Cathy Legg

What does American philosophy mean to you?

In “Why American Philosophy? Why Now?“ Larry Hickman writes, “American philosophy has its roots in the experimentalism that was required by a people who faced the task of coming to terms with the uncertainties of a radically new environment.” Although I believe there’s much truth in that statement, as an Australian I would hate to see the United States lay claim to frontier thinking. Moreover, history cuts many ways. If American philosophy is to claim its pioneers’ manifest courage and fresh thinking, will it also claim their wars of extermination, not to mention grabbing people from their native lands and working them unto death? But one thing I appreciate about American philosophy is that it’s OK to discuss these things. 

Hickman also notes, “a true experimentalism always reaches out in an attempt to be inclusive”—suggesting that Jane Addams was the American philosopher who first embraced this in philosophical practice, as she ventured from her privileged Boston upbringing into the immigrant neighborhoods of Chicago. I find such willingness to actually perform “experiments in living” to be one of the most inspiring aspects of American philosophy. Correspondingly, I see one of our biggest challenges to be not dropping back into the comforts of academicism (the existence of which are sometimes concealed by its many institutional frustrations).... (continues)

Cathy Legg is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University. Her research areas include Pragmatism (especially C.S. Peirce), Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, and Philosophy of Computing and Information. She is the author, with Christopher Hookway, of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on “Pragmatism” and has served on the Executive Board of the Charles S. Peirce Society.