon Critchley, Emily Stokes, Joe Kloc, Phil and Gordon Marino, Rebecca Attwood, Jill Lepore, Andre Dubus III, and Evan Goldstein. My time at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a Visiting Scholar in 2008 gave me the chance to think through James’s lesson from Holden Chapel, and I want to thank Patricia Meyer Spacks and David Sehat for the encouragement they offered during this difficult time. David particularly pushed me to integrate philosophical speculation with the pointedly personal and psychological challenge of daily life. I would also like to thank the administration and my colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Lowell for their continued support. Clancy Martin—one of the few philosophers I know who successfully bridges the divide between philosophical and creative writing—has been a consummate mentor in the drafting of American Philosophy:
A Love Story.

  I feel very fortunate to count Clancy as a friend, and so many others: Peter Aldinger, Jose Mendoza, Amelia Wirts, Jen McWeeny, Steven Miller, Romel Sharma, Nick Pupik, Susanne Sreedhar, Heidi and Mac Furey, David Livingstone-Smith, Brian Hay and the rest of the Hay Draude Watters clan, Whit Kaufman, Marianna Alessandri (who read draft after draft of the book), Sara Clemence (who meticulously edited the manuscript), Becca Greeves, Tess and Ken Pope, Alice Frye, and Luis Falcon. Special thanks to the Hocking family: Jennifer, Penny, Jill, Katie, Joanna, and the rest. A percent of the royalties from this book will be donated to the Hocking estate for the preservation of the rest of the books and the maintenance of the grounds.

  When I was a little boy, I often wanted to grow up faster than humanly possible. But one of the troubles of growing up, as I saw it when I was seven, was that it entailed owing your parents more and more for the life you lived. And if your life went well—all the worse, at least when it came to indebtedness and gratitude. Now that I have children of my own, I understand how horribly misguided this idea is. I am the most fortunate of men: to have a mother and brother like mine is to be deeply blessed. They love in a way that requires no recompense. I don’t deserve such love, because it is not, by its very nature, something that is meant to be paid back.

  In a lecture entitled “What Makes Life Significant?” William James suggests that the meaning of human existence turns on a strange little word: zest. Zest, the particular, peculiar thrill of experience, is the ultimate source of existential value. For a long time I thought this was complete rubbish. But after meeting Carol, I knew, in the pit of my stomach, that James was once again right. Yes, duty and relationships and community and loyalty and work and marriage all have their place, but without zest—that certain something that makes these things pointedly “mine”—life would mean painfully little. I thank Carol and our daughter, Becca Briony Kaag-Hay, for the zest: for making life worth living.