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Preface
- Vanderbilt University Press
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xiii Preface John William Miller (1895–1978) was an American philosopher who exerted a tremendous personal influence on his many students but, because he published very little during his career, had little impact on professional philosophy during his lifetime, beyond the circles of his acquaintances .1 In this regard, he was like many other academic philosophers. One crucial difference between Miller and other teachers who have also exemplified the Socratic life in an unforgettable way, however, is his noteworthy achievement: primarily in conversations and in letters, notes for lectures, and drafts of essays, Miller fashioned a unique philosophical perspective worthy of the most serious consideration. Miller studied at Harvard, receiving his baccalaureate in 1916 and, after serving in the ambulance corps during World War I, his doctorate in 1922. As a graduate student, he took courses with Ralph Barton Perry, E. B. Holt, William Ernest Hocking, and C. I. Lewis (Fell 1990a, 21). Thus, he was party to the disputes between advocates of objective idealism and champions of the new realism. Miller taught at Connecticut College for Women (New London, Connecticut) for a very short while and, immediately after, at Williams College from 1924 until 1960, with one year’s interruption (during which he taught at the University of Minnesota). His senior colleague at Williams was James Bissett Pratt, an able defender of what Pratt called personal realism. For most of his professional life, Miller was never far from individuals hostile to his own outlook. From 1960, the year of his retirement, to that of his death eighteen years later, Miller continued exploring, mostly through conversations and letters, several topics xiv Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom that had been the focus of concern during his years as a teacher. Some of the letters are over a hundred pages long. Miller wrote countless pages both before and after his retirement. Nevertheless, he published few articles until near the very end of his life.2 In 1978, however, The Paradox of Cause and Other Essays appeared several months before his death on December 25. Four other volumes have been published posthumously.3 George P. Brockway, the editor of these volumes and a lifelong student of Bill Miller’s, celebrated the career of his teacher in a memoir included in Joseph Epstein’s Masters: Portraits of Great Teachers (Brockway 1981). This anthology puts Miller in the company of (among others) Morris Raphael Cohen, Alfred North Whitehead, John Crowe Ransom, I. A. Richards, C. S. Lewis, Hannah Arendt, and Margaret Mead. Brockway’s memoir concludes by offering the highest praise a student can give to a teacher: “Of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the wisest, and justest, and best” (64). A volume of essays edited by Joseph P. Fell (1990b) offers an exquisite portrait of the man and insightful studies of various aspects of his unique perspective. A book by Stephen Tyman, Descrying the Ideal: The Philosophy of John William Miller (1993), aims to make the writings of this philosopher “accessible and to advertise their contemporary relevance and vital importance” (xi). It succeeds admirably in realizing this objective, though Tyman tends to neglect the distinctively American character of Miller’s radical revision of German idealism. He reads Miller in reference to such figures as Fichte and Hegel, but not Emerson and Thoreau, or Peirce and James, or Dewey and Santayana. Much is to be gained by interpreting Miller’s project as a development of “a certain stand of post-Kantian thought” (xi). But Miller’s creative appropriation of German idealism was mediated by his personal association with Josiah Royce and William Ernest Hocking. It was also colored by his antipathy toward American pragmatism and his ambivalence toward American transcendentalism.4 Hence, as far as Tyman’s study goes in exhibiting the relevance and significance of Miller’s project, it fails to situate Miller in the cross currents of American thought.5 In a doctoral dissertation, Michael J. McGandy (2000) strives to present “a detailed and systematic articulation of John William Miller’s philosophy understood in relation to Walt Whitman’s challenge to forge ‘a new Literature, perhaps a new Metaphysics,’” worthy of American democ- [18.225.235.89] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 22:59 GMT) Preface xv racy (vii).6 Anyone who is interested in seriously exploring Miller’s philosophy must not only consult but also study this superb exposition of the intricate weave of philosophical texts still unknown even to most of the bestinformed students...