Preview

Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
67 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club
Louis Menand’s book, The Metaphysical Club is a self-proclaimed story of ideas in America. Specifically, the book is a narrative history of the birth and influence of American Pragmatism. An ambitious work, which spans from the end of the Civil War past World War II, it traces the intellectual evolution of four main characters: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. However Menand’s

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In his book The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson, Daniel J. Boorstin attempted to “recapture the Jeffersonian world of ideas” by reconstructing the writings of the Jeffersonian from the American Philosophy Society. He attempted to show the relationship between the different Jeffersonian conceptions, starting with God and ending with society. Furthermore, Boorstin’s attempted to bring coherency to the Jeffersonian tradition in order to save it from the “vagueness which has enveloped much of liberal thought”. Among the major themes in the book is the materialist conception of the Jeffersonian, which begins with ideas of the Creator as the divine “Architect” of nature, and the economy of nature, which explains the efficiency and the practicality with which the Creator made nature. These ideas become the foundation for which all other Jeffersonian ideas stem from. Among them are early conceptions of pragmatism. Therefore, the thesis of this paper concerns Jeffersonian thought exhibited early traces of pragmatism in its ideas of the Creator, the “physiology of thought and morals”, and…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In 46 Pages author Scott Liell is able to poignantly illustrate the colonies metamorphosis from a dependent arm of the English Empire to an independent country, the catalyst for which was Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Liell is able to not only articulate the turning point of the American consensus towards independence, but he also very intelligibly depicts the sentiments of all facets of colonial dogma and the torrential effect that Common Sense had in loosening the cement that held those beliefs. Using fantastic examples of the opinions of Tories, Whigs, and those ambivalent towards independence, Liell efficiently and eloquently establishes that, although turning the populous mentality towards independence happened almost overnight, it did not happen easily. Paine, an unsuspecting hero from a modest upbringing, was met with both fervent praise and grave dissension upon publishing what could accurately be referred to as his "master work." Never in the history of mankind has a singular document been so powerful to bring men to act for a cause, a cause they were, just prior to reading Common Sense, trepidatious and hesitant of. In 46 Pages few stones are left unturned leaving the reader with a comprehensive and complete understanding of one of the most important documents not only in American history, but in human history as well.…

    • 1315 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Bibliography: Commager, Henry Steele. The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Character Since the 1880s. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.…

    • 1821 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Alexander Hamilton Influence

    • 3876 Words
    • 16 Pages

    Often when one thinks of the American Revolution or the American Enlightenment, the philosophies and contributions of men like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin are taken into consideration. Indeed they were great thinkers and very pivotal figures in our country's liberation from Great Britain, however more people played a role in accomplishing this great task. America's founding fathers consisted of several of men, all of whom contributed unique and innovative ideas that would eventually helped to shape our country. Heavily influenced by men such as Locke, Rousseau, and Paine, a great deal of the ideas and political plans which emerged during the 18th century were focused solely…

    • 3876 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Chinard, Gilbert, ed. The Commonplace Book of Thomas Jefferson: A Repertory of His Ideas on Government (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1926).…

    • 1915 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    charles wright mills

    • 1750 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Charles Wright Mills C. Wright Mills was born in Waco, Texas on August 28, 1916 and lived in Texas until he was twenty-three years old.[1] His father, Charles Grover Mills, worked as an insurance salesman while his mother,Frances Wright Mills, stayed at home as a housewife.[1][4] His family moved constantly when he was growing up and as a result, he lived a relatively isolated life with few continuous relationships.[5] Mills graduated from Dallas Technical High School in 1934.[6] He initially attended Texas A&M University but left after his first year and subsequently graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1939 with a bachelor's degree in sociology and a master's degree in philosophy. By the time he graduated, Mills had already been published in the two leading sociology journals in the U.S., the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology.[7] Mills received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1942. His dissertation was entitled "A Sociological Account of Pragmatism: An Essay on the Sociology of Knowledge."[8] Mills refused to revise his dissertation while it was reviewed, and it was later accepted without approval from the review committee.[9] Mills left Wisconsin in early 1942 upon being appointed Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Mills was described as a man in a hurry, and aside from his hurried nature, he was largely known for his combativeness. Both his private life, with three marriages, a child from each, and several affairs, and his professional life, which involved challenging and criticizing many of his professors and coworkers, are characterized as "tumultuous". He wrote a fairly obvious, though slightly veiled, essay in criticism of the former chairman of the Wisconsin department, and called the senior theorist there, Howard Becker, a "real fool". On one special occasion when Mills was honored during a visit to the Soviet Union as a major critic of…

    • 1750 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Man of Two Minds

    • 280 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Different people with different personalities and social histories contributed ideas that helped shape America life. In the excerpt, “The Man of Two Minds” from The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand focuses on the brilliance of William James. According to his sister Alice, William James was “just like a blob of mercury.” (76). He was a talented artist, and his father protected him from getting close to the battlefield. Instead, he joined the Newport Artillery Company and later studied at the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard. James was indecisive about many choices he had to make. He frequently changed his mind, and the paths he took were unpredictable.…

    • 280 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    History Questions

    • 451 Words
    • 2 Pages

    What was the title of Alfred Thayer Mahon’s book? What two things did he say? (Three points)…

    • 451 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The era of the 1770’s was one of confusion, rebellion, and liberation. The British had stopped its salutary neglect of the American colonies and now taxed them heavily to make up for their losses in the seven years’ war. During this turmoil, an upstarting journalist in Philadelphia by the name of Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet entitled common sense. His simple purpose for this fairly large document was for his fellow man to set aside his or her prejudices and listen to his arguments; mainly that the time for talking has passed and the only thing left to do is raise arms. Paine wields the argumentative appeals, Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in a strong and yet eloquent way that adds immense power to his disputes with Britain.…

    • 854 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Lukacs

    • 4083 Words
    • 17 Pages

    * Kadvany, John, 2001. Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-2659-0.…

    • 4083 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In 1883 Spencer was elected a corresponding member of philosophical section of the French academy of moral and political sciences. (2)…

    • 422 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Best Essays

    The main streams constituting modern European and American thought, as imperialism, empiricism, rationalism, utilitarianism, racism and pragmatism, commenced from the Enlightenment and the prodigious series of changes following French and American Revolutions, and also ongoing Industrial Revolution. Historians as Thomas Hobsbawm has remarked that nineteenth-century debate in theology, politics, philosophy, economics and science were ultimately inseparable from an implied stance toward the bourgeois revolutionary ideals. Hence nineteenth-century thinkers could be seen as divided along the border line of obstruction and adherence to the interest of bourgeois class. Economic liberalists such as Smith, Richardo and Malthus and those advocating utilitarianism, such as John Staurt Mill and Jeremy Bentham, made their arguments on political and philosophical foundations given by the thinkers of bourgeois Enlightenment, such as Rousseau, Lock and Hume. Colossal theorists standing in the row of ‘opposition’ including almost the entire constellation of Romantic writers, anarchists and the French symbolists, Christian and Utopian socialists, and eventually the Victorian writers Carlyle, Ruskin, William Morris and Mathew Arnold. An important strand of thought inherited by writers was “Hetrological or alternative tradition (Habib, A History OF Literary Criticism, p503). This tradition exhibits some of historical continuity with the Romantics, the symbolists, and decadents as well as several afflictions with humanists such as Irving Babbit in America and Mathew Arnold in England, both of whom deplored the effects of French Revolution.…

    • 2394 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    english importance

    • 5009 Words
    • 21 Pages

    • Occupy Wall Street Essay • Career Essay • Essay on Humor • Essay on Languages • What is Success • Chemo Alternative • Ice Storms Essay • Mexico Drug Cartels and Ore • Susan Boyle Essay • Nelson Mandela Praises • Nelson Mandela Legacy • North Korea Kim Jong Un • Essay on Morals • Visit to the Zoo • Computer Addiction • Knowledge and Wisdom • metric o-rings hydraulic cylinder seal back-up ring as568 o-ring o-ring sizes 台中瑜珈 • 關鍵字廣告…

    • 5009 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    123456

    • 2114 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Pragmatism was a philosophical tradition that originated in the United States around 1870. The most important of the ‘classical pragmatists’ were Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), William James (1842–1910) and John Dewey (1859-1952). The influence of pragmatism declined during the first two thirds of the twentieth century, but it has undergone a revival since the 1970s with philosophers being increasingly willing to use the writings and ideas of the classical pragmatists, and also a number of thinkers, such as Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam and Robert Brandom developing philosophical views that represent later stages of the pragmatist tradition. The core of pragmatism was the pragmatist maxim, a rule for clarifying the contents of hypotheses by tracing their ‘practical consequences’. In the work of Peirce and James, the most influential application of the pragmatist maxim was to the concept of truth. But the pragmatists have also tended to share a distinctive epistemological outlook, a fallibilist anti-Cartesian approach to the norms that govern inquiry.…

    • 2114 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays