The Soul of Classical American Philosophy: The Ethical and Spiritual Insights of William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Peirce

Three American Philosophers

Charles Peirce (1839-1914), William James (1842 --1910), and Josiah Royce (1855 -- 1916)were American philosophers whose lives and thoughts overlapped and who have become representative of the "classical age" of American philosophy. James and Royce were close friends and colleagues at Harvard for many years. Peirce never received a permanent academic appointment, but he wrote extensively and also was close personally to both James and Royce. The three philosophers are loosely described as pragmatists, which means that each of them believed that the meaning of an idea was based upon its consequences in human activity. Thus each thinker stressed the purposeful, forward-looking character of thought. Josiah Royce shared these pragmatic tendencies with Peirce and James even though his philosophy tended more in the direction of idealism. James and Peirce also differed in many respects, with Peirce being more of a system-builder. In some respects, Peirce and Royce are closer philosophically to each other than either is to James.

Richard P. Mullin's recent book "The Soul of Classical American Philosophy: The Ethical and Spiritual Insights of William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Peirce" (2007)is an excellent introduction to the work of these thinkers and to the value of studying them. Mullin taught for many years at Wheeling Jesuit University, West Virginia, where he is now Professor Emeritus. It is inspiring that this is his first book. Mullin describes (at ix) his book as dealing with issues "that would be treated under the name of soul in traditional philosophy. These issues include: the search for truth; the meaning of whatever we call our 'self', especially in relation to our bodily existence; free will; moral values; community; and our relationship to the Transcendent." Mullin points out that the work of James, Royce, and Peirce arose in the context of the acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution and the related decline in religious belief. Their thought also arose in an expanding, industrializing, and increasingly capitalistic United States which, in the view of many people, threatened communal and other values not rooted in economics. Mullin's discussion of these three philosophers focuses on their ethical insights, their views of the human person and human community, and their efforts to reconcile science with religion. These basic philosophical issues are still of great importance to many people. A fourth philosopher frequently associated with the classical age of American philosophy, John Dewey, is not included in Mullin's study. For Mullin, Dewey differed fundamentally from his three fellow-pragmatists in his naturalism and in his effort to avoid the transcendent spiritual issues that preoccupied James, Royce, and Peirce. Dewey has been the most influential of the American pragmatists, but his thought has been amply explored in many other sources.

Mullin's book consists of three extended parts dealing, respectively, with the thought of James, Royce, and Peirce. He begins each section with a summary of the basic metaphysical position of each thinker and proceeds to a discussion of their views on ethics, human personhood, community, and religion. In some instances, Mullin pauses briefly to examine criticisms that could be advanced against a particular position and tries to answer it. Mullin also briefly compares and contrasts the thought of the three philosophers trying to outline where they agree and where they disagree. In the introduction to his book Mullin states that he considers William James "his principal teacher of philosophy", and James receives the longest section in the book. But my impression is that Mullin has been greatly influenced by Royce's and Peirce's criticisms of James and by the manner in which their thought diverged from his.

William James is the most accessible of the philosophers Mullin discusses. The works on which Mullin focuses, including the "Will to Believe", the "Varieties of Religious Experience", "Pragmatism" and "A Pluralistic Universe" are all readily available in the two-volume set published by the Library of America. Mullin focuses upon James's pluralism and on James's commitment to free will and to purposeful human activity. He offers an excellent discussion (p. 56) of the term "spirituality" which is much used today and applies it to James's thought. There is a great deal of discussion of James and the possibility of religious faith. Mullin shows some recognition in his discussion of the difficulties and possible inconsistencies in James's thought as he struggled to reconcile religion, free will and human effort with his own deep knowledge of empirical psychology.

James' idealist colleague, Josiah Royce, also wrote prolifically, but his works have been for the most part bypassed by contemporary philosophers. Mullin does good service by bringing Royce's voice back into the discussion. Royce's views changed over time, and Mullin describes Royce's comprehensive idealistic work "The World and the Individual" followed by consideration of his latter "Philosophy of Loyalty", and "Sources of Religious Insight." These books remain available and accessible to the interested reader. Mullin stresses Royce's interest in the development of the human personality and the communal character of his thought, as exemplified in the latter two books referred to above. He offers an excellent discussion of Royce's "Sources", a work too little known, which expands upon and modifies William James's great work, the "Varieties of Religious Experience." The Sources is a corrective of the Varieties in that it emphasizes the communal nature of religion and the importance of reason.

Many people regard Charles Peirce as the greatest of American philosophers. Mullin's discussion shows the intriguing, grand character of Peirce's thought as well as the difficulty of approaching it. Peirce's work is difficult and obscure. It is scattered in many essays which, for many years, have been edited and studied. Mullin's discussion is based upon several of Peirce's better-known essays together with passages in his Papers which may not be accessible to all readers. Because of the nature of Peirce's work, Mullin relies more than he did with James and Royce on other secondary sources. Mullin describes Royce as a systematic thinker who attempted to construct an "architectonic" of philosophy, as did Kant, on which an aesthetic of human reasonableness led to an ethics of human good and then to a logic of human knowledge. Peirce was trained in mathematics and the physical sciences and the goal of disinterested human inquiry and ultimate agreement by disinterested observers plays a large role in his thought. Peirce also had a tendency to develop a strange vocabulary using terms such as "uberty" which he defined as the need of philosophy to consider "the full-breasted richness of life.(p. 96-97) The similarity in thought between Royce and Peirce comes out in Mullin's discussion of the two thinkers.

Mullin's book is an excellent way to begin a detailed study of one of the three thinkers he discusses or, even more difficult, to try to study the three philosophers together. The United States has produced rewarding work in philosophy as in other areas of high human endeavor. In the course of his study, Mullin quotes William James at several points in describing people's continued need for the "far-flashing beams of light" that philosophical thought remains capable of sending over the world's perspectives. Mullin has written an inspiring introduction to the work of three seminal American thinkers.

Robin Friedman