Common Sense Philosophy Research Articles

The Romantic Kinship of Medical Science, Sensory Experience, and Literary Aesthetics

The Romantic Kinship of Medical Science, Sensory Experience, and Literary AestheticsNoel Jackson's Science and Sensation in Romantic Poetry (Cambridge, 2008) is a study of the uses to which British Romantics put the science of aisthesis or sensory experience. While this book is not an easy read, it is a useful contribution to the growing body of work relating the Romantics to the sciences. Jackson argues that William Wordsworth and other Romantics called upon the discourses of the emerging human sciences of the brain, nerves, sensation, and perception to create a vocabulary of embodied aesthetic that they used to define and defend the political work of aesthetic culture (1). A uniquely social logic existed in the Romantics' inward-turning (1), which he believes derived from the historical and cultural kinship of medical science and literary (4) and the degree to which Romantic poets were attentive to emerging discourses about the brain and physical sensation. Understood in this way, Jackson asserts, Romantic literary products and their inferiority (especially Wordsworth's of the sense) articulate a practical relationship between the mind and the world. This relationship, amounts to an alternative form of political action and thereby demonstrates the usefulness of aesthetic experience (13).By his own admission, Jackson does not attempt a broad accounting of the Romantic poets' engagement with the sciences of sensation, though he offers a useful index of contemporary scholars who have contributed to such work. Instead, he selects sites in Romantic literature where the literary and scientific domains converge. These include the concept of mental suggestion, the practice of scientific self-experimentation, the notion of the poet as physician or healer of society, and the theory of the divided nerve, which he believes is John Keats's model for the divided nature of poetic form. The book's three sections cover the historicity of poetic sensibility, the subjectivity of the Romantic lyric and its relation to society, and the legacies of early Romantic aesthetics in the work of Walter Pater and Wilkie Collins. Offering two chapters in each section, Jackson's method serves, in part, as a sketch of recent critical discussions, including what the Romantics contributed to understandings of human community and whether their endeavors made or escaped history. Portions of the book are devoted to William Blake, S. T. Coleridge, Keats, Pater, and Collins, but its primary focus is upon Wordsworth's early poetry and his aesthetic legacy.The first chapter, Powers of Suggestion: Sensation, Revolution, and Romantic Aesthetics, begins with a useful rehearsal of classic criticism of Wordsworth - from Irving Babbitt and W.J. Bate to M.H. Abrams and Marjorie Levinson - and a select history of the uses of the word suggestion - from William Shakespeare and John Milton, to the Common Sense philosophers, Erasmus Darwin, Wordsworth, and Keats. The high point of this chapter is Jackson's astute and wide-ranging march through Romantic-era texts to collect examples supporting his thesis that the language of the sense, while seemingly private, is actually public and political. He highlights specific uses of the word suggestion that are scientized, selected from an impressively varied range of texts, including The Prelude (1805), The Watchman (1796), Keats's letters (1816-1820), Humphry Davy's notebooks (1839), Mary Hays's Jacobin novel Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796), Anna Laetitia Barbauld's Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study (1825) and John Thelwall's Hope of Albion (1801). Jackson contends that this scientized sensual language would have been understood as a stimulus or incitation (55) to readers' minds, creating awareness that would almost necessarily lead to public action. While the textual work here is impressive, I longed for more evidence firmly establishing that the writers Jackson quotes were either schooled in the science implied in their language or that they fully and specifically anticipated that their readers' response would be significant public action. …

Samuel Stanhope Smith and Common Sense Philosophy at Princeton

In this article, I discuss how Samuel Stanhope Smith advanced Reidian themes in his moral philosophy and examine their reception by Presbyterian revivalists Ashbel Green, Samuel Miller, and Archibald Alexander. Smith, seventh president and moral philosophy professor of the College of New Jersey (1779–1812), has received marginal scholarly attention regarding his moral philosophy and rational theology, in comparison to his predecessor John Witherspoon. As an early American philosopher who drew on the ideals of the Scottish Enlightenment including Common Sense philosophy, Smith faced heightened scrutiny from American revivalists regarding the danger his epistemology presented to the institution of religion. The Scottish School of Common Sense was widely praised and applied in nineteenth-century American moral philosophy, but before the more general American acceptance of Common Sense, Smith already appealed to Reidian themes in his methodology and treatment of external sensations, internal sensations, intellectual powers, and active powers of the human mind. In this paper, I argue that Smith's use of Reidian themes for grooming his student's morality conflicted with the educational expectations from revivalists on Princeton's board of trustees who demanded more attention on orthodox theology. I identify Smith's notions of causation, liberty, and the moral faculty as primary reasons for this tension over Princeton's educational purpose during the first decade of the nineteenth century.

Problem fundamentu poznania a status etyki. Poglądy Davida Hume’a na naturę sądów moralnych

Hume’s moral philosophy is a source of notorious problems which are rooted in the generally accepted interpretational model. This model is based on the supposition that Hume's philosophy can be fully analyzed from the point of view of the Locke-Berkeley tradition supported by Kant’s recognition of the nature of Humean philosophy. Nevertheless, a deeper analysis of Hume’s arguments shows that the epistemology and moral philosophy of the Treatise was influenced by Scottish common sense philosophers as well as by the father of the Scottish Enlightenment, Francis Hutcheson.

Romantic Empiricism: Poetics and the Philosophy of Common Sense, 1780–1830 ed. by Gavin Budge

Romantic Empiricism: Poetics and the Philosophy of Common Sense, 1780–1830 ed. by Gavin Budge

A Contemporary Reappropriation of Baconian Common Sense Realism in Renewal Hermeneutics

AbstractPart one of the following essay will present a brief explication of the Baconian common sense method. The second part will examine the early Pentecostal's Bible Reading Method as characterized by Kenneth J. Archer. It will be noted that early Pentecostals wedded common sense realism to the Baconian scientific method in the Baconian common sense method. Part three will examine various weaknesses and implications of Archer's representation regarding early Pentecostals and their use of the Bible Reading Method. In part four I will propose my own hermeneutic of Scripture in dialogue with Francis Bacon, Thomas Kuhn, Bernard Lonergan, and Vern Poythress in order to construct a modern, Spirit-inspired, scientifically informed hermeneutic for appropriation by the Renewal movement. I will contend that the Renewal movement should adopt such a hermeneutic in order to be taken seriously in today's (somewhat) scientifically literate culture.

The Scottish Enlightenment and Its Influence on the American Enlightenment

It is often said that Witherspoon brought Scottish Enlightenment to America, and diffused Reid’s Common Sense Philosophy in the continent. At the time he arrived in the former British colony, however, the Americans had already read Scottish books, such as those written by Hutcheson, Hume, Kames, Montesquieu, Locke, Cato, and others. Hutcheson’s Introduction had been used as a text book in Harvard and elsewhere. America’s struggle for independence had appealed to the right of resistance against the mother country, as suggested by Locke or Hutcheson. Communication, trades, and travels fl ourished in the eighteenth century. Benjamin Franklin was acquainted with Scottish philosophers—Kames, Hume, Smith, etc—and helped the next generation of Americans study in Britain. Many Scottish intellectuals, governors, clergymen, doctors, merchants, and laborers migrated to America. Similarly, many American medical students went to Edinburgh. Madison wrote the plan for a Federal Republic upon the suggestion of Hume. Smith’s The Wealth of Nations introduced the thesis of “commerce and liberty.” The Scottish Enlightenment supported its American counterpart, American independence (1776), the making of the US Constitution (1787), and the forging of the American Nation. This paper examines the correspondence between the two enlightenments.

The Pentecostal Reappropriation of Common Sense Realism

AbstractThe paper traces the early Pentecostal appropriation of common sense realism. In the first part of this paper, a general overview of the ascent of common sense philosophy will be provided. In the second part, the early Pentecostal's Bible Reading Method shall be examined, as it is characterized by Kenneth J. Archer, highlighting how early Pentecostals employed a Baconian-influenced common sense method, one that produced confidence that the facts of Scripture could be discovered as clearly as the facts of science. Although this paper is primarily a reconstruction of the historical influence that common sense philosophy had upon early Pentecostalism, in the third part I offer a suggestion for (a) contemporary reappropriation of common sense realism within the Renewal movement.

‘An Open Revolt against the Authority of Reid’: Thomas Brown and the Developments of Common-Sense Philosophy

‘An Open Revolt against the Authority of Reid’: Thomas Brown and the Developments of Common-Sense Philosophy

‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who are we?’ Audit consciousness and the Further Education Funding Council in the 1990s

This paper explores a ‘critical incident’ in relation to a Further Education Funding Council inspection during 1995. The FEFC's short lived and under-researched ‘project’ is discussed against the background of the Major Government's ‘Back-to-Basics’ policy. The FEFC, through its inspection regime and the ways in which that inspection informed ‘good’ practice in relation to appraisal, self assessment and annual subject review, had the discursive power to construct a commonsense reality that it then attempted to insert into the cultural life of the further education sector. Making use of a critical incident, the paper attempts to identify the FEFC discursive patterns as a cultural arbitrary and describe the way in which this surveillance based ‘strong discourse’ was used in an effort to reconstruct the subjectivity of teaching staff. The FEFC could engage in this form of symbolic violence because of their dual role as controllers of the inspection regime and the financial distribution body that could determ...

American Austen: the forgotten writing of Agnes Repplier

In a review of John Lukacs' 1981 book Philadelphia: Patricians and Philistines, the New York Times praised the iconoclastic historian for excavating the work of the 'elegant essayist' Agnes Repplier, 'the Jane Austen of the essay'. Now, in Austen, Lukacs has compiled a definitive and delightful reader of the best writing of this most unjustly forgotten prose stylist and commonsense philosopher. In these pages, Repplier (1855-1950) emerges as perhaps the wittiest female author in the history of American letters - Dorothy Parker not expected. Lukacs has gleaned from Repplier's work the finest essays on her hometown of Philadelphia, excerpts from her biographies of figures such as Junipero Serra, insightful reflections on Puritanism, the suburbs, and writers from Horace to Thackeray, and various other pieces brimming with Repplier's characteristically pungent commentary on American life. Agnes Repplier's engaging style, good-natured skepticism, and realistic appreciation of the genuine accomplishments of Western civilization should win for her a new and attentive audience in the twenty-first century. Agnes Repplier, who published for sixty-five of her ninety-five years, was the author of more than two dozen books, all of which are out of print. A native Philadelphian who never moved and never married, during her lifetime she was a popular essayist who wrote for virtually every major literary outlet in America, including the Atlantic, Harpers, and Life.

‘To Check . . . the Very Worst and Meanest of Our Passions’: Common Sense, ‘Cobbon Sense’, and the Socialization of Cadets at Antebellum West Point

This essay adds to a growing body of scholarship that challenges the image of the United States Military Academy at West Point and US Army officer corps as institutions that were isolated in the nineteenth century from developments in civilian society. It does so by calling attention to parallels between the ideas that shaped the antebellum military academy‘s approach to cadet education and socialization and those of the Scottish-American ‘common sense’ school of moral philosophy that was popular among members of America’s emerging middle class before the Civil War. It describes these parallels, how they reflected a common cultural milieu that shaped the outlook of the common sense philosophers, their adherents and education theorists in antebellum America, and the authorities at West Point, and identifies traits that distinguished how many West Point graduates conducted themselves during the American Civil War that are suggestive of these parallels.

Voyages through empirical common sense: the practice of science in India by James Tod (1782–1835)

In James Tod's travel writings we can observe a paradoxical application of the empirical field observations of the emerging British physical sciences, together with the theoretical framework of the Scottish Common Sense school which sought abstract causes for observed phenomena in an overall evolutionary scale. In geodetical surveying, Tod used Western scientific instruments and also resorted to Indian assistants and Indian estimations of local distances. In geology, Tod noted the formations of mountain ridges and volcanic eruptions, while dreaming of profits from copper and precious stone deposits. In botany, Tod seems to have followed Jussieu's natural climate zones rather than Linnaeus's Latin binomial labels, while also respecting William Jones's example in using local Indian plant names when possible, and showing a selective attention to potentially useful plants and likely agricultural revenues. Thus, Tod can be credited with moving ideas of Western science into Indian contexts, following the dominant scientific trends of his time and leaving the scientific techniques of his Indian assistants in a doubly subordinate position – in relation to the professional British scientists in India, and in relation to the metropolitan British scientists in Britain.

Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham (eds), Medicine and religion in Enlightenment Europe, The History of Medicine in Context, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007, pp. ix, 267, illus, £55.00 (hardcover 978-0-7546-5638-8).

Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham (eds), Medicine and religion in Enlightenment Europe, The History of Medicine in Context, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007, pp. ix, 267, illus, £55.00 (hardcover 978-0-7546-5638-8).

‘Philosophically playing the Devil’: recovering readers’ responses to David Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment

This article assesses the impact made by the Scottish Enlightenment on eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century readers, focusing especially on their responses to the controversial works of David Hume. Although Hume's History of England and collected Essays and Treatises could be found on most contemporary library shelves, it finds that many readers were alienated by Hume's scepticism and turned to Scottish Common Sense philosophers such as Thomas Reid, James Beattie and George Campbell to disprove some of his more ‘obnoxious’ pronouncements. In the process, it highlights the potentialities and pitfalls inherent in a range of complementary approaches to the history of reading.

The Rediscovery of Common Sense Philosophy. By Stephen Boulter

Pp. xvi, 239 , New York , Palgrave Macmillan , 2007 , $74.95. Should philosophy be based upon common sense? Stephen Boulter argues that it should. What would philosophy look like if it were in friendly ‘relations’ with common sense? This text explores these and related questions. Contrary to popular conception and practice Boulter argues that any philosophical paradox and counterintuitive thesis ought to make one conclude that an error has been made in the formulation of the philosophical position, which reinforces the validity of the common sense foundation. This book is essentially a defense of the philosophy of common sense broadly in the spirit of Thomas Reid and G.E. Moore. The text breaks new ground, proffering a meta-philosophy of common sense, which draws upon the work of Aristotle, contemporary evolutionary biology and psychology, as well as historical studies on the origins of early modern philosophy (particularly Descartes). Boulter also dialogues rather extensively with Gilbert Ryle, John Austin, and Paul Grice within this text. Part One offers new answers to the questions: What counts as a common sense belief? Why should common sense beliefs be considered default positions?, and Why is it that philosophers so frequently end up denying what we all know to be true? Pointedly, chapter one sets forth the distinctive and characteristic claims of a common sense philosopher, and draws up a tentative list of nearly two dozen common sense positions that philosophers would do well to respect. For example, building upon G.E. Moore, Boulter notes that the existence of material bodies within the universe, that all material objects are located within space, that human beings have minds endowed with higher level consciousness, and that mental acts are contained within (and ontologically dependent upon) bodies should be taken as a given truths. From Reid, Boulter constructs the following given truths (among others): that memory of an event is reliable (particularly recent ones), that there are some things that cannot exist by themselves (i.e., they must be in something else, as qualities or attributes), that moral judgments are true or false, and that most universally accepted principles should be taken as first principles (pp. 28–31). In chapter two, Boulter offers a rigorous defense of the position that common sense beliefs ought to be treated as default positions. Interestingly, within this chapter Boulter suggests that a proposition counts as a common sense belief if it is reasonable to assume that it was necessary to ensure either social or ecological fitness in the evolution of hominids (I wonder, pointedly, if he would classify religion as such?). In chapters three and four Boulter questions why it is that philosophers of the past have commonly posited answers to questions that the common person never asks. In part, he suggests, these philosophical errors (at least in the modern period) are due to these philosophers (unwittingly) conducting their philosophical endeavors according to the rules and expectations of medieval theologians, and not of the philosophers. Part Two defends common sense beliefs from specific challenges from prominent philosophers on topics from metaphysics to ethics, which in essence is an application of his meta-philosophy developed in part one. In particular, chapter five is a defense of the view that the external world is independent of our representations of it, and that this world is perceived directly, without projective perception. Chapter six is a rebuttal of Michael Dummett's semantic anti-realist challenge to metaphysical realism. Herein Boulter argues that Dummett provides no veritable reason to give up the principle of bivalence (i.e., that every proposition takes exactly one of two truth values: true or false). Chapter seven focuses on the philosophy of mind, and is a refutation of the eliminative materialist claims holding that all mental states now deemed to be filled with intentional content must be rejected on the basis of a as-yet-unidentified concept of neuroscience. Chapter eight is, for me, the most valuable. Here Boulter asserts and defends the notion that humans are, at least some of the time, responsible for their actions (which is in contradistinction to Galen Strawson and Peter van Inwagen, who both argue for a sort of determinism) In sum, this book picks up the threads of former conceptions of the philosophy of common sense and relocates it within contemporary discussion, arguing for a return to intuitionism. Readers who have interests in early modern philosophy, intuitionism, and the Scottish School of Common Sense will find much to be delighted in. I caution the reader to be rather well versed with these topics, however, for Boulter makes assumptions rather regularly on the pre-understanding from the potential reader.

Common sense in philosophical and scientific perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to deepen our understanding of the philosophical and scientific pedigree of the concept of “common sense”, and explore the implications for managerial decision‐makers.Design/methodology/approachAfter examining the management literature on this topic, a brief history of the notion and philosophy of common sense is followed by a review of recent findings in cognitive science and other fields and a discussion of implications for managerial decision‐making.FindingsThe notion of common sense has a stable perceptual basis in the makeup of the human mind, as has been shown by philosophers and scientists. Common sense intuitions serve as the basis for making sense of the world: visual perception, scientific reasoning, language, psychology, mathematics, and moral judgments are all rooted in “mental hardware” of common sense. While it is a necessary element of human cognition, common sense can nevertheless lead us astray if we are unaware of its contours and limitations, which are outlined in this paper.Practical implicationsUnderstanding that the mind comes equipped with a host of common sense mental instincts will have an impact on both one's own decision‐making processes, and how decision‐makers attempt to influence others.Originality/valueBased on original research as well as literature from a variety of disciplines, this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the philosophical and scientific pedigree of “common sense” and its implications for decision‐makers.

Review: Stephen Boulter: The Rediscovery of Common Sense Philosophy

Review: Stephen Boulter: The Rediscovery of Common Sense Philosophy

Charlotte M. Yonge: Reading, Writing, and Recycling Historical Fiction in the Nineteenth Century

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes [1] Budge argues convincingly that the “Victorian typological world view” should be traced—not to the impact of German idealism or early nineteenth‐century Evangelicalism—but to the Common Sense philosophers and theologians of the late eighteenth century such as Joseph Butler. An expanded version of Budge’s analysis here appears in chapters four and five of his recent book, Charlotte M. Yonge: Religion, Feminism, and Realism in the Victorian Novel (Bern: Peter Lang AG, 2007). [2] Yonge slightly misquotes canto II, verse iv, substituting “thou must watch with me” for “I shall watch with thee”. The line also appears earlier in canto I, verse xxii in the form “he shall watch with thee”, as part of Lady Branksome’s instructions to her retainer (Scott, Poetical Works 6). [3] See R.B. Anolik, “Gothic Murder: Containment of Horror in Charlotte Yonge’s Chantry House”, for a fuller exploration of Yonge’s engagement with the Gothic genre in this novel. This paper suggests that Yonge creates a “moral synthesis” which brings closure to the “typically disruptive Gothic text”. [4] Ironically, the box of silver coins has been planted by Lovel—who is believed to be illegitimate himself and thus rejected as a suitor for Isabella Wardour—in an effort to save Sir Arthur from ruin (295–96). [5] The two ladies afford a great contrast, though. While Lady Glenallen is a sinister matriarch whose wicked and duplicitous attempt to prevent her son’s marriage leads to the suicide of the woman he loves and his own decline, Margaret Winslow is a victim of family pride and greed. The first creates a destructive family secret, the consequences of which are only set right by her death; the second exposes a fraud after her own demise. [6] Yonge herself was aware of the criticism in sections of the press concerning her use of the supernatural, and wrote to her friend Miss Barnett that “indeed I did not put in the ghost for the sake of variety or sensation, but to work out my own belief and theory. I could tell you things that I quite believe that chime with it” (Coleridge, Yonge 306).

The Hero as Seer: Character, Perception and Cultural Health in Carlyle

A rhetoric of spectrality pervades Thomas Carlyle’s writings, in a way which is intimately related to his characteristic position of “natural supernaturalism.” This essay argues that Carlyle’s rhetorical emphasis on spectral hallucinations in his descriptions of social upheavals such as those of revolutionary France reflects the influence on his work of physiological theories of perception stemming from the medical thought of Erasmus Darwin, theories which are frequently invoked in early nineteenth-century theories of ghosts and apparitions. Carlyle’s preoccupation in his historical writing with the figure of the “Great Man” also reflects this medical context, in that the Great Man’s superior ability to perceive the reality of his historical moment is understood by Carlyle as indicative of a superior cultural “health” that he manages to convey to the society of his time, contrasted by Carlyle with the state of feverish delirium characteristic of revolutionary situations. The essay suggests that this relationship to theories of perception aligns the Carlylean “Great Man” to the figures of the Wordsworthian poet and the Romantic genius more generally, and also helps to explain the Victorian emphasis on “character,” of which the Carlylean historiography of “Great Men” is an example. The placing of individual character at the centre of accounts of perception by nineteenth-century thinkers such as Carlyle and Ruskin reacts against the determinism associated with Enlightenment thought’s assumption that in perception the mind is passively imprinted with sense-data, and reflects the influence of the alternative account of perception as a process of interpretation of signs put forward by Thomas Reid and other Common Sense philosophers.

Trying to Think with Emily Dickinson (review)

Reviewed by: Trying to Think with Emily Dickinson Melanie Hubard (bio) Jed Deppman . Trying to Think with Emily Dickinson. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 2008. Cloth: $80. Paper: $26.95. Jed Deppman's catchily titled book takes Emily Dickinson seriously as a thinker. In Deppman's account, Dickinson, who was familiar with the available philosophical vocabularies of her day, adroitly steers between the Scylla of a materialistic Scottish Common Sense philosophy and the Charybdis of Transcendental idealisms based on Immanuel Kant. Deppman's careful close readings of rarely discussed (as well as familiar) poems make the case that Dickinson is a post-metaphysical thinker for our time. Engaging notions of Gianni Vattimo's "weak thought," Rortian neo-pragmatic "conversation," reader-centric [End Page 108] and process-oriented hermeneutic theory, and a generalized anti-foundationalism, Deppman demonstrates that Dickinson's poetry eschews a metaphysics of presence and that her poems do philosophy in their own right. Her writings constitute an artful appropriation of linguistic experience for philosophical experiment: if experience is mediated, linguistic, processual, and collective, then poetry is the site of especially fruitful investigations because, by instantiating such theories, it can then test and interrogate them. So Dickinson is a postmodern poet, in effect. If this is the strong claim of the book, the weaker claim is that "certain strains in postmodern thought can help make visible central aspects of her poetry, and her poetry has the power to illuminate and respond to contemporary situations"(8). The first two chapters set out to demonstrate both Dickinson's affinity with contemporary postmodern discourse and her poetry's ability to critique, say, Richard Rorty's insufficient accounting for the other in conversation (37). Deppman roots Dickinson's critical power in the vocabularies available to her, including Christianity and the radical experimental ethos of Francis Bacon. Such public schoolmasters as Isaac Watts make the "mind the site of resistance, study, and experiment" through which a thinker like Dickinson "produces the proto-Kantian results of failure, dissatisfaction, and repetition"(57). The finest statement of Dickinson's philosophical influences takes place in chapter three—alone worth the price of the book—as it sets out in helpful detail which thinkers were being taught at Amherst Academy and the College, who taught them, what their prejudices and predilections were, which books were read and borrowed in and out of the Dickinson household, and what sort of thoughtful conversations would have been available to Dickinson among her college-age (mostly male) peers. As Deppman puts it, "[o]n historical grounds alone the subject [of Dickinson's readings in philosophy] deserves to be integrated into the critical conversations"(78). After treating in detail both Scottish Common Sense philosophers (a heterogenous bunch) and the American interpreters of Kantian thought, Deppman deftly focuses on associationism as the site of contestation over the "irreconcilable vocabularies of 'Mind' and 'Brain'"(99). Chapter four pursues description (or definition) as such, demonstrating that the names we attach to things and the metaphysical (or cultural) logics that guarantee the validity of those names turn out to have high philosophical stakes, a point of which nineteenth-century lexicographers such as Noah Webster and Joseph Worcester were perfectly well aware. Dickinson's definition poems actively weaken certitude and fixity—reference—by emphasizing process, experience, and [End Page 109] conversation, and in this she echoes the theologian Horace Bushnell, who in 1849 startlingly averred that "'language as an instrument' is 'wholly inadequate to the exact representation of thought'"(qtd. in Deppman 119), let alone truth. Chapter five explores Dickinson's thinking about reading as a trope for female self-definition and negotiation with society, and chapter six treats death as the limit-thought that marks both our nearness to the sublime and our human inability to contain or think it. Deppman anticipates, in his introduction, the objection that his approach might be considered ahistorical (10), and it is, I think, a weakness that the book argues that there are affinities with postmodern thinkers otherwise quite alien to Dickinson, but not why. How, indeed, did Dickinson come to reject both Common Sense and Transcendentalism—especially Transcendentalism? The answer has to involve yet further historicizing. My money's on the...