[MD] Royce and the American Philosophical Movement

[Ian Glendinning]

Matt, you claim "Down with System, Up with Life!" in one short
paragraph, .... and spend the whole of the rest of your response in
the traditional system of comparing philsophical "isms".

I think this is where Pirsig says - pejoratively - Down with
"Philosophology", Up with Life - living philosophy.

My position is up with life, why down with anything as a particular
"target" ? But hey, back to the dishes - they won't do themselves ;-)
Ian

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 8:13 AM, Matt
Kundert<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Bruce Kuklick is probably one of the foremost intellectual
> historians of American philosophy.  And much of the listed
> doctrines fit his base (Peirce, James, Dewey, Royce) and
> Pirsig--somewhat.
>
> The trouble is that I don't think James and Dewey especially
> fit easily into his schematic (particularly "voluntarism"), both
> showing contradictory tendencies.  For instance, by
> focusing on a strain of neo-Kantianism that certainly fits
> Royce, and probably the Dewey of Experience and Nature,
> one has to downplay, not just Dewey's avowed love of
> Hegel, but the downright anti-Kantian tenor of a book like
> The Quest for Certainty.  You can "stress the changing
> character of our conceptual schemes" all you like--it just
> doesn't make the best sense of the movement between Kant
> and Hegel.  If one emphasizes Kant's creation of a notion like
> a "conceptual scheme," and then tacks on, "Oh, and Hegel
> said they change over time," then you've only just paid
> lip-service to Hegel's turn to historicity.  The spirit of Hegel
> is more radical than that, just as I think the spirit of James
> and Dewey was (and Peirce in his right moments).
>
> Royce, to me, just doesn't seem like the right candidate for
> promoting the spirit of Pirsig.  But then again, that should be
> obvious given my recent chanting of, "Down with System,
> Up with Life!"
>
> Matt
>
>> Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:23:33 -0700
>> From: ridgecoyote at gmail.com
>> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>> Subject: [MD] Royce and the American Philosophical Movement
>>
>> Beware Bo!  More Royce!
>>
>> My question to MD is do you see Pirsig fitting neatly into this movement as
>> described below?  I'm not familiar with the details of all the labeled
>> doctrines, but reading them with the MoQ in mind I find myself checking them
>> off one by one going, yep, yep, yep.....
>>
>> I mean, I'm pretty sure the MoQ is a "constructionalist epistemology
>> stressing the changing character of our conceptual schemes".  It sure looks
>> like one to me.
>>
>>
>>
>> >From Bruce Kuklick's Josiah Royce, An Intellectual Biography
>>
>> "... we have been told that to trace the story of American thought is to
>> trace a peculiar version of experimental Anglo-American empiricism from
>> Peirce, to James to Dewey;
>> If we wish to examine a secondary theme, we may examine the Hegelian Royce
>> who stands outside this tradition, influence by German thought, the leading
>> expositor of a different philosophic style, absolute idealism.
>>
>> This picture is wrong not merely in detail but in principle.  I have
>> indicated that the Cambridge pragmatists--Royce among them--were part of a
>> major philosophical movement.  Their pragmatism is a form of neo-Kantianism
>> which draws from a set of connected doctrines:
>>
>>  A constructionalist epistemology stressing the changing character of our
>> conceptual schemes;
>>
>> a commitment to a variety of voluntarism;
>>
>> A Kantian concern with the nature of possible experience;
>>
>> an adherence to the idealist principle that existence does not transcend
>> consciousness;
>>
>> a distrust of traditional British empiricism;
>>
>> a recognition of the importance of logic for philosophy;
>>
>> a refusal to distinguish between questions of knowledge and of value;
>>
>> an emphasis on the relation of philosophy to practical questions;
>>
>> a desire to reconcile science and religion."
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>
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