Catalyst for Controversy: Paul Carus of Open Court

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Biography / Philosophy “I am not a common atheist; I am an atheist who loves God.” —Paul Carus, “The God of Science” In the summer of 1880, while teaching at the military academy of the Royal Corps of Cadets of Saxony in Dresden, Paul Carus published a brief pamphlet denying the literal truth of scripture and describing the Bible as a great literary work comparable to the Odyssey. This document was Carus’s first step in a wide-ranging intellectual voyage in which he traversed philosophy, science, religion, mathematics , history, music, literature, and social and political issues. In 1885, Carus published his first philosophical work in English, Monism and Meliorism. The book was not widely read, but it did reach Edward C. Hegeler, a La Salle, Illinois, zinc processor who became his father-in-law as well as his ideological and financial backer. Established in La Salle, Carus began the work that would place him among the prominent American philosophers of his day and make the Open Court Publishing Company a leading publisher of philosophical, scientific, and religious books. Harold Henderson is a staff writer for the Chicago Reader. Southern Illinois University Press 1915 University Press Drive Mail Code 6806 Carbondale, IL 62901 www.siu.edu/~siupress Cover illustration: Paul Carus holding a copy of Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, published by the Open Court Publishing Company in 1898. Courtesy Open Court Publishing Company archives, Special Collections, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Printed in the United States of America ISBN 0-8093-2904-2 ISBN 978-0-8093-2904-5 ...