Flower, Elizabeth and Murray G. Murphey. A History of Philosophy in America (2 Vols.). New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons/Capricorn, 1977.

Abstract

Serious treatments of the American tradition in philosophy have been notable for their absence - extraordinary in the light of the impressive increase of interest in American thought. A History of Philosophy in America is a new and definitive work of scholarship that examines American thought from its seventeenth-century European sources to the work of C. I. Lewis in the twentieth century - a significant and unique achievement in scope and originality. Setting out to determine the origins  of American philosophy, professors Flower and Murphey have discovered debts to Europe that have not been fully considered before. They offer an original discussion of the complex relationships among philosophy, religion, and the sciences, which suggests a new genealogy for pragmatism. Their fresh approach recreates the vital exchange between academic institutions and the broader culture. The authors initially explore the role of the Puritans in New World thinking and the impact of Newton, Locke, and other scientists on traditional Puritan beliefs. But the Puritans are not presented as a paradigm for all American thought; rather, it is the eighteenth-century Scottish philosophers, the authors believe, who introduced a fundamentally new orientation that has dominated subsequent American philosophy. The Americans naturalized this Scottish thought, retaining its sympathy to science and its realism but giving the empirical character of ethical and moral theory their own twist. The authors treat Transcendentalism, especially that of Emerson and Alcott, as a revolt against the Scottish influence - a revolt that failed. The authors turn next to the introduction of German philosophy (in particular German Idealism) into the Midwest, demonstrating how it enriched our philosophical tradition, especially in social theory, during the Civil War and the post-Civil War period. Analysis of the evolution controversy and the work of Herbert Spencer and Chauncey Wright is followed by a study of Charles S. Peirce, tracing the development from his early neo-Kantian idealism to the cosmic evolutionism of his final years. William James's work in psychology emerges as a synthesis of the Scottish and German traditions and also as a basis from which his subsequent pragmatis, radical empiricism, and pluralism spring. in their treatment of Royce, the authors stress his concern with the problems raised by modern science and his effort to handle them through idealism. A study of John Dewey's philosophy from his pioneer work in psychology to its fruition in epistemology, ethics, and social theory is followed by a detailed treatment of C. I. Lewis, the least-known of the pragmatists but the most influential in contemporart philosophy. An appendix on George Herbert Mead and a brief account of the period since Dewey and Lewis closes the book. A History of Philosophy in America is destined to be a standard work. Comprehensive and original, it is a rich and welcome study of American thought, an essential reference work, and a starting point for research in the next few decades.