This book investigates the extent to which various scholarly labels are appropriate for the work of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. As Louis Menand wrote, “Holmes has been called a formalist, a positivist, a utilitarian, a realist, a historicist, a pragmatist, (not to mention a nihilist).” Each of the eight chapters investigates one label, analyzes the secondary texts that support the use of the term to characterize Holmes’s philosophy, and takes a stand on whether or not the category is appropriate for Holmes by assessing his judicial and nonjudicial publications, including his books, articles, and posthumously published correspondences. The thrust of the collection as a whole, nevertheless, bends toward the stance that Holmes is a pragmatist in his jurisprudence, ethics, and politics. The final chapter, by Susan Haack, makes that case explicitly. Edited by Seth Vannatta, this book will be of particular interest to students and faculty working in law, jurisprudence, philosophy, intellectual history, American Studies, political science, and constitutional theory.

This book argues for a three-dimensional view of law and restates the message of Holmes's 'The Path of the Law' for legal educators of today.

W. V. Quine’s occasional references to his ‘pragmatism’ have often been interpreted as suggesting a possible link to the American Pragmatism of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction argues that the influence of pragmatism on Quine’s philosophy is more accurately traced to his teacher C.I. Lewis and his conceptual pragmatism from Mind and the World Order, and his later An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. Quine’s epistemological views share many affinities with Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism, where knowledge is conceived as a conceptual framework pragmatically revised in light of what future experience reveals. Robert Sinclair further defends and elaborates on this claim by showing how Lewis’s influence can be seen in several key episodes in Quine’s philosophical development. This not only highlights a forgotten element of the epistemological backdrop to Quine’s mid-century criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction, but Sinclair further argues that it provides the central epistemological framework for the form and content of Quine’s later naturalized conception of epistemology.

Pragmatism, Logic and Law offers a view of legal pragmatism consistent with pragmatism writ large, tracing it from origins in late 19th century America to the present, covering various issues, legal cases, personalities, and relevant intellectual movements within and outside law. It addresses pragmatism’s relation to legal liberalism, legal positivism, natural law, critical legal studies (CLS), and post-Rorty “neopragmatism.” It views legal pragmatism as an exemplar of pragmatism’s general contribution to logical theory, which bears two connections to the western philosophical tradition: first, it extends Francis Bacon’s empiricism into contemporary aspects of scientific and legal experience, and second, it is an explicitly social reconstruction of logical induction. Both notions were articulated by John Dewey, and both emphasize the social or corporate element of human inquiry. Empiricism is informed by social as well as individual experience (which includes the problems of conflict and consensus). Rather than following the Aristotelian model of induction as immediate inference from particulars to generals, a model that assumes a consensual objective viewpoint, pragmatism explores the actual, and extended, process of corporate inference from particular experience to generalization, in law as in science. This includes the necessary process of resolving disagreement and finding similarity among relevant particulars.

This book explores "real" valuation through tracing the pragmatic meanings of "mattering." Employing Peirce's overall pragmatic method and realism to understand what we mean when we say something "matters," it encourages consideration of the practices we engage in, the values attached to those practices, and their consequences.

This book examines points of meaningful affinity as well as contention and misrecognition between philosophical traditions of the Americas. Using Rodó’s metaphors from The Tempest, it reflects on the perils and possibilities for Inter-American philosophy as an established historical fact, a form of propaganda, or as a legitimate aspiration.

The essays in Pragmatist and American Philosophical Perspectives on Resilience offer a survey of the ways that “resilience” is becoming a key concept for understanding our world, as well as providing deeper insight about its specific actual and proposed applications. As a concept with multiple theoretical and practical meanings, “resilience” promises considerable explanatory power. At the same time, current uses of the concept can be diverse and at times inconsistent. The American philosophical tradition provides tools uniquely suited for clarifying, extending, and applying emerging concepts in more effective and suggestive ways. This collection explores the usefulness of theoretical work in American philosophy and pragmatism to practices in ecology, community, rurality, and psychology.

H.G. Callaway’s critical edition of William James's Essays in Radical Empiricism evaluates this classic work of American philosophy and the pragmatist tradition partly on the basis of the functional psychology of James's magnum opus, The Principles of Psychology. The edition also brings in later, Darwinian-functionalist, American psychology—which James did much to inspire—and contemporary developments in functional, cognitive psychology and neuroscience. James’s own text has been annotated throughout to render his references and theoretical concerns explicit and to briefly indicate points of criticism. The edition features an expanded bibliography that includes both historical and contemporary sources, as well as a new, comprehensive index. The chief arguments of the edition center on criticism of James's claims for "radical empiricism," his doctrine of "pure experience," and the doubtful role as evidence James attributed to stand-alone introspection and Jamesian “retrospection.” Enlisting results from the logic of relations, contemporary empiricism, historical and contemporary developments in cognitive psychology, and experimental neuroscience, Callaway argues for the importance of James on functional relations—to be interpreted in the manner of the scientific naturalism prominent in The Principles of Psychology. Too often, James’s late philosophical views have overshadowed the accomplishments of his earlier work in psychology. Overall, this new edition indicates the scientific virtues of functionalism in cognitive psychology and shows the relevance of James’s functional psychology to contemporary cognitive theory.

While a reconstruction of the whole of William James’s personal library isn’t feasible, there are significant portions of it that reside within the Harvard University Library system and this book is a partial reconstruction of their story. Reconstructing the Personal Library of William James offers a new, comprehensive account of the James collection at Harvard University, bringing together all known Harvard-owned entries into one comprehensive volume. The annotated bibliography contains data on 2,554 entries (2,862 volumes) from James’s personal library, including both the 1923 “Philosophical Library” and all known additional donations by James and his family. . Each entry, when applicable, contains the following data points: Harvard Library location and call number, provenance, bookplate, accession record, autographs, inscriptions, ownership marks, indexical annotations, markings, and marginalia. To orient the reader, Ermine L. Algaier IV supplements the bibliography with essays that examine the history of the James’s library at Harvard, assess the size of the collection and how it came to reside at Harvard, and showcase patterns that emerge from looking at the collection as a whole. Additional essays are devoted to explaining the source lists and archival resources used in reconstructing James’s personal library, as well as outlining steps for continued research on the collection.

Endurance Sport and the American Philosophical Tradition, edited by Douglas R. Hochstetler, analyzes the relationship between endurance sports—such as running, cycling, and swimming–and themes from the American philosophical tradition. The contributors enter into dialogue with writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, Henry David Thoreau, and John Dewey, as well as more recent scholars such as John McDermott and bell hooks. Examining American philosophical themes informs issues in endurance sport, and the experiential nature of endurance sport helps address philosophical issues and explain philosophical themes in American philosophy. The chapters bear witness to the fact that philosophy is not limited to abstract notions such as justice, truth, happiness, and so forth, but intersects with and has a bearing on our human endeavors of work and play. Furthermore, the themes centrally related to the American philosophical tradition align closely with the challenges and experiences present and faced by runners, cyclists, swimmers, and endurance athletes in general.