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Introduces the spiritual ideas of three major American philosophers.
The Soul of Classical American Philosophy is an introduction to the thought of William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Peirce, particularly in terms of the ethical and the spiritual. Writing for the nonspecialist in a straightforward style, Richard P. Mullin brings together the central ideas of these three key figures of classical American Pragmatism and explores their engagement with issues of truth, the meaning of self, free will, moral values, community, scientific thinking, and the relationship with the transcendent. He also addresses the growing international interest in American philosophy and sheds light on a defining movement in its history.
Introduction
Purpose of this Work
Personal Note
List of Abbreviations
Part I. William James
1. Meaning and Truth
Pragmatism
Radical Empiricism
2. Body and Mind
Materialism versus Dualism
Neither Dualism nor Materialism
A Radical Empiricist View of Mind and Body
3. Free Will
Psychology and the Subjective Experience of Free Will
Indeterminism and the Physical Possibility of Free Will
A Late Twentieth-Century Adaptation of James’s Concept of Free Will
4. William James and Moral Philosophy
The Task of the Moral Philosopher
James’s Moral Ideals
The Adequacy of James’s Theory
5. Rationality and Religious Faith
Faith in the Salvation of the World
The Meaning of Rationality
The Reasonableness of Theism
William James’s Personal Faith
Human Immortality
6. Human Nature and the Life of the Spirit
Spirituality Defined and Placed in a Metaphysical Context
Naturalism and Spirituality
The How and Why of Spirituality
A Worldview Compatible with Spirit
Part II. Josiah Royce
7. The Idealism of Josiah Royce
Ideas and Reality
TheFirst and Second Conceptions of Being: Realism and Mysticism
The Third Conception of Being: Critical Rationalism
The Fourth Conception of Being: Royce’s Idealism
8. Josiah Royce’s Concept of the Self
The Ambiguity of the Self
The Self as an Ethical Category
The Individual and the Whole
9. Josiah Royce’s Philosophy of Loyalty as the Basis for Ethics
Royce’s Idea of Loyalty
The American Problem
The Contemporary Problem
The Practicality of Roycean Loyalty
Ethics and the Full-Breasted Richness of Life
10. The Religious Insights of Josiah Royce
Individual Experience
Social Experience
Reason
Will
Loyalty
Sorrow
Unity of the Spirit
What James Missed
Part III. Charles Sanders Peirce
11. Peirce and the Origin of Pragmatism
Peirce’s Pragmatism
Peirce’s Critique of Nominalistic Pragmatism
12. Charles Sanders Peirce on the Human Person
Peirce’s Critique of the Separated Self
The Illusory Self and the Authentic Self
13. Ethics and the Purpose of Human Life
Reasons for the Incompatibility of Practical Theoretical Ethics
The Place of Ethics in Peirce’s Architectonic
Love and Evolution
Deriving a Virtue Ethic from Peirce’s Theoretical Ethics
Continuity of Practical and Theoretical Ethics
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index