Philosophy Americana : Making Philosophy at Home in American Culture / Douglas R. Anderson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Anderson, Douglas R., Author.

drew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Ope, National Endowment for the Humanities/An, Author.

Series:

American philosophy series ; Numbero 18.

American Philosophy

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Philosophy, American--20th century.

Philosophy, American.

United States--Civilization--20th century.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 294 pages).

Place of Publication:

LaVergne : Fordham University Press, 2018.

New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Biography/History:

Anderson Douglas R. : Douglas R. Anderson is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.Douglas R. Anderson is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction: Inheritance, Teaching, and the Insane Angels of American Culture: Our Cultural Invisibility

One. Some Preliminary Remarks on the Origins of Pragmatism

Two. Royce, Philosophy, and Wandering: A Job Description

Three. Wilderness as Philosophical Home

Four. Working Certainty and Deweyan Wisdom

Five. Wildness as Political Act

Six. ‘‘After All, He’s Just a Man’’

Seven. William James and the Wild Beasts of the Philosophical Desert

Eight. John Dewey’s Sensible Mysticism

Nine. ‘‘Born to Run’’

Ten. Philosophy as Teaching

Eleven. Learning and Teaching

Twelve. Emerson’s Platonizing of American Thought

Thirteen. American Loss in Cavell’s Emerson

Fourteen. Emerson and Kerouac: Grievous Angels of Hope and Loss

Fifteen. Pragmatic Intellectuals

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Title from eBook information screen..

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

0-8232-8512-X

OCLC:

1178769667