Showing papers in "Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement in 1985"

Charles Sanders Peirce 1839–1914

Abstract: I am honoured and pleased to address you this evening on the life and work of an extraordinary American thinker, Charles Sanders Peirce. Although Peirce is perhaps most often remembered as the father of the philosophical movement known as pragmatism, I would like to impress upon you that he was also, and perhaps, especially, a logician, a working scientist and a mathematician. During his life time Peirce most often referred to himself, and was referred to by his colleagues, as a logician. Furthermore, Peirce spent thirty years actively engaged in scientific research for the US Coast Survey. The National Archives in Washington, DC, holds some five thousand pages of Peirce's reports on this work. Finally, the four volumes of Peirce's mathematical papers edited by Professor Carolyn Eisele eloquently testify to his contributions to that field as well.

Does American Philosophy Rest on a Mistake

Abstract: When I write about ‘American philosophy’ in this paper, I refer not to the practice of philosophizing in a certain geographic area during a certain time. Rather I mean a scholarly field defined by certain conventions, standard arguments, and major works. I hope primarily to show that that area of inquiry is befuddled. I also want to suggest, however, that it may be unhelpful to try to write about the practice of philosophizing in a certain geographic area—the continental United States—in anything like the way scholars now write about it.

Josiah Royce's Philosophy of the Community: Danger of the Detached Individual

Abstract: The popular mind is deep and means a thousand times more than it knows.It is fitting that the Royal Institute of Philosophy series on American philosophy include a session on the thought of Josiah Royce, for his most formidable philosophical work, The World and the Individual, was a result of his Gifford lectures in the not too distant city of Aberdeen in 1899 and 1900. The invitation to offer the Gifford lectures was somewhat happenstance, for it was extended originally to William James, who pleaded, as he often did in his convenient neurasthenic way, to postpone for a year on behalf of his unsettled nerves. James repaired himself to the Swiss home of Theodore Flournoy, with its treasure of books in religion and psychology, so as to write his Gifford lectures, now famous as The Varieties of Religious Experience. In so doing, however, James was able to solicit an invitation for Royce to occupy the year of his postponement. Royce accepted with alacrity, although this generosity of James displeased his wife Alice, who ranted, ‘Royce!! He will not refuse, but over he will go with his Infinite under his arm, and he will not even do honour to William's recommendation.’ Alice was partially correct in that Royce, indeed, did carry the Infinite across the ocean to the home of his intellectual forebears, although on that occasion as on many others, he acknowledged the support of his personal and philosophical mentor, colleague and friend, William James.

William James 1842–1910

Abstract: He was about five feet eight inches tall, rather thin, and for the last thirty or so years of his life sported a bushy beard and moustache, fashionable for the time. His pleasing low-pitched voice, ideal for conversation, did not carry well to large audiences, and although he was much in demand as a public speaker he rarely spoke from the floor at faculty or professional meetings. As a young man, within the family or with close friends, he was frequently the source and centre of fun, vying with his father in devising practical jokes or in generating lively argument. Like his father he was the victim of his moods, and his own wife and children had much to contend with; typically, he assigned the hour of his evening meal to student consultation, and would refuse to see invited guests if he suddenly felt antisocial. He hated what he called ‘loutish’ informality in dress, and the American way of eating boiled eggs; he loved bright neckties, animals and hill walking. He had no exotic tastes in food, avoided tea and coffee, and drank no alcohol—one of his brothers became an alcoholic, like their father in his younger days. From his early twenties until the end of his life he experienced, and perhaps savoured, a series of physical and mental depressions; remarkably, so did his father, his four brothers, and even more dramatically, his sister.

John Dewey 1859–1952

Abstract: It is generally agreed that the most influential philosophers in America are Charles S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey. James's fame came rather suddenly in the latter half of his life—roughly, from 1880 to 1910; it flourished with the appearance of his Principles of Psychology (1890) and shortly thereafter with his advocacy of pragmatism and radical empiricism. James was acclaimed in England and Europe as well as in America. Peirce, on the other hand, was almost entirely neglected; his work remained unknown to all but a few philosophers and his chief acknowledgment was as a scientist and logician. His importance began to be recognized and his immense researches and writings studied some twenty-five years after his death. It was otherwise with Dewey. During his long lifetime his ideas not only engaged the reflections and critical discussions of philosophers, he also had a profound and contagious influence on education, the social sciences, aesthetics, and political theory and practice. In this respect his thought has reached a wider audience in America than that of either Peirce or James. In his day lawyers, labour leaders, scientists and several heads of state attested to the vitality of his wisdom.

C. I. Lewis

Abstract: Lewis, according to Kuklick, was ‘a private person’, of ‘unsparing honesty and … utter dedication to the rational pursuit of truth’. He was, Kuklick continues, ‘equally uncompromising in what he expected of his readers, and as a result wrote for and lectured to a tiny group of scholars’. I hope that—since I occasionally find myself borrowing from him and frequently find myself arguing with him—I may count myself as one of the ‘tiny group of scholars’ for whom Lewis wrote. And perhaps, by arguing with him again here, I may persuade some of you of the enduring interest of his work.

Emerson and the Virtues

Abstract: Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose life spanned most of the nineteenth century, is widely regarded as one of the greatest sages in the history of American thought. Among educated American citizenry, Emerson is probably the most commonly read indigenous philosopher—and for good reason. Emerson presents a vision of human beings and their place in the universe which gives meaning and stature to the human condition. His profound, even religious, optimism, gives structure and import to even the smallest and apparently least significant of human activities. The inspirational quality of Emerson's, prose, his willingness to travel far and wide to lecture, his ability to help people transcend the difficulties of the times, all led to his very great national as well as international significance.