American Philosophies: An Anthology

American Philosophies is an ambitious book full of the contradictory and clashing voices that have shaped American thought. Rather than force too much unanimity, the editors have opted to feature a wide array of American writers, from freed slaves to founding fathers to scholars. Because the book does not include many 20th-century pieces, it functions primarily as a history of American philosophy. As expected, readers will find selections from William James, John Dewey, C.S. Pierce, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. But the anthology's real brilliance comes from the polemical and contentious views of the voices that have also created America. The book includes a host of unlikely bedfellows: there is King Ferdinand of Aragon's threatening letter in 1493 to the region's newly discovered Indians, demanding that they "recognize the Church and its highest priest, the Pope, as rulers of the universe, and in their name the King and Queen of Spain as rulers of this land." There is Luther Standing Bear in 1933: "every problem that exists today in regard to the native population is due to the white man's cast of mind." There is the puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards on original sin. And there is feminist Emma Goldman defining anarchy. Editors Leonard Harris, Scott L. Pratt, and Anne Waters have given us a volume that is more than the usual collection of white male philosophers, and the result is "a chorus of voices--sometimes in unison, sometimes creating a discordant wail." --Eric de Place