The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction CONTENTS 1 The Emersonian Prehistory of American Pragmatism Emerson on Power (and Tradition) 11 Emerson on Provocation (and the Market) 25 Emerson on Personality (and Race) 28 Emerson as Organic Intellectual 35 xi 3 9 2 The Historic Emergence of American Pragmatism 42 Peirce on Scientific Method, Community, and Christian Love 43 James on Individuality, Reconciliation, and Heroic Energies 54 3 The Coming-of-Age of American Pragmatism: John Dewey 69 Dewey on Historical Consciousness, Critical Intelligence, and Creative Democracy 71 4 The Dilemma of the Mid-Century Pragmatic Intellectual Sidney Hook: The Deweyan Political Intellectual 114 C. Wright Mills: The Neo-Deweyan Radical Social Critic 124 W E. B. Du Bois: The Jamesian Organic Intellectual 138 Reinhold Niebuhr: The Jamesian Cultural Critic 150 Lionel Trilling: The Pragmatist as Amoldian Literary Critic 164 5 The Decline and Resurgence of American Pragmatism: 112 W. V. Quine and Richard Rorty 182 6 Prophetic Pragmatism: Cultural Criticism and Political Engagement 211 Roberto Unger and Third-Wave Left Romanticism 214 The Challenge of Michel Foucault 223 Tragedy, Tradition, and Political Praxis 226 Prophetic Pragmatism and Postmodemity 235 Notes 243 Index 273 ...