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America the Philosophical

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America the Philosophical

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

This bold, insightful book argues that America today towers as the most philosophical culture in the history of the world, an unprecedented marketplace for truth and debate.

With verve and keen intelligence, Carlin Romano—Pulitzer Prize finalist, award-winning book critic, and professor of philosophy—takes on the widely held belief that the United States is an anti-intellectual country. Instead he provides a richly reported overview of American thought, arguing that ordinary Americans see through phony philosophical justifications faster than anyone else, and that the best of our thinkers ditch artificial academic debates for fresh intellectual enterprises. Along the way, Romano seeks to topple philosophy’s most fiercely admired hero, Socrates, asserting that it is Isocrates, the nearly forgotten Greek philosopher who rejected certainty, whom Americans should honor as their intellectual ancestor. America the Philosophical is a rebellious tour de force that both celebrates our country’s unparalleled intellectual energy and promises to bury some of our most hidebound cultural clichés.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345804709
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/23/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	688
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Carlin Romano, Critic-at-Large of The Chronicle of Higher Education and literary critic of The Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty-five years (1984-2009), is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Ursinus College. His criticism has appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Harper’s, The American Scholar, Salon, The Times Literary Supplement, and many other publications. A former president of the National Book Critics Circle, he was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism, cited for “bringing new vitality to the classic essay across a formidable array of topics.” He lives in Philadelphia.

Introduction 3

Part 1 American Philosophy and the Tradition

Therapists, Bootstrappers, Infantry 27

Parsing America 47

Great White Men and the Ivy League Cavalcade 66

Rorty's Revolution 126

Part 2 Abandoning Toothless Truth: Other White Males Muscle In

Persuasion and the Brows 161

Psychologists and Psychiatrist 185

The Literary Critics 208

The Political Theorists 231

Linguist, Mathematician, Neurologist 250

The Casual Wisemen 260

The Print Journalists 281

The Broadcasters 296

Part 3 The Rising Outsiders

African Americans 313

Women 344

Native Americans 443

Gays 451

Part 4 Gutenberg's Revenge: The Explosion of Cyberphilosophy

The Book Lives! 467

Cyberpolitics 478

Cyberreligion 484

Cyberliteratuxe 496

Cybercynics 512

Part 5 Isocrates: A Man, Not a Typo

Busting Isocrates 535

Isocrates's Life 538

Images and Clichés of Isocrates 541

Sophists and Sophistry 543

Rhetoricians and Rhetoric 546

Isocrates, Philosopher 549

Isocrates, Greece and America 555

Part 6 Just Saying No to Justification: The Magnificent Failure of John Rawls

Not Since John Stuart Mill 563

A Lucky Life 567

Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Argue About 575

Rawls on Justification 583

"The Theory Is Not Successful" 591

Epilogue Obama, Philosopher in Chief 596

Acknowledgments 607

Bibliography 611

Interviews 641

Index 645

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Editorial Reviews

Praise for Carlin Romano's America the Philosophical:

“Ambitious. . . . Convincing. . . . An encyclopedic survey of the life of the mind in the United States. . . . Romano is enlightening when he analyzes American intellectual life and illustrates its liveliness.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Is the title a joke? . . . [Romano] argues, brilliantly and at length, that it is not.”
—Harvard Magazine

“A high-speed tour of America’s big thinkers . . . Romano is a cheerful and exuberant guide.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Genuinely exciting and provocative . . . If Romano wanted to discombobulate the traditional landscape of American philosophy, he achieved his goal."
—Umberto Eco

“Admirable . . . Romano writes with the snap of a journalist.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“A comprehensive intellectual history from Emerson to Rawls.”
—The New Yorker

“Magisterial.”
—Broad Street Review

“Romano’s remarkable book stands out in terms of ambition, breadth, provocativeness, and, when needed, a delicate touch.”
—Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard University, author of Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed

“Stimulating . . . graceful . . . exuberant . . . succeeds in filling one’s mind with the excitement of ideas duking it out.”
—Seattle Times

“Both scholarly and entertaining—learned and stimulating—to an equal and extraordinary degree. America the Philosophical is one of the books of the year . . . A hugely enlightening compendium of intellectual heresy.”
—The Buffalo News

“In an age when many debates are high-pitched screeds, how counterintuitive it is to argue that American philosophical thought is booming. But that’s trademark Romano . . . Romano turns his subject into a narrative of people brought together by their love of ideas.”
—Chicago Tribune

“Romano’s grip on his subject is fierce. . . . A tour de force—encyclopedic, entertaining and enlightening.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“With illuminating anecdotes and an addictive prose style, Romano renders complex ideas lucid without sacrificing depth of understanding or his splendid sense of humor . . . breathtaking intellectual range and passion.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Part love letter, part hand grenade, Romano’s commentary is sure to delight and infuriate in a way that will underscore its thesis.”
—Booklist

“Romano writes so well and unrolls his knowledge in such an unthreatening way that before you know it, you will be thinking philosophically yourself.”
—Philip Seib, Director of the Center for Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California

“Romano offers a smart, sophisticated and counter-intuitive comparison of European and American culture. His language is rich and textured, but also contemporary and wry.”
—Dallas Morning News

“Romano’s voracious intellectual curiosity is impressive—America the Philosophical is dense with amusing anecdotes.”
—The Daily

From the Publisher

Though de Tocqueville argued that “in no country in the civilized world is less attention paid to philosophy than in the United States,” award-winning book critic and Ursinus College philosophy professor Romano sets out to prove, in this engaging tome, that America is the “most philosophical culture in the history of the world.” America’s philosophy is a pragmatic one, Romano argues, aimed not at locating absolute truth in the ether, but instead confronting real world problems and finding real world solutions. Romano begins with the philosophical roots of American pragmatism in the 19th century and outlines the 20th-century contributions of Willard Van Orman Quine, John Rawls, and Richard Rorty. In addition, Romano analyzes the philosophy of intellectuals like Harold Bloom or Edward Said, and highlights the oft overlooked contributions of African-Americans, women, and gays before tackling contemporary realms of cybertechnology and popular culture. At its core, the work seeks to shift our definition of philosophy from an emphasis on reason and truth-finding to philosophy as a form of persuasion that aims to find better solutions to problems. With illuminating anecdotes and an addictive prose style, Romano renders complex ideas lucid without sacrificing depth of understanding or his splendid sense of humor. His breathtaking intellectual range and passion will make every reader want to be a philosopher. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt Inc. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Though Romano (philosophy, Ursinus Coll.) received his doctorate from Princeton, which has one of the country's foremost analytic philosophy departments, his primary aim here is to combat what he sees as the unduly narrow scope of much academic philosophy. For Romano, philosophy is a broad cultural affair rather than a technical discipline, and he argues that America is not such an unphilosophical country as is commonly believed. On the contrary, he writes, philosophy is everywhere in this country. Romano deplores the usual emphasis on a few major figures and brings to the fore individuals not usually considered philosophers such as child psychiatrist Robert Coles and literary theorist Kenneth Burke. He covers a great number of people, including many women and minority writers as well as those prominent in new fields like cyberphilosophy. His hero is not Socrates, who sought solutions to deep questions, but rather a less well-known Greek thinker, Isocrates. For Isocrates, and for Romano as well, philosophy is a conversation that has no fixed goal or outcome and that serves to bring various outlooks to public attention. VERDICT This wide-ranging survey is likely to be of interest to all readers interested in philosophy and American thought in the 20th and 21st centuries. Recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 9/29/11.]—David Gordon, Bowling Green State Coll., OH

Library Journal

Chronicle of Higher Education critic-at-large Romano (Philosophy and Humanities/Ursinus Coll.) debuts with a comprehensive and certain-to-be controversial diagnosis of the condition of philosophical thinking in America today. The author sees philosophers everywhere today (whether they call themselves such or no), not just lounging in the groves of academe, and this will surely annoy some fellow academics. He realizes that philosophy has traditionally been the ballpark for white men to play in, so he makes a thorough effort to add to the team some prominent women, African Americans, Native Americans, gays and others. But he begins with the famous white men (William James, George Santayana, John Dewey et al.) and looks at key figures later on--John Rawls and Richard Rorty among them. Romano then begins his explorations of byways rather than highways, seeing the philosophical bent of thinkers who didn't necessarily define themselves as philosophers--e.g., psychologists B. F. Skinner, Abraham Maslow and Howard Gardner. Then it's on to literary critics Kenneth Burke, Harold Bloom and Edward Said. Political theorists are next, and the author also gives a serious look at Robert Fulghum and Hugh Hefner. He examines journalists as well, including I.F. Stone, Christopher Hitchens and Bill Moyers. Near the end, Romano makes a strong case for Isocrates, a rival of Plato whose thought, writes the author, was more pragmatic--as we are. Romano's grip on his subject is fierce, and his tone, though critical throughout (he does not just summarize; he assesses), is occasionally light (he alludes to Buster Keaton, Bigfoot and the TV show Justified). In the final chapter, he praises the philosophical talents of President Obama, a discussion sure to displease Republicans. A tour de force--encyclopedic, entertaining and enlightening.

Kirkus Reviews

America the Philosophical

America the Philosophical

Paperback(Reprint)

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

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