The Chicago Pragmatists (review)

496 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY which all other, lesser people must either be annihilated or incorporated into this one authentic humanity which is destined to achieve its fulfillment as the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is no otherworldly Kingdom, but is the ultimate goal of human history itseLf; the unification of the entire human race in one mind and heart. This goal of ultimate historical fulfillment of mankind is the true meaning of that which was expressed symbolically in the idea of the Universal Church, and it is that total communion of all things prefigured in the Eucharist. Christian society, qua-panEuropean society, is the historical vehicle of this new humanity. Toward this society Chaadayev can say, in all stark affront to his own native land and church: "in spite of all its incompleteness, vice and guilt, in European society as it is today, it is nonetheless true that the reign of God is realized in it to some extent, for it contains the principle of indefinite progress and it possesses the seeds and elements of all that is needed for this reign to one day be definitively established on earth" (lst letter, p. 48). For Russia to incorporate herself into the Western European soul is then, for Chaadayev, nothing less than an exhortation to join that progressive triumph of the new humanity which the divine Logos has initiated from the beginning, renewed and guides toward its final goal. ROSEMARYRADFORDRUETHER Howard University The Chicago Pragmatists. By Darnell Rucker. (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1969. Pp. 200. $6) Professor Rucker gives an excellent account of what the University of Chicago was in the beginning, under the leadership of the philosophy department. There will be nothing like it again without such cooperative inquiry; and "some aesthetic or ethical or scientific value will have to gain at least equal status with the profit motive." We must marvel at an "Institution that produced acknowledged schools of philosophy, psychology, education, religion, sociology, and political science." We see "what an intellectual community might be." What William James hailed in 1903 as the Chicago School had made its mark in the first ten years with Dewey and Mead, Tufts, Moore, and Ames, in close relation with psychology and education, originally in the same department with philosophy, all headed by Dewey. His ideas were disseminated especially through the University's Elementary School, where scholars from all over the campus came to watch and teach, and learn the new philosophy. As Rucker says, Chicago pragmatism was close to that of James in teaching the practical character of knowledge, but nearer Peirce in the "conception and use of the method of science." Activity was central, understood in psychological and ethical terms, but "directly connected to the biological concept of function, the notion of organic process." This meant emphasis on growth, tentative ends, and progressive change. Backing that philosophy were millions of dollars from John D. Rockefeller, much support from many Chicago citizens, and President Harper's tremendous drive. He started with eight ex-presidents of colleges and universities, fifteen top scientists taken from G. Stanley Hall's collection at Clark University (who never forgave the raid), and eminent figures BOOK REVIEWS 497 from a dozen other institutions. Freedom to work in a university breaking from the past, in a city on the move, was the lure more than money. Diverse opportunities were provided for inquiry, and a "vast laboratory for-testing solutions." Though the University was founded primarily by and for Baptists, it was free of religious requirements , and Baptist control was gradually relinquished. Harper's original intention was to build up especially his own subject of Semitics, with classics and philosophy. The Clark windfall, in addition to Dewey in philosophy, after others had declined, led rather accidentally to a great center of science and science-oriented thought. "'On the other hand, Harper brought the first student of religion into the Department of Philosophy," Edward Scribner Ames, who received its first Ph. D. in 1895. His pioneering in the psychology of religion, with Harper's critical approach to Bible study, did much to develop liberal religion. Several thinkers outside the philosophy department, mostly in the Divinity School, were working...