American Philosophy and the Romantic TraditionCambridge University Press, 1990 - 162 pages 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. |
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acknowledgment aesthetic American philosophy Art as Experience believe calls Cambridge Cavell's cism Coleridge Coleridge's consciousness criticizes Dewey's discussion emotion empiricists ence epistemological essay example existence expresses external world external world skepticism fact faith feeling Harold Bloom Harvard University Press Hegel Hegelian hereafter cited Hilary Putnam human experience Ibid idea idealism idealist imagination intellectual interest intimacy James writes James's John Dewey Kant Kant's Kantian Kierkegaard knowledge Literature live logic M. H. Abrams maintains marriage means mind moods moral nature objects ordinary passion philoso philosophy Plato poet poetry Pragmatism Princeton problem radical empiricism Ralph Waldo Emerson rational reality reconstruction relation religion religious experience role Romantic Romanticism sensation sense skepticism spiritual Stanley Cavell stresses subjective T. S. Eliot temperament theory things thinking Thoreau thought tion tradition transcendental truth Walden William James Wittgenstein word Wordsworth wrote York