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.
I've been on a Bryson kick lately, re-reading Made in America and One Summer: America, 1927, and listening to a collection of his various BBC appearances over the years. He has a unique perspective on Americana: born and raised in Des Moines, he's spent most of his adult life in England but recently has been back and forth enough to feel like a "suave cosmopolitan"... and he's very funny.
But this is one of his serious moments:
“Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.” ― Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away
Part Four of America the Philosophical is about "cyberphilosophy," a term that already sounds dated. (AtP is over a decade old now.) But do you think the presence of contemporary philosophers and students of philosophy on the internet is likely to make consumers of that content more reflective and wise, and ultimately to raise our culture's tone of discourse? Will it create conditions of greater public civility? Or has the internet just become a "place" where people go to find others who share their prejudices and political biases, rather than a place to challenge them and think them through?
"You have the people of the book, which is the East Coast, and the people of the screen, which is the West Coast." 469 Are we all people of the screen now, even the relative few of us who still read for pleasure and enlightenment? Is my "Save the book" bumper sticker promoting a lost cause? (NOTE: I own, borrow, and read lots of books on my kindle, but a culture of the screen is one which seems to place less value on the word than the image. Are we there yet, or headed there?)
Do you think the computer revolution is "a living fulfillment of... the pragmatism of James and Dewey"? 474
"...the only solution [is] better educated citizens... dedicated to 'the common good.'" 482 True? Likely?
"Machines are becoming biological and the biological is becoming engineered." Are Kevin Kelly, Ray Kurzweil et al prophets of the Singularity? Is it getting nearer?
Is the "global brain" hypothesis kooky or plausible? Or Gaia? 489 Do both represent a misplaced "impulse to worship" (technology in the first instance, the earth in the latter)? 495
Can you recommend any good sci-fi/cyberlit? 496ff.
Is Jaron Lanier right? Are we, or will we become, "gadgets"? 531 Comment?: “But the Turing test cuts both ways. You can't tell if a machine has gotten smarter or if you've just lowered your own standards of intelligence to such a degree that the machine seems smart. If you can have a conversation with a simulated person presented by an AI program, can you tell how far you've let your sense of personhood degrade in order to make the illusion work for you?"
Do you listen to any philosophy-themed podcasts?*
Do you find Dewey's "sensible mysticism" preferable to an "otherworldly mysticism"? Do you agree with Anderson that it is more attuned to the "American quest"?142
Springsteen, Little Feat, Warren Zevon, Neil Young... some of my favorites. Yours? What about any of the other musicians mentioned in Anderson's ch9?
"Marcuse's one-dimensional man who is doomed to an Archie Bunker status": the exception in America, or the rule? 149
What do you think of the juxtaposition of Springsteen's "Born to Run" with Thoreau's "Walking"? 153-4 Do both express something like Whitman's democratic vision?
Dewey said "a democracy cannot long be sustained by an ignorant demos." Agree? Is that what we've got? 159 Can we effectively teach "sympathy with those who sincerely hold opinions different from our own"? 161
What can be done to rectify the situation in which "the majority of our high school students arrive at college with no conception of what philosophers do or why [they] do it"? 166
If "the community" cared for all children as the best and wisest parents do, would it be so "oblivious" to the children victimized by war and neglect? McD 169
What do you think of the Montessori approach to childhood education? 174ff.
Do you agree that we need "a radical transformation of the curriculum in teacher education programs"? 180
Should students be more thoroughly introduced to "the experience of others," especially accomplished others in our cultural past, via the reading and study of biography? 188-9 Do you recall being impacted in school by a famous or accomplished person's biography? If so, who and how?
What else in this week's reading would you like to discuss?
Anticipating Erica's report:
Recent books on women in philosophy I've enjoyed:
Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Rachael Wiseman and Clare Mac Cumhaill...
The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times by Wolfram Eilenberger...
The Philosopher Queens: The lives and legacies of philosophy's unsung women by Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting...
The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics by Benjamin Lipscomb... Also see
Maria Popova's Figuring and her excellent website "The Marginalian"...
The history of philosophy has not done women justice: you’ve probably heard the names Plato, Kant, Nietzsche and Locke – but what about Hypatia, Arendt, Oluwole and Young?
The Philosopher Queens is a long-awaited book about the lives and works of women in philosophy by women in philosophy. This collection brings to centre stage twenty prominent women whose ideas have had a profound – but for the most part uncredited – impact on the world.
You’ll learn about Ban Zhao, the first woman historian in ancient Chinese history; Angela Davis, perhaps the most iconic symbol of the American Black Power Movement; Azizah Y. al-Hibri, known for examining the intersection of Islamic law and gender equality; and many more.
For anyone who has wondered where the women philosophers are, or anyone curious about the history of ideas – it's time to meet the philosopher queens. g'r
Carl Sagan’s account of Hypatia’s murder and the death of The Library
of Alexandria in the original Cosmos television series. 1980.
The Partially Examined Life A philosophy podcast by some former philosophy grad students discussing major works in a fun and accessible manner.
Philosophize This! Hosted by Stephen West, this podcast provides an engaging introduction to various philosophers and their ideas, starting from ancient to modern times.
The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps Peter Adamson's podcast covers the entire history of philosophy, episode by episode, from ancient Greece to contemporary thought.
Very Bad Wizards Not strictly a philosophy podcast, but explores philosophical topics in a humorous and engaging way, often combining philosophy with psychology.
Elucidations: A University of Chicago Philosophy Podcast Conversations with philosophers about their work and ideas, hosted by Matt Teichman.
New Books in Philosophy Interviews with philosophers about their new books across a wide range of philosophical topics.
Hi-Phi Nation A narrative-style podcast that brings philosophical ideas to life through stories and real-world examples.
The Philosophy Guy A podcast that explores various philosophical ideas and issues, often with a focus on contemporary topics.
The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast A British podcast that covers a range of philosophical topics and texts in an accessible way.
The American Philosophical Association Podcast Series Offers discussions and interviews with philosophers on various topics in American philosophy and beyond.
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The Tennessee State Museum is chock-full of Americana...
President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act on this day in 1958, creating a new federal agency dedicated to exploring the great beyond: NASA.
Project Mercury, NASA's first major undertaking, would set the space race into motion and put the United States on the path to landing on the moon.
https://to.pbs.org/44Kh1n9
For a French aristocrat born 219 years ago, on July 29, 1805, Alexis de Tocqueville sure had some prescient things to say about American society and politics. From his landmark Democracy in America, published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840: "In the United States, the common man has understood how the general prosperity affects his own happiness—a very simple idea, yet one of which the people in most countries have only a very limited grasp."
Maria Popova again has me thinking this (like its predecessor "Overstory") would be a good text for Environmental Ethics. Bioethics too.
"…Set sometime in the near future, when our search for life beyond the Solar System has come to its inevitable fruition, [Bewilderment] tells the story of a thirty-nine-year-old astrobiologist and his neurodivergent, frightened, boundlessly courageous nine-year-old son, searching together for other worlds and instead discovering how to reworld ours with meaning.
Radiating from their quest is a luminous invitation to live up to our nature not as creatures consumed by "the black hole of the self," as Powers so perfectly puts it in his talk, but as living empathy machines and portable cosmoses of possibility, whose planetary story is yet unwritten…
As the father searches for other worlds, he is savaged by despair at humanity's catastrophic mismanagement of this one, haunted by the growing sense that we couldn't possibly be good interplanetary emissaries until we have become good stewards of our own home planet. But each time he hits rock bottom, he bounces back up — as we all do, as we all must in order to go on living — with rekindled faith in what we are capable of…"
"In a truly democratic society, civil rights should not be contingent on a fortuitous combination of Supreme Court Justices." Revisit Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's essay, from 2020, exploring the undemocratic nature of the Court.
My wife and our best friends Nell and Pita just had a charming long weekend at a cabin in the woods of Monteagle, TN, near the University of the South. The place is steeped in Americana, including the Highlander Folk School and the "teahouse" future writers Walker Percy and Shelby Foote constructed at Lost Cove as teenagers in the '30s.
