American philosophy

American philosophy is the study of ideas from thinkers in the United States. It is different from the philosophies of Indigenous American people or Latin American philosophy. American philosophy has helped shape how people in the United States think about their country and the world.

Many early American thinkers were inspired by ideas from Europe. Some special ways of thinking began in America, like pragmatism and transcendentalism. Famous philosophers like William James and Ralph Waldo Emerson helped create these ideas.

American philosophy continues to grow and change, showing the experiences and values of people in the United States over time. It shows how American thinkers have added to the world's understanding of many important topics.

17th century

See also: 17th-century philosophy

When people first came to the lands that are now the United States, they brought their ideas about life and society. Early leaders like the Puritans created important documents such as the Mayflower Compact in 1620. These documents helped make rules for the new communities.

Some thinkers, like John Winthrop, believed that helping the whole community was more important than an individual's own needs. Others, like Roger Williams, who helped start Rhode Island, thought it was important to let people have different religious beliefs.

18th century

See also: 18th-century philosophy

The 18th century in American philosophy had two main parts. The first part combined religious teachings with ideas from European thinkers. The second part created its own American ideas about right and wrong, taught in schools. These ideas helped shape new ways of thinking for the United States, leading to the thoughts of the Founding Fathers.

During this time, new ideas from European thinkers like Bacon, Descartes, Newton, and Locke came to America. Two American thinkers, Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Edwards, used these ideas to build their own American philosophy. Both were teachers who helped shape American thinking, especially in politics and government.

Introduction of the Enlightenment into America

In the early years, schools in America mostly taught religious ideas. But in 1714, many books arrived at Yale from England. These books had new ideas from thinkers like Locke and Newton. A young student named Samuel Johnson read these books and was inspired. He began teaching these new ideas at Yale, starting what is called the American Enlightenment.

Reformed Christianity

Jonathan Edwards was an important religious thinker in America. He gave strong speeches about the power of God. He combined religious ideas with new scientific thinking, especially from Newton.

Enlightenment

American philosophy in the 1700s began to focus more on science and new learning. There was also a belief that people could improve through learning and good behavior.

Samuel Johnson is known as the founder of American philosophy. He was interested in many areas, including education and organizing knowledge. He believed that true religion was about doing what is right.

Founders' political philosophy

Around the time of the Stamp Act, many leaders wrote about government and politics. Important figures like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison talked about how God, the government, and people should relate to each other. This thinking helped create the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the United States Constitution in 1788.

The Constitution created a government with balance between three parts: the courts, the president, and Congress, which has two houses: the House of Representatives and the Senate.

19th century

See also: 19th-century philosophy

The 19th century brought big changes in American thinking. One major movement was transcendentalism, which focused on personal experiences and nature. Writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller believed that true knowledge comes from thinking deeply and connecting with nature.

Another important idea was pragmatism, started by thinkers like Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Pragmatism teaches that beliefs should be tested by what works.

The work of Charles Darwin also influenced American philosophy. Writers like John Fiske and Chauncey Wright looked at ideas about morality and the mind through the lens of evolution.

20th century

See also: 20th-century philosophy

Pragmatism, which began in America in the 1800s, was joined by other ideas by the early 1900s. The 20th century introduced process philosophy, influenced by science and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. In the middle of the century, the philosophy of language and analytic philosophy became more popular in America. Existentialism and phenomenology were well-liked in Europe but not as much in America.

Rejection of idealism

Pragmatism stayed important in the 20th century. Spanish-born philosopher George Santayana supported pragmatism and realism. He felt that idealism didn’t make sense and went against common sense. He believed that if something had to be certain to be known, then maybe nothing could really be known. Santayana said that knowledge was more about what we need to act and deal with the world, calling this “animal faith”.

Process philosophy

Process philosophy follows the ideas of Einstein, with main supporters like Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. The main idea is that events and changes are the most important things. Process philosophy is about change, much like the ideas of Heraclitus.

Aristotelian philosophy

The University of Chicago became a center for Aristotelian philosophy after its president Maynard Hutchins changed the curriculum based on ideas from philosopher Mortimer Adler. Adler also encouraged Sister Miriam Joseph to teach college students about the medieval Trivium of liberal arts. Adler helped start the Aspen Institute to teach business leaders. Richard McKeon also taught Aristotle during this time.^{[citation needed]}

Many American philosophers helped bring back ideas about character and goodness.

Ayn Rand liked Aristotle and promoted her own belief system called Objectivism in her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. These books started the Objectivist movement and influenced many people, including a young Alan Greenspan, who later became Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Objectivism says that there is a real world we can understand with reason, that people should look out for themselves, and that the best economic system is one where the government doesn’t control much, called laissez-faire capitalism.

Analytic philosophy

The middle of the 20th century saw the rise of analytic philosophy in America. This way of thinking began in Europe with philosophers like Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists. They believed that logic and math were about certain truths, and science could prove things, but other ideas like ethics or beauty didn’t mean much unless they could be proven.

W.V.O. Quine agreed with some of these ideas but disagreed with others. He talked about how all our beliefs are connected like a web, and we can’t know everything for sure. Quine also made up the word “gavagai” to explain how hard it can be to understand other languages.

Saul Kripke, a student of Quine’s at Harvard, had a big impact on analytic philosophy. He is known for his work on how we understand words and what they mean, and he also worked on logic and truth.

David Kellogg Lewis, another student of Quine’s, was known for his idea that there are many different possible worlds out there, and ours is just one of them.

Thomas Kuhn was famous for his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, where he said that science changes in big ways when scientists find new problems to solve. He called these big changes paradigm shifts.

Critical theory

Critical theory, from the Frankfurt School in Europe, began to influence American thinking and culture in the late 1960s. This way of thinking came from Marxist philosophy and aimed to change the world to make life better and freer for everyone.

Return of political philosophy

In 1971, John Rawls wrote A Theory of Justice, where he talked about what fairness means. He used an idea called the “veil of ignorance” to imagine a fair way to decide rules for society.

Feminism

Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique talked about the challenges faced by many women and helped start a big movement for women’s rights in the U.S.

Judith Butler’s 1990 book Gender Trouble talked about how ideas about gender are created by society and helped start the study of gender in schools.

See also: Feminism in the United States and History of feminism in the United States

Contemporary philosophy

In the late 1900s, people became more interested again in a way of thinking called pragmatism. Two important thinkers, Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty, helped bring this back. Rorty wrote books like Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and Philosophy and Social Hope. Putnam is known for his ideas about math and thinking about tricky questions like the brain in a vat thought experiment.

Today, many discussions focus on what it means to have a mind and how our thoughts work. American thinkers like Putnam, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Douglas Hofstadter, John Searle, and Patricia and Paul Churchland all talk about these ideas.

Some American thinkers also looked back at old ideas about how our minds connect to the world. Nicholas Rescher and his friends at the University of Pittsburgh, like John McDowell and Robert Brandom, talked about these ideas in new ways.

In recent years, more people have thought about how our bodies and minds work together. Thinkers like Shaun Gallagher and Alva Noë support this idea.

Two famous American thinkers, Ronald Dworkin and Richard Posner, study big questions about laws.

Cornel West talks about important issues in American life.

Alvin Plantinga is known for his work on big questions about belief in God.

Some modern thinkers have looked back at the ideas of John Dewey.

Other American thinkers have helped us understand more about how we talk. George Philip Lakoff and Mark L. Johnson showed how the ways we think about things shape what we understand. Colin Murray Turbayne talked about how old ways of thinking still affect how we study science today. Kendall Walton explored how we imagine things and what that means for understanding the world.

Some thinkers also brought back old ideas about wisdom to help solve modern problems. They say that along with thinking, we also need kindness and understanding others. Thinkers like Martha Nussbaum and Richard Clyde Taylor are part of this group.