Supporting the study, critique, and appreciation of American philosophy and culture--"American Studies"-- in the tradition of William James, John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, Emerson, Thoreau, et al... This site was constructed initially to support an Independent Readings course at Middle Tennessee State University in the Spring 2021 semester.
It was on this day in 1837 that Ralph Waldo Emerson(books by this author) delivered a speech entitled "The American Scholar" to the Phi Beta Kappa society at Harvard University.
Emerson wasn't especially well known at the time. He was actually filling in for Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who had backed out of the speaking engagement at the last minute.
The speech was the first time he explained his transcendentalist philosophy in front of a large public audience. He said that scholars had become too obsessed with ideas of the past, that they were bookworms rather than thinkers. He told the audience to break from the past, to pay attention to the present, and to create their own new, unique ideas.
He said: "Life is our dictionary ... This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it ... Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds."
The speech was published that same year. It made Emerson famous, and it brought the ideas of transcendentalism to young men like Henry David Thoreau. Oliver Wendell Holmes later praised Emerson's "The American Scholar" as the "intellectual Declaration of Independence." WA
On August 28, 1963, a quarter of a million people marched to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to protest racial inequality.
Mahalia Jackson, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and others led the crowd in song before speeches by John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders.
📸: Marchers with signs at the March on Washington, 1963 (Marion S. Trikosko/Library of Congress)
What Gillian Welch and David Rawlings Took from the Tornado
"…d.r.: And you stand up onstage in front of all these people and play. It's such an honor to have all of your energy focussed on this one thing that you care about so much. And to know that all the work you've done in the past—all the thinking about what the next line's going to be, or what the next story you're going to tell is, or what the next note you're gonna play is, or what you played last night that really was fun and you need to remember how to do that again because people enjoyed it so much and you enjoyed it, that you have this North Star. It's unreal.
g.w.: It's so heartening that, with everything that's going on in everybody's lives and in the world, people still feel that impulse. They still want to go and sit in a dark room and listen to people sing."
In "Keeping the Faith," Brenda Wineapple finds an ongoing battle over the soul of America in a century-old trial.
...[Darrow] was a man in the mold of Robert Ingersoll, a.k.a. the Great Agnostic, the freethinker who tore through the lecture halls of the 19th century smashing all the idols of Christian America. The labor leader Eugene V. Debs, the women's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois and a very long list of philosophers, writers, education reformers and politicians were of the same, heretical stripe.
These were Darrow's people — his friends, his admirers, his clients, his forebears, his fellow dreamers — and some of them get cameos in this book. They saw themselves, rightly, as part of a movement that, extending back to the Republic's enlightened founders, defied the orthodoxies of the time to keep America true to its democratic promise. They played a critical, underappreciated role in navigating the economic and social conflicts that roiled the Progressive Era.
It all came to a head once again in the crucible of a Tennessee summer, when Darrow and Bryan faced off. At stake was the very idea of self-government. One man held that the safety of the nation demanded the enforcement of a common creed revealed from on high. The other maintained that the foundation of human freedom rests not on the uniformity of belief but on the contest of ideas among an educated public at the bar of reason.
Under Darrow's ruthless cross-examination, Bryan's ignorance even of the Bible (never mind Darwin) was exposed. Scopes was found guilty (no surprise there), but the idea of government of, by and for the people lived another day.
Wineapple prefers not to draw as many explicit connections with the American past and future as this reviewer would have liked. She is also not nearly as judgmental. But I will get over it. "Keeping the Faith" is history at its most delicious, presented free from the musty smell of the archives where it was clearly assembled with great care. And if you have been awake for the past 16 years or so, you won't miss the point. The struggles of yesteryear between reason and ignorance do not merely illuminate those of the present. They are the same struggle. This is a story from a past that isn't even past.
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KEEPING THE FAITH: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation | By Brenda Wineapple | Random House | 509 pp. | $38
700+ newly-credentialed grads this morning at Murphy Center, always a milestone to celebrate. I do wonder how many of them were truly "liberally" educated, in the best sense of the term (the sense we try to support in the MALA program).
But it's never too late to learn and grow, as most of you know; so good luck to the class of '24 and to all who follow.
(And btw, Jada, your poster on the wall looks great.)
On this day in 1854, Henry David Thoreau published Walden; or, Life in the Woods (books by this author). His friend Ralph Waldo Emerson said he saw a "tremble of great expectation" in Thoreau just before publication day. Thoreau's previous book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), sold fewer than 300 copies. On the day he got his 706 unsold copies back from the publisher, he wrote in his diary: "I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself ..." Walden didn't do much better. It took five years to sell off the first edition of 2,000 copies, and Thoreau did not live to see a second edition. He managed to arrange a nationwide lecture tour, but only one city made an offer, and so Thoreau kept his lectures to the Concord area. Since then, millions of copies of Walden have been sold. WA
Hi everyone, this is my diversity in Philosophy. I am so sorry I could not present in class. It has been an interesting two weeks for me to say the least, but here it is! I hope you enjoyed reading my PowerPoint posted above. I decided to do an overview presentation on what diversity looks like in North American philosophy (sorry I tried to stay within American culture, but had to add a little piece of Canada in there). I began by introducing what diversity looks like in the university philosophy departments, and suggested a possible reason why there are such small amounts of minorities in the program. Though, my main focus for this presentation are the three philosophers mentioned. In my research, these philosophers stuck out to me, based on their theories, ideas, and individual stories. Each philosopher comes from a different background. Cornel West is an African American philosopher, Maria Lugones is a lesbian/Latin American philosopher, and Dale Turner is an Indigenous Canadian philosopher. The key aspect of these philosophers is that they are impactful in todays society. They have touched on and have worked to change diversity issues in the North American society. Also, I believe they are working to change the view of philosophy in the younger audience, which we talked about in text and in class. This is just a little tidbit of diversity in philosophy, as well as, where philosophy could be headed in North America.
I would love to hear what you guys think about this topic. Has anyone heard about these three philosophers before? Do you know of others that fit the same description? Also, speaking on diversity topics has become more popular as I grew up, where do you think this is headed? Do you think philosophy in America will change because of this in the coming years? If yes, what will these changes look like?
Jada's getting her report draft ready, and will be giving us some discussion questions to consider and respond to. Meanwhile, here's a link to it, if anyone would care to go ahead and offer comments.
I'm hitting the road for my annual August meetup with far-flung friends and won't have as much time this week to think up questions. Let's crowd-source them. UPDATE: I'm back, had a great time (see below). Thanks for your questions, crowd. 🙏
Anderson, ch12-15; McDermott, ch13-14; Romano Parts 5-6. REPORT: Hailey, Isocrates (Romano pt 5); Jada, ---
Had you ever even heard of Isocrates? Why do you think most of us haven't? Do you prefer him to his more famous almost-namesake?
COMMENT?: "In the United States, we don't have to teach people how to philosophize because the country's immense diversity forces them to it. And if, in America, we've come to recognize that truth comes from consensus... Isocrates, not Socrates, is our man." 560
Are you persuaded by Romano that President Obama was a pragmatist (in the American philosophical sense)? Is it likely that we'll have a philosophically-inclined president in the future?
Looking back over our whirlwind mini-'mester, how would you summarize what you've learned about the intersection of American philosophy and American culture? Are you hopeful and optimistic for the future prospects of democracy in America, or otherwise? Or is it hard to think beyond November?
More coming soon... Please help me out, everybody post a couple of discussion questions.
I'm back... Do you agree with Emerson (and Anderson, and James) that "language...routinely and inevitably falls short of experience" and that, therefore, there's a place for the poetic in philosophy? 196
Anderson says John Dewey, despite his strong advocacy of democracy, "displays deep misgivings about American culture" and "recognizes the need...to be prepared for the failures of democracy in a precarious world" (215). Do you have such misgivings? Are you prepared? Do you think we can rebound from our failures?
What do you think it means to say that "community must cross time as well as space"? 232 (HINT: see Dewey's gravestone epitaph)
Are you an Either/Or or a Both/And thinker? 243-4
Do you agree with McDermott that "boredom and ennui are signs of a living death"? 198
Is indoor and night-time baseball a mistake? 205
Have cities become hostile to the "human scale" and absent a suitable "personscape"? 207
COMMENT?: "Education is a process of living and not a preparation for future living." 217
COMMENT?: "What the best and wisest parent wants for his/her own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools... destroys our democracy." 221
COMMENT?: "Isolation from the flow of experience is a fate worse than death..." 222
Following up last week's discussion of "cyberphilosophy"...
Here’s Why ‘The Matrix’ Is More Relevant Than Ever One scene reflects the themes — A.I., fake news, transgender lives and Gen X — that make the film a classic.
Neo, the hero of “The Matrix,” is sure he lives in 1999. He has a green-hued cathode-ray-tube computer screen and a dot-matrix printer. His city has working phone booths.
But he’s wrong: He lives in the future (2199, to be exact). Neo’s world is a simulation — a fake-out version of the late 20th century, created by 21st-century artificial intelligences to enslave humanity.
When we first saw Neo, though, it really was 1999. The idea of A.I. feeding on human brains and bodies seemed like a thought experiment. But the movie’s warnings about A.I. — and everything else — have sharpened over time, which explains why it’s been harnessed by all kinds of people in the years since: philosophers, pastors, techno-boosters and techno-doomers, the alt-right. Judged solely on cultural relevance, “The Matrix” might be the most consequential release of 1999... nyt
It was on this day in 1965 that Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act that ended the long era of voter discrimination in many Southern states. Johnson had been delaying legislation on voting rights, because he thought it was too soon for it to succeed. But after a group of civil rights marchers were attacked in Selma, Alabama, he gave a speech on TV, in which he said: "I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote ... it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome."
That was the first time the president of the United States had ever used the phrase, "We shall overcome." Martin Luther King Jr. was watching the address on TV that night, and he later said that when he heard Lyndon Johnson say the words "we shall overcome," he burst into tears. The president signed the legislation a few months later, on this day in 1965.
And it was on this day in 1945 that the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. It was the first time that a nuclear weapon was ever used in warfare, and only the second time that a nuclear weapon had ever been exploded. It was dropped over Hiroshima at 8:15 in the morning. It exploded 1,900 feet above the ground. Capt Robert Lewis watched the explosion from his cockpit and wrote in his journal, "My God, what have we done?"
"Men do not like to feel themselves in danger. Yet, it is because there are real dangers, real failures and real earthly damnation that words like victory, wisdom, or joy have meaning. Nothing is decided in advance, and it is because man has something to lose and because he can lose that he can also win." — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity Thr
Also William James's view:
"If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight,—as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem..." --The Dilemma of Determinism, 1895
"Hot can be cool, and cool can be hot, and each can be both. But hot or cool, man, jazz is jazz."
Louis Armstrong, the legendary trumpeter and jazz vocalist, was born on August 4, 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
In a career that spanned decades and brought jazz music to the fore of American culture, Armstrong's on-stage companions ranged from Bing Crosby to Ella Fitzgerald to Barbara Streisand.
We try to highlight better books to learn about Appalachia than Hillbilly Elegy, so each day until the election we're going to share a different one you should read instead.
If you know baseball, and baseball cinema, you'll recognize the images of the original Durham Bulls ballpark which the city has preserved as an urban park. And maybe you'll recall the scene in the film "Bull Durham" when the coach berates his players for being "Lollygaggers"... which is why my old grad school pals and I have started to call our annual meetup at a designated minor league baseball venue a Lollypalooza, and ourselves a
We started the annual August meetup in 2017, converging on Nashville from various far-flung places in the southeast U.S. (just two of us reside in middle TN). In subsequent years (missing only the first pandemic summer of '20) we've been to Chattanooga, Asheville, Huntsville, Lexington, Knoxville (Kodak TN), and now Durham.
For next year we're talking about Greenville SC, home of one of this year's new Lollygaggers. And the year after, since we've picked now up a Minnesotan (seems like that's suddenly a trend, since today is Tim Walz's veep candidacy debut), we may have to think about getting on a plane to St. Paul. After that, Fred, Durango?
Everyone should make a point of keeping up and meeting up with old friends through the decades. It really is like stepping back in time, for a weekend. It's a good and happiness-inducing thing to do.
And thanks to Younger Daughter for taking good care of the pooches in my absence. Maybe she needs a tee-shirt that says
…On Saturday, a group of Black Nashville residents stood downtown in support of the young children who had faced racist vitriol from the group and to voice frustration with what they felt was an uneven treatment by the police. Amplified by a megaphone, their chants reverberated over passers-by on their way to a Bitcoin conference, tourists headed to the Country Music Hall of Fame and bachelorette parties wheeling by.
Robert C. Sherrill, a business leader and youth advocate who lives in North Nashville, took the bullhorn and asked, "What are we doing, America?"
"…The 55 men who assembled in Philadelphia 237 years ago to hammer out an American Constitution differed on a great many things. Among the rare points on which most agreed was that the American people could not be trusted to choose a president for themselves. They were easily misled, too often "the dupes of pretend patriots."
Diversity in philosophy.pptx
