American Philosophies - Native American Philosophy, Puritan Thought, Transcendentalism, Pragmatism, African-american Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
American philosophies are as varied and diverse as the many backgrounds and cultures that collaborate to form American life. Even so, there are some similar emphases that cross these differences. Often, philosophies in America valorize action and the practical aspects of thought; American philosophers are regularly concerned with problems of race, class, gender, and other ethical and political forces that shape and undergird more abstract thought; and even the more religious and spiritual elements of American philosophies are characteristically addressed to matters of community and personal growth.
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Well prior to the arrival of European colonists, the Iroquois had developed sophisticated political thought and a government with a clear division of powers; Mississippian peoples
had constructed one of the largest cities in the Western hemisphere at Cahokia, spreading Mississippian religious and cultural influence throughout the region; and the Pueblo people had created intricate agricultural in…
Puritan philosophy arises out of sense of the separation and uniqueness that developed as the Puritans left England because of religious persecution and settled in the New World. The difficulty of such a journey and the problems of living in an unfamiliar land combined to add a kind of rigor and harshness to the Puritans' Christian theology and a strict ethical and social control over the m…
Transcendentalism, which blended philosophy, religious thought, social reform, and environmental concern, was most active during the first half of the nineteenth century, and most of its key figures lived in New England. These figures include Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), and Margaret Fuller (1810–1850). Through its major outlet for publicat…
Pragmatism developed primarily out of the work of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), William James (1842–1910), and John Dewey (1859–1952). Peirce, a logician, semiotician, and philosopher, first developed the notion of pragmatism as a theory of meaning, a way of clarifying terms used in philosophic debate. Peirce claimed that when one understands "all the conceivable …
African-American philosophy has historically struggled against the efforts of many European-Americans to marginalize and denigrate the importance of African-American experiences and reflections upon the unique situations of black Americans. For many centuries punished if they learned to read or write, black Americans communicated largely through the development of rich oral and religious tradition…
Women in American society have also been marginalized and their unique perspectives have been often overlooked and many times simply discarded. Despite this forced invisibility, American women have contributed to worldwide feminist movements, often in uniquely American ways far different from their counterparts in other nations and cultures. From childhood, Jane Addams (1860–1935) was deepl…
Anglo-American philosophy, also known as analytic philosophy, is largely an import from European thinkers who immigrated to the United States during the first half of the twentieth
century and their followers. Perhaps the most famous of these immigrants was Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), who was a serious academic philosopher and a great popularizer of both analytic philosophy and his own c…
Addams, Jane. Democracy and Social Ethics. New York: Macmillan, 1902. Deloria, Vine, Jr. Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr., Reader. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum, 1999. Flower, Elizabeth, and Murray Murphey. A History of Philosophy in America. 2 vols. New York: Putnam, 1977. Harris, Leonard, ed. Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hu…
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