Ralph Barton Perry_Is There a North American Philosophy?

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Is There a North American Philosophy? Author(s): Ralph Barton Perry Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 9, No. 3, "Second Inter-American

Congress of Philosophy" (Mar., 1949), pp. 356-369Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2104042Accessed: 08-10-2015 12:07 UTC

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IS THERE A NORTH AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY?

In order that we of North America may explain ourselves to our philosophical brothers of South and Central America, and vice versa, we must explain ourselves to ourselves, which is a good exercise for both of us. We do this in one another's presence in the spirit of candor and frienship which becomes those who are not only fellow Americans but fellow philosophers.

Although I have accepted the title given me by our Committee I must confess that I shall not be able to stick to the expression "North American" beyond the first few pages. In the United States the only people known as "North Americans" are the North American Indians, and presumably the title does not refer to them: at any rate I know nothing about their philosophy. Living recently in Scotland, I have been impressed by the fact that the people of that land can be called Scats, Scottish, Scotsmen, or Scotch-though the last tends to be restricted to a well-known beverage. It seems unfair that there should be no term, substantive or adjective, which is properly applicable to the people of the United States. We habit- ually refer to ourselves as "Americans," and we answer to that name. We have an "I am an American Day" and "America" is employed in our patriotic songs; we even have an American Un-American Committee. I have tried to say "North American" instead of "American" but language habits have proved too strong for me. So I have given it up; and I can only ask my non-North American friends to supply the word "North," and to believe that my use of the word "American" implies no arrogant claim of proprietorship, but only a humble confession of inaccuracy and poverty of speech.

The question of a regional or national philosophy may be taken to be a question of importance and desirability, or a question of fact. I shall adopt the latter alternative. Insofar as I find that there is a North Amer- ican philosophy I do not mean that this is especially significant either for philosophy or for North America. I dissociate myself altogether from the doctrine that regions or nations are oracles: that philosophical truths are made manifest only through social organs, and that their truth is relative to the cultures in which they are embedded. Still less do I mean that any American should consciously strive to think in a North American manner, or in an Ibero-American manner. The proof of any doctrine, philosophical or non-philosophical, lies in the objective evidence which can be cited in its support. Both the conceptual meaning of the doctrine and its supporting evidence are, in principle, open to anybody who chooses to think on the subject, and pursues it with sufficient perseverance. The

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Is THERE A NORTH AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY? 357

personal and social circumstances in which philosophy develops are ir- relevant to its truth. In proportion as philosophy is faithful to its essential cognitive purpose it will endeavor to transcend such circumstances, and to emulate the universality so notably achieved in mathematics and the so- called exact sciences.

Despite this ideal of universality, however, personal, regional, and national influences will be ineradicable. Every philosophy will inevitably reflect prejudices and prejudgments: it will start with some peculiar philosophical inheritance; it will give special attention to certain questions rather than to others; it will approach the universal truth from some peculiar point of origin, and will therefore follow its own peculiar path.

Emphasis on the regional or national characteristics of philosophy must not be allowed to obscure contemporary characteristics. It is at least questionable, for example, whether the philosophy of North America in the twentieth century does not have more in common with Ibero-American philosophy in the same century than it has with North American philosophy in the seventeenth century. The fact is that it is, possible to define many areas of similarity-epochal, geographical, linguistic, ethnic. The dis- position to reduce them all to some one, such as national or regional, has led to the creation of fictions which are themselves expressions of bias. A graphic representation of philosophical similarities would be composed of many overlapping circles drawn form different centers and having different diameters all the way from the personal philosophy of a particular man in the period of his youth, to the human philosophy embracing all men of all times and places.

Is there a North American philosophy? I assume that there are North American philosophers, as there are North American physicists and mathe- maticians. But the question is whether there is anything peculiarly North American about North American philosophers. If the answer is affirmative it must be possible to distinguish a character which is descriptive of the North American mind in general, and which can then be used to describe North American philosophy in particular. And this, I believe, is the case.

The American mind has come to possess a specific character which per- vades the entire country, from coast to coast and from border to border. It is recognizable by visitors from abroad, and is sufficiently strong to im- print itself on successive native generations and on a continuous stream of immigrants. The melting pot has not merely melted, it has cooked a broth with an unmistakable flavor of its own.

This flavor is easily sensed-or perhaps smelled-though not so easily defined. Its most evident quality is buoyancy, zestfulness, resourcefulness, and self-reliance. The term "individualism" (the best single term with which to characterize the American mind) has to be used with reser-


358 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

vations. If individualism means the cult of solitude, or the prizing of those personal traits which set one man apart from his fellows, and are the effect of retreat from the world, then the term is inapplicable. For the people of the United States are highly gregarious and sociable. They find silence almost intolerable, and if they develop an oddity they make a cult of it so that they may dwell among similar oddities. American individualism means not the isolation of one human being, but the intercourse and cooperation of many. It means confidence in achievement through organization and combined effort. Thus it is less likely to promote that creative originality in art or fundamental discovery in pure science which is the fruit of solitary genius, than the technical devices by which organized effort-even in art and science themselves-can produce results. The individual who holds himself apart, who will not "join," who does not "be- long," who does not "play the game," who does not "get together," who does not "row his weight in the boat," is viewed with suspicion.

The self-confidence of Americans is due to many causes, including the bounty of nature, the temperate climate, the Protestant emphasis on personal responsibility, and the adventurous character and happy mixture of racial stocks. Whatever the causes, there can, 1 think, be no doubt that those who are born into this region of the earth's surface imbibe a sense of abounding opportunity. In spite of the growth of population and the progressive exhaustion of natural resources, the great majority of articulate Americans still believe that they can improve their condition and make their fortunes; and that if they fail they have only themselves to blame. There is a promise of reward, not too remote, which excites ambi- tion and stimulates effort.

It follows that the people of the United States judge, and expect to be judged, by the standard of success, meaning something made of opportunity. There is the opportunity in the sense of favorable conditions- the "opening," as it is sometimes called-and there is the seizing of the opportunity, the taking advantage of the opening. Success is thought of as the fruit of a marriage between circumstance and action.

It is a mistake to suppose that the American idea of success is limited to material success. That which is characteristically American is not the exclusion of art, literature, science, and religion by the pursuit of wealth, but the introduction into art, literature, science, and religion of something of the same spirit and attitude of which the pursuit of wealth affords the most notable or notorious manifestation: not the drowning of culture by the hum of industry, but the idea of making culture hum. And so material success, yes, but any kind of success, with no prejudice whatever against cultural attainment provided it can be recognized and measured as success. The standard is not essentially sordid or commercial, but it is essentially



competitive, whether that consists in beating records or in beating other competitors.

The belief in success is not based on blind faith, or on trust, or on a mere elasticity of spirit, but on experience. It is no secret, least of all from the American people, that the little enterprise launched on the banks of the Delaware in 1776 turned out to be a great success. As these people look back over their history or out upon the life of their times they see American success-achieved and in the making-and their confidence seems to them to be justified. They feel themselves to be on the march; toward precisely what is not always clear, but anyway toward something bigger and better.

Because of a widespread belief in success, competition tends to stop short of the destruction of the rival. Competition is keen and intense, but not deadly or vindictive. This is because no fight is taken to be the last fight. Defeat may not be accepted gracefully, but it is accepted cheerfully, because he who is defeated expects to fight again, with another opponent or on another field of battle. Sometime, somewhere, somehow, he expects to win.

Whether Americans are happy, is another question; the contrary is often asserted. Nor is it clear that they methodically pursue happiness, or have, save for certain sects, developed any positive art of happiness. It would perhaps be true to say that they believe in the possibility of re- moving the causes of unhappiness-pain, poverty, frustration, sickness, old age, and even death. They don't regard unhappiness as the necessary lot of man, to be accepted as a fatality and sublimated in tragic nobility. Even sin has come to be regarded as curable-if not by religion, then by psycho-analysis.

American resourcefulness consists to no small extent in the fertility of its intellectual soil. It has become a universal seedbed and nursery for ideas from all the past, and from all the world. The American public is a sort of public-at-large-a great cultural world market. Its immense and voracious literacy creates the greatest consumer demand for what is called "reading-matter,"for newspapers, magazines and books, for visual art, for music, for thoughts and fancies, for anything communicable, in human history. I dare say that the time will come, if it has not already come, when the majority of the consumers of Shakespeare will have been Ameri- cans-or of any future Shakespeare, or any lesser Shakespeare. Now while this does convey, and rightly conveys, a suggestion of shallowness and lack of discimination, it also gives the Americans the sense that they have everything. If they do not make it they can buy it. This does not offend their pride, for they feel that they buy it with what they have made.

The last half-century has witnessed an increasing disillusionment and self-criticism. There is, I need not say, a sophisticated elite which scoffs



at such Americanism as I have described. But one does not find the peculiarities of a nation in its sophistication, which tends to be the same among all persons and peoples. To find what is characteristically American one must look for its naivete; for that unself-critical self which its self- criticism criticizes; for the illusions from which it seeks emancipation. This being the case I venture to say that the meaning of life for the Ameri- ,can people is not revealed in the tragedy or in the comedy of manners, but in the melodrama-with its dash and excitement, its galloping horses or speeding automobiles, its pursuits and hair-breadth escapes, its pro- digious feats, its black villain and snow-white heroine-and above all its happy ending.

The Americanism which I have.taken the melodrama to illustrate is not, however, a bad form of art, but a serious interpretation of life: a recognition of the force of evil and of the inertia and indifference of inanimate nature, coupled with an ideal of the good and a belief in man's power to achieve it by the intelligent and organized effort of individuals. For, after all, why shouldn't things end happily-if possible? The faith which I venture to call American is no absolute optimism, no assurance that all is perfect in the eternal constitution of things, or in another world, but a conditional optimism: we can if we try and put our minds and our hands to it, and unite our action. It is not an easy optimism-a faith that moves mountains by simply wishing and believing, or by invoking supernatural agencies, but a contriving optimism, which moves mountains by learning how and applying the necessary leverage. It is a faith justified by the fact that mountains have been so moved. This faith, like all faith, exceeds the limits of past experience, but only because experience itself proves the immense resources of the implemented human will. It is a faith which does not easily accept impossibilities because so many impossibilities have proved to be possible, It is utopian in its dreams, but does not confuse dreams with the actual state of affairs, and is prepared to earn the good and not have it handed out.

Whatever barriers have been erected in America against the importation of physical commodities, or against immigration, the door has been open wide to ideas from all quarters. Given the circumstances of the settlement of the country and the varied composition of its population this could not well have been otherwise. Those who have settled here from different parts of the world have brought ideas with them and transmitted them to their descendents. Contacts have been maintained between settlers or immigrants and their places of origin. At the same time there has emerged from all this variety of impacts a characteristic American response-a selective response, which tries all things but assimilates, rejects, or modi- fies. This principle -of selection, which I have described as individualism,


Is THERE A NORTH AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY? 36t

is not the creation of any consciously nationalistic philosophy. It is a bias compounded of many causes, economic, ethnic, cultural; a self-con- firming bias which once having come to pass has grown by its own exercise. It lies below the level of formal expression. It is an attitude, an inartic- ulate premise, an undefined standard, a prejudice which, since it is deeper than art, literature, politics, business, and philosophy, colors them all alike, and governs the judgments and sentiments of everyday life and of the common man.

It would be an egregious error to suppose that this individualism is the sole or even the principal source of any single branch of American culture. At best it can only describe what is American about it. A painter, a poet, a scientist, a statesman, a businessman has his own vocation and his own threads of connection with the past and the present, both at home and abroad; and he also has himself, his own talent and inventiveness-pos- sibly genius. Similarly, the philosopher by vocation is charged with the solution of certain problems. He takes over the unfinished business of his philosophical predecessors and collaborates withr his philosophical con- temporaries throughout the world. He thinks philosophically for himself. But if he is an American philosopher he is not only a philosopher but also an American, and thus the question arises as to what if any difference this makes to his philosophizing.

My thesis, then, is a very modest one: to the effect, namely, that the philosophizing carried on by Americans or in America, reveals the accent which I have named individualism. Amidst the wide range of philosophical ideas which Americans have inherited from the past, or received from abroad, or drawn from their own minds, the ideas which have been uttered with most conviction, which have enjoyed the widest vogue, and which have taken root, have been ideas which are consistent with individualism. Those parts of philosophical systems which have found favor' have been those parts which could be assimilated to individualism. The characteristic modifications of philosophical systems when accepted by American philosophers or by the American mind at large have been in the direction of individualism. History thus presents us with a sort of experi- mental test. The very range of stimuli, whether presented by the past, or by contemporary thought throughout the world, or by the fecundity of the American mind itself, has served to bring out more clearly the consis- tency of the selective reaction.

For a summary justification of this thesis I accept the periods into which American philosophy is customarily divided: Puritan-Protestant thought of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which flourished in America in the eighteenth century and -culminated in the ideology of the American Revolution; the Scottish



or Common Sense School beginning in the late eighteenth century and lasting throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century; the Roman- tic-Transcendentalist philosophy of the middle of the nineteenth century, followed by Post-Kantian Idealism; and finally the Pragmatic, Realistic, and other movements which have appeared since the opening of the present century and are still moving.1

From the Puritan-Protestant thought of the seventeenth century a part proved congenial and was absorbed into the durable American tradition, while a part was soon forgotten or consciously rejected. That which proved congenial was its Calvinistic moralism of the will; its emphasis on personal accountability; its attributing of failure to weakness rather than to circumstance; its contractual or covenant theory of human institutions by which even God was held to his bargain; its congregational form of church polity; its assertion and practice of the right of private judgment in the reading and interpretation of scripture; its conception of a terrestial paradise; its recognition of the hard facts of evil; its sanction of prudence and worldly success; its broadly Christian or theistic view of the world. The part of Puritan-Protestantism, on the other hand, which was soon abandoned both in New England and elsewhere, comprised the famous Five Points of Calvinism, and in particular the doctrine of human inability; its sombre view of divine vindictiveness; and its theocratic authoritarian- ism.

Because of what was found congenial to the American temper in Puritan- Protestantism the transition to the philosophy of the Enlightenment was not abrupt or revolutionary. For here there was the same moralism; the same confidence in the capacity of a human person to be the master of his own destiny; the same conception of property as an index of character and effort, and as embodying the right of a man to the fruits of his own labor; the same interpretation of institutions, political as well as ecclesiastical, as resting on a compact between private parties each of whom was the natural and jealous guardian of his own interests. The natural rights affirmed in the Declaration of Independence and the civil rights embodied in con- stitutions were in keeping with the Protestant conception of the right of the individual believer to know for himself the terms of salvation, and to demand his quid pro quo even before the throne of God. The precepts of Puritan morality, and in particular the Golden Rule, were not altered in content when they were called the laws of nature. Benjamin Franklin's practical wisdom and methodical cultivation of the powers of the will had been anticipated by Cotton Mather. The State of Nature was scarcely distinguishable from Paradise before the Fall, and both could readily be

1 For a fuller presentation of the same view, cf. the Author's Shall not Perish from the Earth (1940), Ch. 2.



transferred from the past to the future and conceived as the goal of progress. The philosophy of the Declaration of Independence, formulated by Thomas Jefferson not only because he was a skillful draftsman but because he was so completely impregnated with the prevailing opinions of this self-congratulatory epoch, is the creed solemnly adopted by the nation at its coming of age, and perpetually reaffirmed in all its hours of crisis.

The Scottish philosophy claimed a peculiar title to acceptance in Amer- ica. It preserved Locke's metaphysical and moral individualism, while at the same time it rejected both the subjectivism and the scepticism of Locke's followers in the British line. It proposed to save Locke from the paradoxical consequences of his theory that the knowing mind can only compare its own ideas. The Yankees, said James McCosh, "have a pretty clear notion of what a thing is, and, if it is of value, they take steps to secure it." In short according to this most eminent exponent of the Scottish School in America, the American is by temperament and habit one who relies on his head to see the world as it is and on his will to make it better.

The influence of Kant, direct and indirect, was disseminated in America in two waves, the literary movement which came to be called "Tran- scendentalism," and the strictly philosophical movement, which came to be called "Post-Kantian Idealism."

Transcendentalism as represented by Emerson and Bronson Alcott affords a peculiarly good example of the selective emphasis of the American mind. To one who is interested in Americanism the interesting thing is not that Emerson and Alcott should have been influenced by German Romanticism as well as by Plato and by Oriental thought, but what these American thinkers did to these influences before they got through with them. The Transcendentalists, reacting against the empiricism and ex- ternalism both of the Enlightenment and of the Scottish School, accepted from Neo-Platonism, from the Coleridgean version of Schelling, and from Brahmanism or from any other available source, the doctrine of a universal indwelling spirit or over-soul, apprehended by intuitive reason. But they did not allow the logic or the piety of this doctrine to drive them to a mystical absorption or self-surrender. There has never been an extremer or more defiant champion and exemplar of individualism than Emerson; and the name which Alcott preferred for the gospel which he besought Emerson to join him in proclaiming was the name of "personalism."

Post-Kantian Idealism of the American variety was notable for its stub- born unwillingness to sacrifice the individual to the universal. Hence the spread in America of personal or personalistic idealisms which sought to reconcile the absolute spirit of the Kantian school in all its various interpre- tations with the irreducibility of the moral will of the individual man.



This was the gospel of those great teachers of the academic youth-Watson of McGill, Howison of California, Garman of Amherst, Wenley of Michigan, Bowne of Boston, Royce of Harvard-to whom during the last decades of the nineteenth century the colleges and universities looked for a non- sectarian and non-dogmatic support of the moral and religious tradition against the rising influence of natural science.

Of these the most interesting and the most formidable was Royce, who sprang from the western frontier of America and conducted his philosophical studies in Germany. He was profoundly influenced by Schopen- hauer's voluntarism, but rejected his pessimism. He delighted in Hegel's paradoxes and insights but rejected his historical determinism. He was a Fichtean in his moralism but he followed neither Fichte nor Hegel in their apotheosis of the state. He became known as the proponent of "The Absolute," but his Absolute was an American edition of the Absolute. It was no accident that his maj or work was entitled The World and the In- dividual. Not only was Royce's Absolute itself an individual, but in the end it became a society of finite individuals. Its essence was will, embracing a plurality of wills. Temporality was reconciled with eternity through the doctrine of the "specious present." Morality consisted essentially in the energetic triumph of good over evil; and the moral good was loyalty, divisible into conflicting loyalties reconcilable only through mutual respect and tolerance.

At the opening of the present century, when this Americanized Post- Kantian Idealism so dominated the philosophical world as to constitute a sort of academic orthodoxy two powerful thinkers risked the odium of heresy and profoundly altered the scene. It is interesting and characteristically American that the older of these men, William James, sprang from the line of the British School, while John Dewey, his younger and independent ally, had in his earlier years been infected with Hegelianism. Despite the fact that though neither ever completely escaped his original bias, they felt themselves to be collaborators, both in what they rejected and in what they affirmed. The course of American philosophy during the last half-century has been largely the result of their joint influence.

Together they have brought into vogue that way of philosophizing that is loosely called by the name of "Pragmatism." Of Pragmatism it can be said that if it is not strictly indigenous it is, in a degree that is true of no other philosophy, distinctively American. James, owing to his sociability, mobility, and cosmopolitanism, his personal intimacies with European thinkers, and the brilliancy of his style, has been widely read abroad, and especially in France. But the fact remains that Pragmatism, whether of the Jamesian or Deweyan variety, has never taken root outside of the United States. It is worthy of remark that Dewey, who is facile princes among



American philosophers today is elsewhere, save in the field of education, a prophet without honor. This may be taken as negative evidence that Pragmatism is American-that is, not non-American, too American for the alien palate.

James and Dewey both found the scientific clue to their philosophies in biology rather than in physics, and looked to the creative power of the will as the escape from a necessitarian materialism; but whereas James stressed the force of the will and its reserves of energy to be called into play for the overcoming of obstacles, Dewey stressed the intelligence by which obstacles can be circumvented. Dewey, therefore, as compared with James, is more-in line with the American emphasis on organization and technology. The same difference is reflected in their moral philosophies; James's moralism being more dualistic, black and white, heroic and utopian, Dewey's more piecemeal and opportunistic. Thus while James was ready to define the ideal goal and enlist under its banner, he was less concerned with the means of its attainment; while Dewey was so concerned with the means, so unwilling to commit himself to absolutes of any description, as to leave doubt of the end to which the intelligent and organizing will is to be applied. But both for James and for Dewey the will in question was the actual will of mortal man. They knew no other-no transcendent will, no absolute will, no eternal will, no metaphysical will defined a priori to satisfy the requirements of the ideal.

Pragmatism, despite its wide vogue in America, has never attained the high respectability, or, to borrow Santayana's term, the "gentility," once enjoyed by Protestant-Puritanism, by the Scottish School, and by Post- Kantian Idealism. It is a philosophy which does not readily lend itself to authority, to orthodoxy, or to edification. Furthermore, by challenging Idealism, Pragmatism liberated many divergent philosophical forces having little in common save their common rejection of tradition. The spell of Idealism being broken, all sorts of irreverent philosophies poured through the breach-philosophies calling themselves "neo-realism," "critical realism," "contextualism," "operationalism," "positivism," "naturalism." And among these innovating philosophies, recent and contemporary, appears a revised and considerably chastened "idealism"; no longer capitalized, no longer the philosophy, but merely one philosophy among others.

It would take a bolder and more penetrating insight than is claimed by the present writer to see any clearly marked trend amidst this diversity and clash of contemporary philosophical opinion. I venture only to say that I find no disparagement of the individual, whether as moral agent or as thinker, no static absolutism, no mystical self-surrender and dissolution, no fatalism, no tragic futility, no subjection of man to institutions, no



pessimism, no misanthropy; but a pervasive temper of mind which is the opposite of all these things.

Despite, or perhaps because, of the clash of doctrines American philosophy tends to moderation. Its different ideals rub against one another after the manner of gregarious Americans. This friction dulls the sharp edge of difference and works against intellectual obsession or monomania. There are verve few American thinkers who do not have more than one idea. American philosophy does not tend to fanaticism, to doctrinaire rigidity, or to pontifical utterance, or, and this may be held to be a weakness, to system-building.

This moderation is connected with the tendency to hospitality and eclecticism which has already been remarked; and it may account for America's comparative lack of intellectual daring and originality-its producing many busy and efficient thinkers, scattered through a thousand colleges and universities, rather than a few sages, prophets, and revolu- tionaries. The American mind does not live on mountain tops or in ivory towers but in union railway stations; or in skyscrapers Which accommodate a throng of occupants, engaged in diverse enterprises, and whose offices are connected by elevators, telephones, and public address systems.

It is now time for footnotes and epilogue. This survey is guilty of notable omissions, of which I am by no means wholly innocent. Nothing has been said of the history of Catholic thought except by implication in the emphasis on Protestantism. In the last century an attempt to bring Catholic thought more explicitly in line with American liberalism was condemned by the Vatican. In the decades that followed, Catholic thinkers were for social and cultural as well as for dogmatic and ecclesiastical reasons, largely isolated from the main stream of American philosophy. There are signs of a new reapprochement by way of Thomism. In Thom- ism Catholic thinkers, whether Roman or Anglican, have found a common ground with the American tradition of natural law, the dignity of the moral person, social progress, and the rejection of statism.

Three eminent individual philosophers have as yet received no mention. George Santayana found the American environment repellant, and what he found repellant is precisely that which has here been defined as Ameri- can-its moral earnestness, its voluntarism. its disrespect for authority and institutions, its belief in progress through effort and organization. Despite his vogue as a master of style, and despite his doctrinal affinities with realism and naturalism, his Olympian escapism, his delicately mocking and condescending attitude to man's effort to better himself and his world, have proved as uncongenial to Americans as their ways to him.

Very different was the experience of Alfred North Whitehead, who has recently dwelt among us. While America cannot claim to have produced



him, it has nourished him and made him happy. His manysided and tentative manner of philosophizing, his intellectual tolerance, his suspicion of systems, his intimacy with contemporary science, his naturalism, his realism, his personal involvement in the two world wars and devotion to the cause of the Allies, his sympathy with liberal social and economic trends both in Britain and in America, his admiration of James and Dewey above all American philosophers, his empirical sense of a universe rich in undisclosed possibilities, his setting of wisdom and personal conviction above learning, his hailing of the promise of youth-all of these traits of character and of mind enabled him to ally himself with, and take his place among, American philosophers-both loving and beloved.

There remains the figure of Charles Pierce, who stands like a lonely peak, its altitude increasing with distance. I shall not say that Pierce proves the rule, but rather that he proves that there is no rule. Although he was himself an unmitigated individual he explicitly rejected the philosophy of individualism-and he is the best authority that can be cited on the subject. He became the imputed father of Pragmatism but refused the, to him, doubtful honor. He is claimed as a forerunner of American Naturalism, but he would doubtless refuse that honor too, had he the opportunity to speak. He remains a philosopher's philosopher, belonging to no school, and having little in common with his American environment.

So much for the foot-notes. My epilogue contains two paragraphs. In the first place, I wish to say how little I claim for the thesis which I have here defended. I cannot bring it down to date for the simple reason that one cannot see the contours of a complexity in the midst of which one lives. I make no prediction of future trends, not even to the extent of extrapolating the trend which I think I discover in the past. For all I know American philosophy may be about to cease to be, may already be ceasing to be, American as I have interpreted the term. Furthermore, opinion in such matters is peculiarly vulnerable to the charge of bias. Since I desire myself to be American, it is inevitable that I should construe Americanism in terms which enable me to be its champion. So I may have done nothing more than state my own creed, with illustrations from the history of American thought. As I review what I have said I think it should perhaps be entitled "Jottings and Comments on American Philoso- phy,)" with a long sub-title as follows: "By one who believes in the possibility of moral and cultural progress through the organized effort of individuals, and who finds the environment of man both independently resistant and compliantly plastic to the spiritual offspring which it has itself begotten." If this be American, I have, to the best of my ability, made the most of it.

And finally I know that I express the agreement of both branches of



the American family when I say that our philosophizing should create a bond and not a division. For as a goal of endeavor, if not in practice, philosophy is one. If we discover our differences it should be in order to remove them, each profiting by the other. And if we should achieve a common understanding among ourselves, it would have no value if it accentuated a difference between ourselves and the rest of the world; but only if it served to promote a unity of philosophic spirit-a common desire for the truthful solution of common problems-pervading and binding all mankind.

RALPH BARTON PERRY.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

EXTRACTO La filosofia como cualquiera otra rama de la investigation aspira a ser

verdadera y, por lo tanto, universalmente vailida. No ha de proponerse, entonces, ser nacional. Por otra parte, es imposible escapar de la influencia de lo nacional de modo que hay que admitirlo como un hecho sin considerarlo digno de admiracion. Aunque en Estados Unidos no hay un cuerpo de doctrina ni una escuela de filosofia que pueda ser considerada como norte-americana, existe si un molde intelectual que ha sido creado en los Estados Unidos como un resultado de su historia, de su origen etnico y de su ambiente natural y que se ha reflejado en el tipo de filosifia que ha tendido a predominar y prevalecer. El termino mas adecuado para ese molde intelectual es el de individualismo, tomado en el sentido que sirve para expresar una constelacion de presuposiciones mas o menos inconcientes: que desde el punto de vista ordinario los individuos son reales; que son causalmente eficaces tanto en la competencia como en el acuerdo; que pueden, utilizando las fuerzas de la naturaleza fisica someterla a sus propios fines; que crean y controlan sus instituciones sociales de las cuales son sus legitimos beneficiaries; que pueden fraguar y realizar sus ideales por el esfuerzo y la inteligencia organizados.

Tal cunio mental se hace presente en los negocios, la ley, la politica y en la competencia deportiva, en el College, en la ciencia y en las artes. Ha ejercido una influencia selective en la filosofla como puede comprobarse analizando las sucesivas corrientes del pensamiento europeo que han sido adoptadas y asimiladas en suelo americano (E.E.U.U.). El pensamiento americano ha acentuado y absor'bido lo que habia de individualist (en el sentido arriba apuntado) en la concepcion Protestante-Puritana de la 6poca colonial. El Iluminismo (Filosofla de la Ilustracion) y la escuela realista escocesa del -sentido comuln fueron aceptados especialmente. Del aporte dado por el Idealismo Kantiano y el Romanticismo Aleman acentuo



sus aspectos voluntaristas y personalistas. Del Pragmatismo, venido de fuentes francesas, inglesas y alemanas acepto todo aquello que concordara con el primado de la voluntad y una filosofia social liberal. Se prestan para ser sometidos a la misma interpretacion otras corrientes actuales: los dos grupos del Realismo, el resurgir del Idealismo, el movimiento que se titula a si mismo "Naturalismo," el interest por la teoria de los valores, el Positivismo Logico y sus diferentes grados. Respecto al futuro de la filosofia en los Estados Unidos seria aventurado predecirlo salvo declarar que, a pesar de los cambios sociales, economicios y culturales su molde intelectual tiende a permanecer inalterable.


Article Contentsp. 356p. 357p. 358p. 359p. 360p. 361p. 362p. 363p. 364p. 365p. 366p. 367p. 368p. 369

Issue Table of ContentsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Mar., 1949) pp. 345-626Front MatterFormal Opening of the CongressIs There an Ibero-American Philosophy? [pp. 345-355]Is There a North American Philosophy? [pp. 356-369]

Oriental Philosophy and ReligionThe Extremism of Eastern Philosophy [pp. 370-376]Philosophy and Philosophers in the Far East [pp. 377-388]

Theory of Knowledge: Reason and IntuitionIntroduccin a la Filosofa de las Ciencias[pp. 389-399]

Theory of Knowledge: Reason and InutitionPosibilidades Epistemolgicas de la Filosofa Existencial[pp. 400-415]

Theory of Knowledge: Reasona nd IntuitionMysticism and Semantics [pp. 416-422]

Philosophy of Religion and SpiritThe Problem of God [pp. 423-432]Sobre el Espritu y la Actitud Espiritual en las Grandes Culturas[pp. 433-439]

Methaphysics: ExistenceConcept, Process, and Reality [pp. 440-447]Being, Value, and Existence [pp. 448-457]Metaphysics and Existence [pp. 458-462]

Esthetics and Philosophy of ArtThe Esthetic Development of Creation [pp. 463-468]Convention, Nature, and Art [pp. 469-479]The Art of Delight and the Art of Relief [pp. 480-486]

Ethnics and Philosophy of LawDe la Responsabilit des lites[pp. 487-495]Justice and Legal Security [pp. 496-503]The New Subjectivism in Ethics [pp. 504-511]

The Presidential AddressWhat Contribution Can Philosophy Make to World Understanding? [pp. 512-530]

Philosophical AnthropologyIndividuality and Community [pp. 531-537]The Interpenetration of the Ibero-American and North American Cultures [pp. 538-544]The Comparative Method and the Nature of Human Nature [pp. 545-557]

Philosophy of History and CultureConcepcin Biolgico-Historicista de Los Valores[pp. 558-567]The Philosophy of Culture and its Bearing on the Philosophy of History [pp. 568-575]The Philosophy of Democracy as a Philosophy of History [pp. 576-587]

The Philosophical Bearings of Modern LogicE. Husserl and J. Joyce or Theory and Practice of the Phenomenological Attitude [pp. 588-594]El Problema del Mtodo en la Investigacion Filosfica[pp. 595-608]The Relation of Logic to Metaphysics [pp. 609-619]Some Reflections on the Theory of Systems [pp. 620-626]

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Ralph Barton Perry_Is There a North American Philosophy?

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