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The Editors Jennifer Keefe Jenny Keefe is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Her research interests include Scottish Philosophy, British Idealism and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy. She is the editor of James Frederick Ferrier: Selected Writings (2011) and the author of articles and book chapters on Ferrier’s philosophy and the British Idealists.
19th Century
Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie
The Philosophy of the 19th Century Volume 2
2
Kipton Jensen Kipton Jensen is a Professor of Philosophy at Morehouse College. His scholarly interests include German Idealism, American Pragmatism, and the philosophy of religion. Jensen has published Hegel: Hovering, Parallel Discourses, and Howard Thurman and the Search for Common Ground.
United Kingdom and United States United Kingdom and United States
Edited by Kipton Jensen and Jennifer Keefe
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The Philosophy of the 19th Century Volume 2 United Kingdom and United States This volume covers the philosophical developments in the United Kingdom and the United States during the 19th century. It comprises thirty essays, divided into seven chapters, which survey the historical and institutional context (Section 1), empiricism and utilitarianism in Britain (Section 2), American pragmatism (Section 3), idealism and reactions to scepticism in Britain and America (Sections 4 and 5), and political and social philosophy in Britain/Colonial India as well as in America (Sections 6 and 7). The volume presents biographical details, the works, and the doctrines of key figures such as John Stuart Mill, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lady Mary Shepherd, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Josiah Royce, and Margaret Fuller. The philosophical movements and thematic debates addressed include African American philosophy, empiricism, evolutionary thought, feminism, idealism, indigenous philosophy, pragmatism, transcendentalism, social reform, utilitarianism, and women philosophers. Additionally, each essay provides a comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary literature.
GRUNDRISS DER GESCHICHTE DER PHILOSOPHIE FOUNDED BY FRIEDRICH UEBERWEG
F U LLY R EV ISED N EW EDI T ION EDI T ED BY L AU R EN T C E SA LLI A N D GER A L D H A RT U NG
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DIE PHILOSOPHIE DES 19. JAHRHUNDERTS/ THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE 19 T H CENTURY EDITED BY GERALD HARTUNG
VOLUME 2
UNITED KINGDOM AND UNITED STATES
EDITED BY KIPTON JENSEN AND JENNIFER KEEFE
SCHWABE VERLAG
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Grundriss 19. Jahrhundert 2/Grundriss 19th Century 2
© 2026 Schwabe Verlag, Schwabe Verlagsgruppe AG, Basel, Schweiz This work is protected by copyright. No part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or translated, without the prior written permission of the publisher. The use of content for the purpose of developing or training AI systems without the consent of the publisher is prohibited. Proofreading: Katherine Bird Typesetting: Dörlemann Satz, Lemförde Print: Beltz Grafische Betriebe GmbH, Bad Langensalza Printed in Germany Manufacturer information: Schwabe Verlag, Schwabe Verlagsgruppe AG, St. Alban-Vorstadt 76, CH-4052 Basel, info@schwabeverlag.ch Responsible person under Art. 16 GPSR: Schwabe Verlag GmbH, Marienstraße 28, D-10117 Berlin, info@schwabeverlag.de ISBN 978-3-7965-4664-8 ISBN e-Book (PDF) 978-3-7965-5729-3 DOI 10.24894/978-3-7965-5729-3 The e-Book has identical page numbers to the print edition (first printing) and supports full-text search. Furthermore, the table of contents is linked to the headings. Database: DOI 10.24894/Grundriss_19JHD2 rights@schwabe.ch www.schwabe.ch
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Contributions by John W. August III (American Institution for Philosophical and Cultural Thought), Randall E. Auxier (Southern Illinois University-Carbondale), Peter J. Bowler (Queen’s University Belfast), Audrey Brown (University of Oregon), Stuart Brown (The Open University), Vincent Colapietro (Pennsylvania State University), Cairns Craig † (University of Aberdeen), Jennifer Daly (University of New Hampshire), Therese Boos Dykeman (Independent Scholar), Monika Elbert (Montclair State University), Stephen C. Ferguson II (North Carolina State University), Rick Anthony Furtak (Colorado College), Roger L. Geiger (Pennsylvania State University), Gordon Graham (Princeton Theological Seminary), Kipton Jensen (Morehouse College), David Leopold (Oxford University), John T. Lysaker (Emory University), Jennifer Keefe (University of Wisconsin-Parkside), David Landy (San Francisco State University), Bernard Lightman (York University), John H. McClendon III (Michigan State University), Douglas McDermid (Trent University), James M. McLachlan (Western Carolina University), Thomas Newbold (Asian University for Women in Chittagong), Scott L. Pratt (University of Oregon), Dorothy Rogers (Montclair State University), Bart Schultz (University of Chicago), Melanie Sehgal (University of Wuppertal), John Shook (Bowie State University), Janet Smith (Independent Scholar), John J. Stuhr (Emory University), Trygve Throntveit (Ball State University and Hoover Institution, Stanford University), Piers Norris Turner (The Ohio State University), Colin Tyler (University of Hull), James Vigus (Queen Mary University of London), Peter Wirzbicki (Princeton University)
Editor (publishing house): Christian Barth
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Preface (Kipton Jensen and Jennifer Keefe) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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First Section: Historical and Institutional Context: Universities and the Discipline of Philosophy § 1. The Professionalisation of Philosophy in Britain and Ireland (Stuart Brown) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Figures and Strands in the Development of Philosophy as a Profession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . § 2. Philosophy in American Colleges and Universities (Roger L. Geiger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Figures and Strands in the Development of Philosophy as a Profession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3 3 5 18 20 20 21 36
§ 3. North American Indigenous Philosophy: Philosophies of the Border (Audrey Brown and Scott L. Pratt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
38 38 41 53
§ 4. Dialectical Idealism and African American Philosophers (Stephen Ferguson II and John McClendon III) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
55 55 56 73 75
Second Section: Empiricism and Utilitarianism in Britain § 5. Utilitarianism (Bart Schultz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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§ 6. John Stuart Mill (Piers Norris Turner) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
98 98 98 100 117 118
§ 7. Associationism and the Connection between Psychology and Philosophy (Cairns Craig) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. The Arts of Association . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
122 128 128 130 134
§ 8. Evolutionism (Peter J. Bowler) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
137 137 138 143 152
Third Section: American Pragmatism § 9. American Pragmatism (John J. Stuhr) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
157 157 157 175
§ 10. Charles Sanders Peirce (Vincent Colapietro) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
177 177 178 179 190 192
§ 11. William James (Melanie Sehgal) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
195 195 197 199 206 211
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§ 12. John Dewey (John R. Shook) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
215 215 217 218 226 227
Fourth Section: Idealism and Reactions to Scepticism in Britain § 13. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (James Vigus) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
231 231 231 233 248 249
§ 14. Lady Mary Shepherd (David Landy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
253 253 253 254 261 261
§ 15. Philosophy of the Conditioned and Early Idealism (Douglas McDermid) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Hamilton and Ferrier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
263 263 263 273
§ 16. Agnosticism (Bernard Lightman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
276 276 277 290
§ 17. British Idealism (Colin Tyler) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
293 293 293 315
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Fifth Section: Idealism and Reactions to Scepticism in America § 18. Common Sense in American Philosophy (Gordon Graham) . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
319 319 320 328
§ 19. Transcendentalism (Peter Wirzbicki) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
330 330 333 345 346
§ 20. Ralph Waldo Emerson (John T. Lysaker) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
348 348 349 350 362 365
§ 21. Henry David Thoreau (Rick Anthony Furtak) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
369 369 370 371 380 381
§ 22. Hegelianism and Anti-Hegelianism (James McLachlan) . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
383 383 384 396
§ 23. Josiah Royce (Randall E. Auxier) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
399 399 399 400 409 412
§ 24. American Personalism (John W. August III) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
414 414 417 429
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Sixth Section: Political and Social Philosophy in Britain, Colonial India, and America § 25. Feminism and the Rights of Women in the UK (Janet Smith) . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
433 433 435 453
§ 26. Marx and Socialism in Britain (David Leopold) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
456 456 458 463 470
§ 27. British Rule and Philosophy in Colonial India (Thomas Newbold) . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
473 473 473 488
§ 28. Margaret Fuller (Monika Elbert and Jennifer Daly) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
494 494 495 496 505 507
§ 29. 19th-Century American Social and Political Philosophy (Trygve Throntveit) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
509 509 510 529 530
§ 30. Women’s Social and Political Philosophy in 19th-Century America (Therese Dykeman and Dorothy Rogers) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Positions and Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
534 534 534 549 549
Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
553
Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
557
Index of Universities and Colleges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
567
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1. Introduction. – 2. Philosophy. – 3. Bibliography.
1. INTRODUCTION 19th-century philosophy in Britain and America has often been overshadowed by the philosophy that appeared in the adjoining centuries and considered to be of less significance than, for instance, the Enlightenment philosophy of the 18th century or the development of analytic philosophy in the 20th century. Yet, the 19th century witnessed some important philosophical developments as well as significant social changes that led to the emergence of new ideas and schools of thought. Philosophical ideas must be understood within the larger socio-historical context of the 19th century: in Britain and America, this means that philosophical movements and philosophers themselves must be understood within the context of, e.g., racism, civil war, the abolition of slavery, reconstruction, colonialism, and women’s suffrage. How we tell the history of philosophy, whom we include and whom we don’t, and how we frame it, matters to the future of the discipline. What constituted the disciplinary boundaries of philosophy, properly denominated, whether construed as a literary tradition or as an inherited set of distinctively philosophical conundrums, whether distinguished as a method or a distinct range of research or scope of intellectual work, as a «national character or temperament» (Oesterreich, Die Philosophie des Auslandes, III), as Traugott Oesterreich (1880-1949) put it in the 1928 volume V of the ‹Grundriss›, should give us pause as historians of philosophy if not also as philosophers of history. Despite the potential for a broader conception of philosophy, the first English edition of the ‹Grundriss› was generally dismissive of philosophy outside of Germany. As Audrey Brown and Scott L. Pratt note: «philosophy in North America received only a sentence from Ueberweg, but is included in a lengthy appendix by Yale President and moral philosopher, Noah Porter (1811-1892), one of the best-known American philosophers of the time. He held that Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was the leading American philosopher, and his summary of the field of American philosophy focuses largely on adherents of Edwards. He concludes with a list of some 50 names of then-prominent men, now mostly forgotten» (see § 1.3 in this volume). Although the 1928 volume of the ‹Grundriss› aimed at cross-cultural understanding, or at least a recognition of philosophical activity outside Germany, when Oesterreich edited the volume on ‹Philosophie des Auslandes›, which included American and British philosophy qua English-speaking philosophy in the
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19th century, the exigencies of war made that laudable goal extremely difficult if not impossible. It was during this period between the First and the Second World War that «the nationalization of the history of philosophy» arose as a means of classifying and organising the ‹Grundriss› (Oesterreich, Die Philosophie des Auslandes, I). While some hailed this novelty as a more inclusive picture of the history of philosophy, and thus a relative gain, other historians claim that «nationalizing philosophy remains a stumbling stone until the present day» (Elberfeld 2017, 287). One hundred years later, the 21st-century revision of the ‹Grundriss› aims at fostering a more global community of scholars who wish to provide a more inclusive account of the history of philosophy. 2. PHILOSOPHY 1. Overview. – 2. Universities and the Discipline of Philosophy. – 3. Empiricism, Pragmatism, and Utilitarianism. – 4. Idealism and Reactions to Scepticism. – 5. Political and Social Philosophy. – 6. Concluding Remarks.
1. Overview The present volume provides an updated and expanded treatment of this period, but it is also far more inclusive. Included are a range of schools and figures who continue to be significant today such as John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) or William James (1842-1910) as well as those who are now relatively unknown but played an important role in the 19th century, for instance, the American Hegelians. Further, figures of importance who have been overlooked, both in the original ‹Grundriss› and other histories of philosophy, have been included in this volume. For instance, Audrey Brown and Scott L. Pratt’s chapter on ‹Nineteenth-Century North American Indigenous Philosophy: Philosophies of the Border› and David Landy’s chapter on ‹Lady Mary Shepherd› are examples of chapters that cover topics and figures that were omitted from earlier versions of the ‹Grundriss› and represent neglected groups, namely, Indigenous philosophers and women philosophers. Ultimately, we hope that this revised version of the ‹Grundriss› will serve as a conduit for advancing mutual understanding and fostering relationships between younger and older scholars from around the world about the best ways to write about or otherwise present the history of philosophy. There is a transatlantic confluence of influences to be found between British and American philosophy during this time, from more well-known figures such as Charles Darwin (1809-1882), whose theory of evolution had a significant impact on both sides of the Atlantic, to others that are lesser known; for instance, the British feminist Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904) was, in part, influenced by the American transcendentalist Theodore Parker (1810-1860). Nonetheless,
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although the British and American philosophers and schools have some shared influences and concerns, at the same time, these are substantially different traditions. For example: while German philosophy influenced both the British Idealists and the American Hegelians, the two groups drew on different, additional sources and dispatched their respective philosophies in distinct directions. For that reason, the British and American chapters have been separated within this volume. We have attempted to strike a balance between the too-broad and the too-narrow, and this we have done within page-length limitations. Some notable 19th-century figures have been omitted in so far as they have not been allocated a dedicated chapter. For example, Herbert Spencer’s (1820-1903) importance in the 19th century was considerable, although there is not a single chapter devoted to his work in this volume. Nevertheless, he does appear in several chapters such as ‹Evolutionism› or ‹Agnosticism› and in this way his thought has not been overlooked. The chapters have been arranged according to categories that are broad enough to capture the range of philosophical interests in the 19th century while attempting also to maximise the wide array of figures included in this volume. Therefore, rather than utilising categories such as Aesthetics or Metaphysics, broader sections such as ‘Empiricism and Utilitarianism in Britain’ and ‘Idealism and Reactions to Scepticism in America’ have been selected. This not only avoids having multiple chapters concerning the same figures but also allows for a greater number of overall figures and schools to be included. If, for example, there were categories such as Aesthetics and Metaphysics, there would need to be an entry for the British Idealists in each. Using broader sections honours the fact that the philosophers that have been included would not necessarily separate the different aspects of their own thought in this way. Additionally, this frees up space to include chapters on additional figures or schools of thought such as ‹Josiah Royce› or the ‹Philosophy of the Conditioned and Early Idealism›. 2. Universities and the Discipline of Philosophy The first chapter of this volume concerns the nature of philosophy in the 19th century. This century oversaw many changes to the discipline of philosophy at the university level, which resulted in a greater specialisation of the subject and the professionalisation of the vocation of teaching philosophy. In the 19th century there was a significant expansion of the number of B ritish universities. In turn, this led to the increase of university teaching positions. Philosophy itself, radically changed, becoming more specialised and separate from subjects that had once been included within its remit, notably economics and psychology. This development called for specialised practitioners. University teaching, including the teaching of philosophy, slowly became a profession over the course of the century. It moved away from amateurs and patronage to a profession that required credentials and followed the model of a typical career ladder.
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The professionalisation of philosophy as an academic discipline in America, or what Bruce Kuklick (b. 1941) calls «collegiate philosophy» (Kuklick 2002, 62), extends from the Philosophical Society, which was dedicated to promoting useful knowledge and founded by Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) in 1783, to the establishment of philosophy departments and academic journals to the founding of the American Philosophical Association in 1901. Beyond the conventional definitions of academic philosophy, there are 19th-century thinkers who challenge this characterisation of the philosophical enterprise and the typical categories or terms of classification within the academic discipline of philosophy in the Old World. In American Philosophy a case can and should be made for a broader conception of philosophy that would include Indigenous thinkers, who had a well-established tradition of inquiry aimed at thoughtfully and strategically responding to settler colonialism. While distinctive tribal practices flourished within Indigenous communities, a new brand of philosophy emerged at the border between Indigenous and European-descended communities. Indigenous philosophers served as prophets, tribal leaders, missionaries, writers, and academics focused on speaking to both Indigenous and European-descended peoples about conceptions of being, knowing, and living in a fundamentally diverse land where humans and other-than-humans could live sometimes in conflict and sometimes at peace. Indigenous North American philosophy is distinctive because it emerged at the contested borders of vastly different worlds. Further, African Americans have been wrongly denied their rightful place within the canon of American philosophy. African American philosophy is expressed as an ambivalent yet defiant set of responses to slavery, segregation, industrial capitalism, and the consolidation of the segregation regime. This set of responses constitutes the African American Dialectical Idealist tradition, one that includes David Walker (1786-1830) and Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) as well as Alexander Crummell (1819-1898) and William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963). 3. Empiricism, Pragmatism, and Utilitarianism Sections two and three of this volume focus on Empiricism and Utilitarianism on the one hand and Pragmatism on the other. The figures that are covered here are representative of 19th-century philosophy in so far as they have disparate interests and far-reaching influence. Empirical thinkers such as Mill or Darwin were either concerned with or influential upon fields as varied as aesthetics, epistemology, and political philosophy. American philosophers tended to appropriate empiricism and utilitarianism, if not also evolutionary thought, in unconventional yet instructive ways that seemed excessive to most European thinkers. Classical British utilitarianism is best represented by Jeremy Bentham (17481832), Mill, and Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900). Bentham, the English legal theo-
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rist, philosopher, and reformer, is typically considered the first utilitarian. His work focuses on increasing happiness via an emphasis on security represented by such reforms as his well-known panopticon prison reform plan or by arrangements to reduce poverty. He had liberal views in so far as he extended his reforms to all sentient beings and disapproved of discrimination based on sexuality or race. It would be no exaggeration to describe Mill as one of the most significant British philosophers in the history of philosophy. He departs from Bentham by emphasising not only the material conditions that are required for happiness but also one’s emotional fitness and the importance of developing a balanced character. Nevertheless, he remained committed to a form of utilitarianism which argued for impartiality and maximising the happiness of everyone, including some non-human sentient beings. The complex yet integrated philosophy that he produced in collaboration with Harriet Taylor (1807-1858) over his lifetime encompasses epistemology, philosophy of language, metaphysics, equality, and moral and political philosophy. Throughout his life Mill was a committed advocate for some political and social reforms, including the rights of women and the abolition of slavery. Unlike Mill and Bentham, Sidgwick sought a rational justification for ethics and attempts to reconcile utilitarianism with intuitional morality. Moreover, all three utilitarians were supporters of liberal imperialism and supported harsh colonial actions in the name of civilisation. In the 19th century, philosophical associationism was developed by figures such as Mill, Alexander Bain (1810-1877), and Herbert Spencer, who were influenced by David Hume (1711-1776) and David Hartley (1705-1757) in the previous century. They considered that the operations of the mind not only rested on the physical discoveries in anatomy but also on the association of ideas. The 19th century saw the development of psychology as a subject that was distinct from philosophy. Nevertheless, philosophers were heavily involved in the development of this new subject; for instance, the journal ‹Mind› sought to establish psychology on a scientific basis. The influence of associationism was not restricted to an understanding of the human mind as an object of scientific research. Instead, it had a wide influence that extended to art and literature and played a role in the scientific racism of the 19th century. The impact of theories of evolution on philosophical thought in the 19th century was considerable. On the one hand, there was the model of evolution as progress, as represented by Robert Chambers (1802-1871) and others, who described a ladder of development – whether organisms or societies – from lower to higher forms. Such a model would be reflected in certain idealist conceptions of the progress of history. On the other hand, there was the model of evolution as adaptation, developed most notably by Darwin’s branching tree model, that could either result in ascent or degeneration, and was displayed in theories such as Thomas Henry Huxley’s (1825-1895) scientific naturalism. Further, there was the ‘middle-ground’ of Spencer and his supporters, who synthesised naturalism with a teleological conception of progress. There was a considerable overlap between philosophers in both Britain and America in so far as evolution impacted various schools of philosophy from utilitarians such as J.S. Mill to pragmatists like
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James, who dedicated his 1907 ‹Pragmatism› to «the Memory of John Stuart Mill» (James, Pragmatism, 4). One of the most significant American forms of philosophy to emerge from the 19th century was pragmatism. In his ‹The Pragmatist Account of Truth and its Misunderstanders›, James suggested that German philosophers had spent the better part of three decades egregiously misunderstanding pragmatism. Hans Joas (b. 1948) goes so far as to suggest that «the German, French, and Italian reception of pragmatism is a concatenation of misunderstandings» (Joas 1998, 94). But to be fair, the transatlantic philosophical discourse in the 19th century was challenging on all fronts: as an illustrious case in point, Jon Stewart (b. 1961) claims that «the oeuvre of Hegel, like that of many thinkers of the post-Kantian tradition in European philosophy, has been subjected to a number of misreadings and misrepresentations by both specialists and nonspecialists alike that have until fairly recently rendered Hegel’s reception in the Anglo-American philosophical world extremely problematic» (Stewart 1996, 306). Pragmatism constitutes a unique contribution to the history of philosophy and a significant departure from traditional philosophy: not only does it reject earlier beliefs and doctrines, but it also rejected conventional philosophical problems and standard philosophical methods. Pragmatists typically displayed an aversion to abstract speculations and self-evident truths, insisted that problems emerge from lived experience, construed ideas or beliefs in terms of practical consequences, acknowledged human fallibility, accepted the implications of pluralism, argued that individuals were not isolated entities but rather a confluence of social relations, and tended to dismiss traditional philosophical dualisms. Pragmatists are radical empiricists who treat theoretical distinctions as working instruments for further observation and discovery. The principle of pragmatism in Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was designed as a method for clarifying the meaning as distinct from the truth of our ideas or beliefs. Establishing the meaning of an idea, pragmatically, which consists in specifying the conceivable sensible effects and possible practical bearing of that idea, is a prerequisite to determining its truth or falsity. Peirce was a gifted logician who made significant contributions to epistemology, semiotics, and the philosophy of science. The primary point of pragmatism is not that thought is for the sake of action, it is rather that thought itself is a form of conduct. Peirce defended both scholastic realism and critical common sense; as a philosopher of science, he was preoccupied with the question of how laws as principles of explanation themselves might be explained and ontologically grounded. Though very little of his work was published in his lifetime, Peirce has been increasingly acknowledged – as John Dewey (1859-1952) did – as a «philosopher’s philosopher» (Dewey [Review], Peirce: Collected Papers I-VI, 480). It was James who popularised pragmatism as a method for disclosing the meaning of beliefs and settling otherwise interminable philosophical disputes. He expanded the pragmatic method to include a pragmatic theory of truth: true beliefs are those that succeed, in the long run, when put to the test, and truth
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should be understood as a subset of the good. Together with Peirce, Dewey, Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), and Henri Louis Bergson (1859-1941), James is part of a philosophical movement that can be labelled as process philosophy because it stresses the processual character of being and the importance of relations. James coins his own metaphysical doctrine that he terms radical empiricism. Although Dewey is often considered to be the most influential philosopher and public intellectual of 20th-century America, much of his foundational work was conducted at the end of the 19th century. He made lasting contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, political theory, and ethics. Due to his seminal contributions to functional psychology, educational development, ethics, and progressive politics, along with his controversial theories about logic, science, naturalism, and religion, Dewey was the principal pragmatist for nearly three generations. His fellow Americans Peirce and James launched the pragmatist movement, and Dewey joined them on a route that went through neo-Hegelians such as Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882) and John Caird (1820-1898), with whom he shared much on ethical theory. His experimentalist logical theory avoided the narrowness of 20th-century analytic and symbolic logicism and his version of naturalism provided a metaphysical alternative to positivism, materialism, and idealism. Dewey always viewed himself as an empiricist, whatever other labels he permitted for his philosophy, such as experimental idealism, pragmatism, instrumentalism, empirical naturalism, and humanistic naturalism. 4. Idealism and Reactions to Scepticism Sections four and five on Idealism and Reactions to Scepticism consider an array of figures with diverse views. Nonetheless, there are some important trends that emerged on both sides of the Atlantic. First, there was an increasing influence of German philosophy in both Britain and America, starting with early figures such as Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) but coming to full fruition in the form of the British Idealists and the American Hegelians. Second, the importance of the arts was considerable for many 19th-century figures, most notably for Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834) and the Transcendentalists. Third, 19th-century British and American philosophy reflects the influence of common sense philosophy. In Britain, Hamilton tried to synthesise Kantian ideas with Thomas Reid’s (1710-1796) thought, developing an account of the unknowable that was further developed by the agnostics. In America, several colleges and universities bore the stamp of Scottish common sense philosophy. An essential figure in British romanticism was Coleridge, who through his poetry and other writings on theology and philosophy was enormously influential on both sides of the Atlantic. He shaped the work of several figures who are considered in this volume, including Mill, Emerson, and Dewey. Coleridge’s position
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changed over time from his early empiricism and Unitarianism to his later idealism and Trinitarianism. The Scottish philosopher Lady Mary Shepherd (1777-1847) is of interest in the history of British philosophy because in the early 19th century she developed her own distinct anti-sceptical metaphysics and epistemology via her critique of 18th-century figures such as Hume, George Berkeley (1685-1753), and Reid. Yet, like many women philosophers, Shepherd’s work was overlooked until the latter part of the 20th century. The development of agnosticism in the 19th century was inspired by accounts of the unknowable found in figures such as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Hamilton, and Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-1871). Huxley first coined the term to express his own view, against the metaphysicians and theologians, that there were limits to human knowledge. This was developed further by Leslie Stephen (18321904), who like Huxley, divorced the Christianity from Mansel in his own argument against Christian theology. However, the nature of agnosticism changed when Spencer and others advocated for beliefs that Huxley rejected such as the view that both science and religion suggest an absolute for which humans have a positive consciousness of. As the 19th century developed, there was an increasing awareness of Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770-1831) thought in both Britain and America. In Britain this is most clear with the British Idealists for whom Kant and Hegel served as a crucial influence. British Idealism was an important and influential philosophical movement in British philosophy and there are several, different figures who can rightfully be considered as British Idealists. There is a degree of commonality between figures such as Green, Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924), Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923), and Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (1856-1931): for instance, a belief in progress, an idealist metaphysics, and a concern with social questions. Nevertheless, there are also important differences in emphasis and theory such as the distinction between the Absolute and Personal idealists. There was a pervasive influence of Scottish philosophers on pre-revolutionary America, an influence that continued to shape philosophy in the United States and Canada over most of the 19th century. The origins are to be found in the 18th century Presbyterian seminaries that established liberal arts education in America, where works by Scottish philosophers were widely adopted as textbooks for college curricula. These included books written for Scottish students by Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) and David Fordyce (1711-1751), and by the first decades of the 19th century, books published by Reid and Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) set much of the philosophical agenda. American-born teachers of philosophy modelled themselves on the Scottish professoriate, especially Samuel Stanhope Smith (1751-1819) at Princeton and Porter at Yale. Although their philosophical thought was relatively unsystematic if not somewhat eclectic, the men and women associated with the Transcendentalist movement in America were bound together by a common set of intellectual influences and socio-political commitments. The New England transcendentalists
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were animated and allied by an earnest engagement with German philosophical idealism, especially Romanticism, a love of classical literature, a scepticism of the Lockean tradition, their liberal religion, an antipathy for dualistic metaphysics, and a commitment to political reform. The most famous transcendentalists were Emerson and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Other influential transcendentalists include Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), Elizabeth Peabody (1804-1894), and Parker. Emerson plays an important role in defining the trajectory of 19th-century American philosophy. In the 1928 edition of the ‹Grundriss›, he was considered to be an «epoch-making» representation of transcendentalism construed as «the first indication of refined intellectual life in America» (Oesterreich, Die Philosophie des Auslandes, 373). Although some historians of philosophy may wish to portray Emerson as the progenitor of American pragmatism, or an advocate of ethical perfectionism, or an American variation on post-Kantian idealism and Romanticism, self-cultivation is the process by which Emerson conceives of genuine individuation. Confronted by the demands of social conformity, which can warp the personality, Emerson prescribes the philosophical remedy of self-trust or self-reliance. Thoreau was influenced by classical Greek philosophy and Roman literature as well as German Idealism and the Upanishads. Though affiliated with many of the leading transcendentalists of his day, he did not think of himself as a transcendentalist. He famously retreated to Walden Pond to «live deep and suck out all the marrow of life» (Thoreau, Walden, 91). His refined awareness of his environment, both proximate and remote, is reminiscent in ways to the leading naturalists of the day, including Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) and Darwin. Thoreau’s work displays an ethics of perception and an epistemological method that is closer aligned to the ancient processes of self-purification or spiritual discipline than to objective scientific procedures. Beyond his contributions to a naturalist epistemology and a non-dualist metaphysics, Thoreau is best known for his socio-political thought – especially his theory of civil disobedience and non-violent resistance, which was influential on both Mahatma Gandhi (18691948) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968). Hegelianism in America was venerated by some and despised by others. American scholars’ fascination with German Higher Criticism in the early 19th century led them to idealise the German educational system and for those who chafed under the rationalism and materialism of John Locke’s (1632-1704) empiricism, an introduction to German Idealism and its ethical implications was both liberating and exhilarating. The hub of antebellum Hegelianism in America was in the Midwest, in Missouri and Ohio, where «German culture was so pervasive as to be virtually dominant» (Goetzmann 1973, 10). Many of those affiliated with American Hegelianism thought tended to construe the U.S. Civil War (18611865) as a world historical process that was largely explicable in terms of Hegelian or Marxian dialectics. Hegelianism could also be construed as an ancestor of pragmatism: indeed, Dewey began his career as a Hegelian, Peirce claimed Hegel as an ally sometimes while on other occasions he considered him to be an enemy,
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and James’ friend – Josiah Royce (1855-1916) – claimed even James was more heavily indebted to Hegelianism than he realised or otherwise admitted to himself. The earliest conceptions of pragmatism in Peirce and James as well as in the instrumentalism or progressivism of Dewey emerged against the background of Anglo-American Hegelianism; but both James and Dewey considered their philosophical orientation as a corrective to the excessive intellectualism and technical apparatus of Hegelian thought. Although it is sometimes suggested that he was «Hegel’s unauthorised deputy in America for a generation» (Kaufman 1966, 121), the classification of Royce as either an American Idealist and Personalist or a philosopher of religion is misleading and overly restrictive. For Royce, ethics was both the beginning and the end of philosophical inquiry. Royce’s appropriation of Kantian and post-Kantian idealism exhibits affinities with process philosophy and philosophical personalism. Royce was preoccupied throughout his career with philosophical conundrums concerning loyalty and the beloved community. His philosophy of religion and moral philosophy are concerned first and foremost with the psychosocial dynamics of loyalty and community. Construed as an immanent principle of life, Royce fixates on the idea of loyalty, or a loyalty to loyalty, as an interpretation of Christian love and the possibility of extending loyalty even to those who oppose and mistreat us, thus redefining the admonition to love thine enemy. These conceptions of loyalty and community are at the heart of his moral philosophy. In addition to metaphysics and epistemology or logic, Royce made significant contributions also to rational and empirical psychology, social philosophy, philosophy of nature, philosophy of education, philosophy of literature, and semiotics. The most prominent member of the Boston Personalists was Edgar Brightman (1884-1953). Philosophical personalism is an elaborate ethical theory, one traditionally associated with a coterie of philosophers and Boston theologians who taught at Boston University, where King did his graduate studies. In his ‹Letter from Birmingham Jail›, which provides an iconic expression of American personalism, King argued that «an unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust» (King, A Testament of Hope, 293). Personalists tend to treat ethics as the highest form of philosophical thought; that said, the category of personhood also constitutes the first principle of metaphysics and epistemology. According to the Boston personalists, Brightman among them: God is personal, and persons are sacred. 5. Political and Social Philosophy The 19th century was also a time of considerable political and social changes and section six focuses on the way in which this impacted the development of British and American philosophy. In Britain, this period included many social
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changes and three are of particular interest: the push for women’s suffrage, efforts to establish worker’s rights, and the reciprocal yet asymmetrical impact of colonialism. First, British and Irish women philosophers, from more well-known figures such as Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) to those who have been historically overlooked such as Annie Besant (1847-1933) or Anna Parnell (1852-1911), made a considerable contribution towards the effort to achieve women’s equality in the 19th century. These efforts were myriad and came from a range of disparate sources and influences such as utilitarian and utopian socialism, Christian duty feminism, and anti-imperial feminism. Second, the German philosopher Karl Marx (1818-1883) spent the final 33 years of his life in London, and this period had a considerable impact on his intellectual development. The impact of British socialism, specifically Robert Owen (1771-1858) and Owenite socialism, British literary culture, Marx’s engagement with British politics via journalism, Chartism, and the International Working Men’s Association, affected not only Marx’s economic thought but also his sociology and theory of history. Third, the impact of British Colonialism on British philosophers and their work was significant, and several chapters in this edition refer to this connection. Yet, both sides of this uneven relationship are of interest. To better understand the reception of British philosophy in 19th-century India, a consideration of the East India Company, Indian scholars such as Rammohun Roy (1772-1833) who became celebrated in Britain by religious radicals, and the history of the influence of British philosophers on Indian scholars and universities as the century progressed, is informative. In America, the socio-political landscape was troubling: slavery, colonialism, sexism, and genocide. American philosophers of the 19th century were preoccupied with both the promise and the limits of democracy. The 19th century was animated by westward expansion and crippled by civil war. Whereas the British Parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807 and the Abolitions of Slavery Act in 1834, slavery was legal in many parts of America until 1863. The most prominent American Transcendentalists were outspoken abolitionists. Thoreau’s philosophy of civil disobedience must be understood within the social and political context of the Fugitive Slave Laws. American pragmatists and personalists were critical of what they considered to be the looming threats of imperialism and monopoly capitalism. And while African American men were precariously granted the right to vote in 1870, women in both Britain and America were not permitted to vote until 1918/1919. To better understand the political and social philosophical landscape, it is instructive to consider the often unacknowledged contributions of African American thinkers and women philosophers to the emerging albeit contested conception of a liberal selfhood in the 19th century. There is a vast array of American women who engaged in and influenced the trajectory of American philosophy in the 19th century. One such figure is Fuller; despite growing awareness of her significance to the American Transcendental-
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ist movement, many still fail to acknowledge her importance and focus instead on Emerson and Thoreau. Despite her contributions to the Transcendentalist movement, Fuller is also known for her writings that showed an ecological awareness, a sympathy to Indigenous Americans and their landscapes, and a feminist philosophy. Further, women such as Ednah Dow Cheney (1824-1904) and Jane Addams (1860-1935) made unique and significant contributions to traditional fields of philosophy while also establishing independent fields of inquiry including gender and moral agency, educational theory, civil and human rights, and sociopolitical reform. The philosophical theories and socio-political activism of these women may well provide us with the resources requisite for conscientiously addressing the varied social problems, political turmoil, and global conflicts in contemporary society. This period in American history also saw the emergence of a market economy, drastic enlargement of the nation’s territory, the expansion and abolition of slavery, the genocide and dispossession of Indigenous Americans, the rise of organised capital and labour, epochal technological advancements, changing gender views and roles, and the entrance of the United States onto the geopolitical stage. This political, social, and cultural evolution was inextricably linked with developments in American philosophy. The interdependent-dynamic project of liberal selfhood, which is the culmination of social and political philosophy in the 19th century in America, abides as an individual invitation and an ongoing collaborative aspiration. 6. Concluding Remarks It was Hegel who suggested that no philosophy can extend beyond its own Zeitgeist. And surely this is the basic interpretative point when it comes to intellectual history with a socio-historical frame of mind. There is a principle of charity, perhaps, when it comes to reading Hegel’s ‹Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte› (Lectures on the Philosophy of World History) (originally given in 1822; first publication in 1837), which in retrospect seems shortsighted if not xenophobic. We should apply a similar principle of charity to the design of the 1928 edition of the ‹Grundriss›. Britain and America were both philosophical traditions that were foreign, and while they both spoke English, it must also be recognised or acknowledged that Britain and America were among the Allied Powers who continued to restrict the freedoms of German citizens, including German scholars. The transatlantic philosophical discourse during this period is fascinating. This collection of essays comprises a significant contribution to the scholarly materials available on this topic; it also expands the growing edges of the global philosophical community. The way we tell the story – the way we frame it, how we lay it out, the outline we adopt, the canon we endorse – is important to our understanding of our collective past as well as discovering new vistas of philosophical exploration.
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Bibliography
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3. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Primary Literature. – 2. Secondary Literature. The specification of series and volumes adheres to the guidelines of the ‹Grundriss›: series and parts consisting of multiple volumes are indicated using Arabic numerals, while individual volumes are indicated using Roman numerals; part volumes are again indicated using Arabic numerals. Information on editions has been standardised in accordance with the guidelines of the ‹Grundriss›.
1. PRIMARY LITERATURE Dewey, John [Review]: Peirce, Charles Sanders: Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, I-VI, ed. by Charles Hawthorne and Paul Weiss (Harvard 1931-1935) [1935], in: John Dewey: The Later Works of John Dewey, XI: 1925-1953, ed. by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale 2008), 479-484. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte (Berlin 1837). James, William: Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking [1907] (Auckland 2010).
King, Martin Luther: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (San Francisco 1986). Thoreau, Henry David: Walden; Or, Life in the Woods [1854] (Princeton 2016). Oesterreich, Traugott Konstantin: Friedrich Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, V: Die Philosophie des Auslandes vom Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts bis auf die Gegenwart (Berlin 1928).
2. SECONDARY LITERATURE Elberfeld, Rolf: Philosophiegeschichtsschreibung in globaler Perspektive (Hamburg 2017). Goetzmann, William H. (ed.): The American Hegelians: An Intellectual Episode in the History of Western America (New York 1973). Joas, Hans: The Inspiration of Pragmatism, in: Morris Dickstein (ed.): The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture (Durham 1998), 190-198. Kaufman, Walter: Hegel: A Reinterpretation (South Bend 1966).
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Kuklick, Bruce: A History of Philosophy in America, 1720-2000 (Oxford 2002). Mander, William J. (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford 2014). Stewart, Jon: The Hegel Myths and Legends (Evanston 1996). Stone, Alison: Women Philosophers in Nineteenth Century Britain (Oxford 2023).
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First Section
Historical and Institutional Context: Universities and the Discipline of Philosophy
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§ 1. The Professionalisation of Philosophy in Britain and Ireland Stuart Brown
1. Introduction. – 2. The Professionalisation of Philosophy. – 3. Bibliography.
1. INTRODUCTION The 19th century was a time of great change in the provision of higher edu cation in Britain and Ireland. In 1800 there were four universities in Scotland (St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh), two in England (Oxford and Cambridge) and one in Ireland (Trinity College, Dublin), though none yet in Wales. By the end of the century, however, university institutions had been founded in the main towns, some of which had grown massively because of industrialisation. Joseph Whitaker’s (1820-1895) ‹An Almanack for the Year of Our Lord 1898› has entries for universities in Durham (1831), London (1836), Leeds: the Yorkshire College (1874), Belfast: Queen’s College (1845), M anchester: Victoria University (1880), and Liverpool University College (1881). Also listed were what the ‹Almanack› classed as ‘provincial colleges’: at Birmingham (1875), Bristol (1876), Newcastle-on-Tyne (1878), Nottingham (1880), and Sheffield (1897). The oldest of the Welsh colleges was the anomalous St David’s in Lampeter, founded in 1828 with a special connection to Oxford and Cambridge, though with a limited curriculum. As the need for a more widespread provision of university education came to be recognised, University Colleges were founded at Aberystwyth (1872), Cardiff (1883), and Bangor (1884). These were brought together as constituent colleges of the University of Wales when it was created in 1893. In Ireland, then still included as one of the British Isles, there had been Queen’s colleges in Belfast, Cork, and Galway since the 1840s. These were incorporated in the Dublin-based Royal University of Ireland in 1880. In Scotland there were already four long-established universities, but Dundee had developed as a major new port city and a University College was created there in 1880 with links to nearby St Andrews. During the 19th century there was an increasing demand for a far more skilled workforce. There was a great expansion in the number of professions and professional people. In the early 1800s, there were only three established kinds of professional in Britain: lawyers, medical practitioners, and clergy. Members of a profession were expected to have undergone a particular training and their conduct was judged by special standards, particularly ones relating to competence and ‘integrity’. At the same time, professionals were valued because they fulfilled special roles in society: in consequence they enjoyed privileges, respect, and so-
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§ 1. The Professionalisation of Philosophy in Britain and Ireland
cial standing. Other occupational groups, such as architects, surveyors, and accountants, went on to achieve professional status during the nineteenth century and this became an aspiration for further groups, including those teaching at universities (Perkin 1969b). By the 1860s it was declared as a university reformer’s dream «to erect teaching and learning, inseparably united, into a life-profession» (Pattison, Suggestions on Academical Organisation, 204). And this dream of making university teaching a regular profession was well on its way to being realised by the end of the century. In tandem with this development was what may be called the professionalisation of individual academic subjects. The academic world was increasingly divided into specialisms, each with its own group identity as well as its own professional organisations, its own set of qualifications for membership, and even its own journal. University teachers were increasingly grouped by discipline into separate departments that enjoyed a degree of autonomy and taught their own students for specialised degrees. Philosophy, though no longer regarded as the ‘queen of the sciences’, was still widely put forward as a unifying subject, one that claimed a special place in the curriculum. In the past, moral philosophy had been taken to mean the human or moral sciences generally, including economics and psychology. Political economy, for instance, had traditionally been understood as a part of moral philosophy. That was how it was understood by Adam Smith (1723-1790), who had himself been Professor of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow (1751-1764): he wrote a well-received book ‹The Theory of Moral Sentiments› (1759) as well as the ‹The Wealth of Nations› (1776) for which he is most celebrated. But, by the late 19th century, economics was becoming established as a separate discipline, with specialised chairs at several universities, including London, Manchester, and Liverpool. The separation of psychology from philosophy was much more problematic, commonly insisted upon by psychologists but often resisted by philosophers. British philosophers had traditionally sought to explain where our ideas come from and so, it was hoped, how the language we use has the meaning it has. The explanations given were, in a broad sense, psychological. The separation of psychological from philosophical considerations was not found easy to make and was to have profound consequences for what was taken to be the nature of philosophy. Moral philosophy was increasingly reduced to a study of ethics. Philosophy itself was beginning to be thought of as, in some respects, just one further specialism. As a result of such developments, philosophy ceased to be widely regarded as a ‘mother’ subject that, in one way or another, provided a way of bringing other subjects together. It was beginning to appear as just one more (and even rather esoteric) option in an increasingly crowded curriculum. This might be viewed as a loss. But it brought one clear benefit. For just as professional economists or historians might, and did, claim a special competence generally lacked by the amateur, so too philosophy might be, and was, represented as calling for a special competence that required a particular training.
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Figures and Strands in the Development of Philosophy as a Profession
5
At the beginning of the 19th century, British philosophers were typically people for whom philosophy was a leisure pursuit or at least not their primary occupation. Their interests commonly ranged over several disciplines, and they wrote for a broadly educated laity who had the leisure to study but not usually special training. Philosophy was, for them, an inclusive subject rather than a specialism. That vision of philosophy and the role of the philosopher remained throughout the century and beyond. But it was increasingly challenged by a view of the subject as an esoteric even technical one, only fully accessible to those who had undertaken special training – who were, in short, professionals. 2. FIGURES AND STRANDS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY AS A PROFESSION 1. The Growth of Professionalism. – 2. Towards a Profession of University Teachers. – 3. Steps Towards the Professionalisation of Philosophy. – 4. The Decline of the Amateur Philosopher.
1. The Growth of Professionalism By the late 19th century, the professionalisation of philosophy in Britain was quite well advanced. But clergymen and amateurs were still prominent in promoting, administering, and contributing to the subject. The then Bishop of Peterborough, William Connor Magee (1821-1891), continued as an active member of the London Metaphysical Society in the 1870s. Herbert Wildon Carr (18571931), a London businessman, found time not only to become a well-published writer on Leibniz and other philosophical subjects, but also to be Secretary of the Aristotelian Society, a post he held from 1881 until well into the following century. Philosophical societies that were, in the course of time, to be increasingly dominated by professionals, were in their early years very open to the contributions of amateurs and quite normally managed by them. Fundamental changes were needed, both in wider society and in the universities themselves, to make the professionalisation of academic subjects possible. Many of these took place in the late 19th century. Other subjects such as economics and psychology that had historically been part of moral philosophy were already evolving, acquiring a distinct identity, and establishing their own institutional status with their own professional societies and journals. The Victoria University of Manchester, for instance, had a chair of Political Economy quite distinct from that of Logic and Moral Philosophy. The London School of Economics was founded in 1895. Psychology too was beginning to separate, though this was more painful and problematic. The British empiricist tradition, with its emphasis on the origin of ideas in the senses, was itself inherently psychological and well into the following century it remained common for philosophers from that tradition to insist on regarding psychology as part of their subject. Where
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§ 1. The Professionalisation of Philosophy in Britain and Ireland
philosophy had previously been regarded as almost a faculty that included other subjects, it was increasingly seen as just one more specialism. But there were many factors holding back the professionalisation of philosophy and even making the process controversial in a way it was not in other academic areas. Other subject areas could more readily be exclusive and establish sharp boundaries with cognate subjects. Philosophy did not have such boundaries or, at any rate, boundaries on which its practitioners were all agreed. Even worse, there was no single coherent and agreed view of the subject shared by those who practised philosophy for a living. Professionalisation did not have its source in philosophy itself, nor in other university subjects, but in large-scale social changes. These changes greatly increased the size and importance of the professional classes and changed the social and political character of the country. Patronage, privilege, and tradition were much more open to challenge as the 19th century neared its end and there were unprecedented opportunities for social advancement on the basis of merit. The purpose and nature of a university education became a matter for public debate in the second half of the 19th century. During that time the British university scene changed radically. University institutions were established in all the great industrial cities that had grown up by that time and student numbers increased considerably. Moreover, there were major changes in the backgrounds of students attending the old universities in England. In Oxford at the beginning of the century, for instance, sons of the clergy and the landed gentry were the most prominent by background of the students matriculating. By the end of the century there were many fewer from these groups and many more undergraduates from lay professional backgrounds, both traditional and new. By the end of the century, university teaching itself was emerging as one of those new professions. University expansion in the late 19th century meant the creation of new chairs in a great variety of subjects, including philosophy, and gradually opened up the possibility of academic careers that had not previously existed. To begin with, expansion meant there were soon too many students for the professor to teach himself and it became a widespread practice to employ assistants. Initially these assistantships were ‘dead end’ jobs, badly paid and short-term, but gradually they became the beginning of a recognisable career that could, and did, lead on for some to become professors. Towards the end of the century, there was a great increase in student numbers and a corresponding rise in the demand for teachers, including teachers of philosophy. Whitaker’s ‹Almanack› for 1898 names professors of philosophy, including those for universities that had been founded earlier in the century. There were professors of philosophy at both University and King’s College in London, as well as Durham, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Nottingham, and each the three constituent colleges (Aberystwyth, Bangor, and Cardiff) that made up the new University of Wales. In Ireland, there were professors of philosophy appointed both at the old University of Dublin (Trinity College) and at the then relatively new Queen’s College, Belfast, a constituent at the time of the island-wide Royal University of Ireland.
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