From a Philosophical Point of View: Selected Studies

Morton White

Published by Princeton University Press 2005

From a Philosophical Point of View

Selected Studies

Morton White

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400826469

Overview
Contents

About this book

One of the most important philosophers of recent times, Morton White has spent a career building bridges among the increasingly fragmented worlds of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. From a Philosophical Point of View is a selection of White's best essays, written over a period of more than sixty years. Together these selections represent the belief that philosophers should reflect not only on mathematics and science but also on other aspects of culture, such as religion, art, history, law, education, and morality.

White's essays cover the full range of his interests: studies in ethics, the theory of knowledge, and metaphysics as well as in the philosophy of culture, the history of pragmatism, and allied currents in social, political, and legal thought. The book also includes pieces on philosophers who have influenced White at different stages of his career, among them William James, John Dewey, G. E. Moore, and W. V. Quine. Throughout, White argues from a holistic standpoint against a sharp epistemological distinction between logical and physical beliefs and also against an equally sharp one between descriptive and normative beliefs.

White maintains that once the philosopher abandons the dogma that the logical analysis of mathematics and physics is the essence of his subject, he frees himself to resume his traditional role as a student of the central institutions of civilization. Philosophers should function not merely as spectators of all time and existence, he argues, but as empirically minded students of culture who try to use some of their ideas for the benefit of society.

Author / Editor information

Morton White is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Intellectual History at the Institute for Advanced Study. Earlier, he was Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. His most recent book is A Philosophy of Culture (Princeton).

Reviews

"From a Philosophical Point of View has an intellectual unity that results when a single mind of real ability looks about and surveys a wide variety of interesting issues. The author's adroit prose makes it a pleasure to read his discussions. And his wide reading in many fields endows his material with solidity and depth of informative range."—Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: What I Have Learned by Rereading These Essays Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I Prolegomena
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
CHAPTER 1 Prologue to A Philosophy of Culture (2002) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	5
CHAPTER 2 Philosophy and Man: An Exhortation (1955) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
CHAPTER 3 The Social Role of Philosophy (1952) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	14
CHAPTER 4. New Horizons in Philosophy (1960) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
PART II History
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
CHAPTER 5 A Plea for an Analytic Philosophy of History (1953) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
CHAPTER 6 Historical Relativism and the Evaluation of Histories (2003) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
CHAPTER 7 Historical Inevitability (1956) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
CHAPTER 8. Tolstoy the Empirical Fox (2003) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
PART III Religion, Education, and Politics
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
CHAPTER 9. John Dewey: A Great Philosopher of Education (1966) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
CHAPTER 10. Religion, Politics, and the Higher Learning (1954) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
CHAPTER 11. Religious Commitment and Higher Education (1957) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
CHAPTER 12. The University in Transition (1966) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
CHAPTER 13. Philosophy in a Utopian Institute for Advanced Study (1989) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
PART IV. Analyticity, Morality, Causality, and Liberty
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
CHAPTER 14. The Analytic and the Synthetic: An Untenable Dualism (1950) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
CHAPTER 15. Ontological Clarity and Semantic Obscurity (1951) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
CHAPTER 16. On the Church-Frege Solution of the Paradox of Analysis (1948) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	112
CHAPTER 17. Oughts and Cans (1979) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	116
CHAPTER 18. Causation and Action (1969) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
CHAPTER 19. Hart and Honoré on Causation in the Law (1960) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
CHAPTER 20. The Question of Free Will: Some Preliminary Remarks (1993) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	134
PART V. Pragmatism
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
CHAPTER 21. Harvard’s Philosophical Heritage (1957) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
CHAPTER 22. Experiment and Necessity in Dewey’s Philosophy (1959) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
CHAPTER 23. Value and Obligation in Dewey and Lewis (1949) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	160
CHAPTER 24. Desire and Desirability: A Rejoinder to a Posthumous Reply by John Dewey (1996) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
CHAPTER 25. Peirce’s Summum Bonum and the Ethical Views of C. I. Lewis and John Dewey (1999) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
CHAPTER 26. Normative Ethics, Normative Epistemology, and Quine’s Holism (1986) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	186
CHAPTER 27. Holistic Pragmatism and Ethics (2002) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
CHAPTER 28. The Psychologism of Hume and Arithmetical Truth (2003) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
PART VI. History of Ideas
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
CHAPTER 29. Why Annalists of Ideas Should Be Analysts of Ideas (1975) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
CHAPTER 30. The Revolt against Formalism in American Social Thought of the Twentieth Century (1947) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
CHAPTER 31. Pragmatism and the Revolt against Formalism: Revising Some Doctrines of William James (1986) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
CHAPTER 32. The Politics of Epistemology (1989) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
CHAPTER 33. Original Sin, Natural Law, and Politics (1956) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	270
CHAPTER 34. Philosophy, The Federalist, and the Progressive Era (1988) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	284
CHAPTER 35. The American Intellectual versus the American City (1961) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
CHAPTER 36. The Philosopher and the Metropolis in America (1963) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	310
PART VII. Philosophers
INTRODUCTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	321
CHAPTER 37. William James (1986) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	323
CHAPTER 38. The Later Years of George Santayana (1963) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331
CHAPTER 39. English Philosophy at Midcentury: An American’s Impressions (1951) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	333
CHAPTER 40. Memories of G. E. Moore (1959) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	339
CHAPTER 41. W. V. Quine (2001) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	344
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	349
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	353

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