Tadd Ruetenik is Professor of Philosophy at St. Ambrose University. He is the author of The Demons of William James: Religious Pragmatism Explores Unusual Mental States (2018) and Secretary of the William James Society.
What does American philosophy mean to you?
Since the term “American” signifies continents, “American philosophy” signifies more than “United States philosophy.” I take it to refer to philosophy related to life in the Western Hemisphere, and in contrast especially to Europe.
I do not see a particular need to assert that American philosophy is strongly tied to pragmatism. In fact, I have come to see that term “pragmatism” as problematic, since in almost all popular usage it means either an unscrupulous power play on the world, or some kind of compromise that favors non-populist centrist politics. I know that many philosophy terms have common usages that differ or even work against the word in its philosophical sense—“idealism” and “metaphysics,” for example—but I am having difficulty motivating myself for the battle of meanings. I have been drawn to the term “pluralism,” or better, “radical pluralism” to describe the philosophy in this part of the globe. If it wasn’t so occult-sounding, I’d suggest “transcendental pluralism” which can refer to the problem of “the one and the many” that William James, perhaps presciently, said was the fundamental problem of philosophy. But then we would still begin to run into troubles with the common usages of the word. Perhaps I’ll be able to retire at that point.
How did you become an American philosopher?
Since an early age I have had a personal antipathy for nationalism, patriotism, and any types of large, political allegiance, especially as this relates to the United States. My early interests were in existentialism and philosophy of religion, and it does puzzle me a bit why I became interested in American philosophy to begin with. After a world religions course at a community college piqued my interest in philosophy, I enrolled at Eastern Michigan University. The counselor had recommended I take just 4 courses, but I was a somewhat older student, and thought I was ready for more, so I picked up the phone—it was the beginning of touch-tone registration back in the early 1990s—and I added the first philosophy class I could find. This happened to be American Philosophy, and was taught by a great professor for whom this was not in her area of specialization. There was something of a radical and environmentalist take to the class, but I remember being especially drawn to Emerson and Thoreau... (continues)
This post directed me to Emerson and this great read on how to live a happy life: "Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Signet Classics)" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, William H. Gilman, Charles Johnson, Samuel A. Schreiner Jr.
ReplyDelete"I understand by the scholar no mere pedant, dilettante, literary epicure or dandy; but a serious, robust, full-grown man; who feels that life is a serious affair, and that he has a serious part to act in its eventual drama; and must therefore do his best to act well his part, so as to leave behind him, in the good he has done, a grateful remembrance of his having been. He may be a theologian, a politician, a naturalist, a poet, a moralist, or a metaphysician; but whichever or whatever he is, he is it with all his heart and soul, with high, noble—in a word—religious aims and aspirations. And we hear it echoing seventy-six years later, in W.E.B. Du Bois’s magnificent The Souls of Black Folk: … to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living,—not sordid money-getting, not apples of gold. The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame. And all this is gained only by human strife and longing; by ceaseless training and education; by founding Right on righteousness and Truth on the unhampered search for Truth. Despite these tergiversations, he remains the most essential of guides into the soul of the American experience, a superbly civilized man who, in his own words, chose “to unsettle all things."