AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY: FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO THE PRESENT, ERIN MCKENNA AND SCOTT L. PRATT

Abstract

Reviewed by: American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present by Erin McKenna and Scott L. Pratt Gregory Fernando Pappas Erin McKenna and Scott L. Pratt American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015, xiv + 421 pages American Philosophy is the first introduction to the tradition of American philosophy that frames the history of the philosophical ideas in the history of America. This is an extraordinary accomplishment that [End Page 130] is long overdue. The book tells the story of a philosophical tradition that is shaped by, and critically reacts to, major events in the history of the USA. In their introduction, McKenna and Pratt explain what the American philosophical tradition stood for. For many of the philosophers mentioned in this volume any worthwhile philosophy “should be understood as an activity that arises from experience” (3) and must be committed to ongoing reconstruction of present circumstances as they are lived. Consistent with these commitments, the authors wrote a text that illustrates the ways in which philosophy was and continues to be relevant to lived experience. From its beginnings, the challenge of American philosophers was to critically examine their European inherited ideas in light of the new problems faced in the Americas. From the Wounded Knee massacre to the problems that we still face today, such as exploitation, racism, sexism, immigration, American philosophers have proposed views of reality and knowledge that directly or indirectly are relevant to these problems. These are the social problems that American Philosophy presents as the background of philosophizing in the Americas. The task of writing a review of such a lengthy manuscript is challenging. I will limit myself to providing, first, a brief summary of its structure and content, and after that some evaluation and critical remarks in regard to its pedagogical value and some of its philosophical assumptions about how to understand the history of American philosophy. There are a total of thirty-one chapters that follow a chronological order. Part I is from 1894 to 1918. The Wounded Knee massacre and the problematic World Columbia Exposition in Chicago sets the stage for the long history of American philosophers’ reaction and struggles against genocide, exclusion, imperialism, war, assimilation, and segregation. The authors outline the history of challenges the USA faced after the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction. Each of the classical figures get their individual chapters: James, Peirce, Royce, Dewey; as they should, and we expect from a textbook on American philosophy. However, Part I also includes Ida Wells-Barnett, Charles Eastman, Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, Jane Addams, Emerson, Thoreau, and Emma Goldman, among many others. Their historical and philosophical importance of these neglected figures in the canon is explained and recognized. Part II covers 1918 to 1939. It covers the legacy and events after the World War One, such as the race riots and tensions, the problems of segregation, poverty (the great depression), exploitation, immigrant discrimination, and the issue of what to do about the unavoidable cultural pluralism the USA was facing. Hartley Alexander, Thomas Davidson, Morris Cohen. Mary Parker Follett are some of the main thinkers; but featuring predominantly W. E. B. Du Bois, Horace Kallen, and Alain Locke. Part III covers 1939 to 1979. The events around and after the [End Page 131] World War Two and the great depression, and McCarthyism provide the historical backdrop to the rise of what we know today as “analytic philosophy” and some American philosophers like Neurath, Jacob Loewenberg, Henry Sheffer, C.I. Lewis, and Charles Morris. There are chapters on the Linguistic Turn and resistance to it that discuss the role of Gustav Bergmann, W. V. O. Quine, Richard Rorty, Donald Davidson, and Wilfrid Sellars. The remaining parts of the book continue a historical progression, or at least the readers get a sense that the authors are taking us on a journey through some of the events and problems in the second half of the 20th century until today (from the Civil Rights to 9/11), but there are mostly centered on themes. Part IV is titled “Applying Philosophy” and covers important American philosophers that addressed environmental problems (John Muir, Aldo Leopold...