American Realism, Objective Relativism, Columbia Naturalism, and Justus Buchler

Abstract

Justus Buchler’s metaphysics of natural complexes seems so unique as to be sui generis and to have little relation to the rest of the American tradition, even to the Columbia naturalists. Buchler’s reticence in naming influences gives us little guidance. We will find, however, that his key metaphysical ideas – ontological parity, neutrality, distributivity, and ordinality – derive from the debate over realism that dominated not only American philosophy, but the early days of what would become analytic and continental philosophy in the years 1900–1930. These ideas arose amidst a ferment of now largely forgotten doctrines, like objective relativism, emergence, and neutral monism. Our discoveries will clarify not only Buchler’s thought, but also the tradition and period from which it sprang.