This article retraces the antecedents and consequences of a historically decisive turning-point in the relations between philosophy and the national question in the U.S.
Philosophy, just like culture in general, took on increasingly mottled tones in the U.S. depending on the waves of immigration. That is to say that few doctrines or convictions exist in the new world which were not traced out upon those of the old world.
But it is one thing to speak of philosophy in the U.S. and another to speak of American philosophy.
The latter is not over a hundred years old. It was born in New England after the Civil War. Thus, without entirely sacrificing polychromia to monochromia, it presents a markedly predominant color; the optimistic green of pragmatism. The first text in the lineage, the essay of Charles Sanders Peirce entitled How to Clarify Our Ideas, bears witness to this.
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Father Reiner Schürmann, O.P., Ph.D. (February 4, 1941 – August 20, 1993) was Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York.
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