Helm, Bertrand P. Time and Reality in American Philosophy. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1985.

Abstract

From the end of the Civil War to the beginning to World War II, American philosophers produced a complex and sophisticated body of thought. Six men in particular were responsible for shaping American philosophy: Charles S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, John Dewey, and Alfred North Whitehead. This book argues that all six held in common the conviction that the main problems of philosophy center on the nature of time and time's relation to reality. This conviction not only gave rise to much that uniquely characterized classical American philosophy, but also reflected and helped fuel a North American proccupation with time, beyond the specialized world of philosophy. Bertrand P. Helm here offers a major study of the reflections on time by American classical philosophers. It is a disciplined and scholarly work that examines how each of these six men, writing in an era when the very concept of time was being perceived in radical new ways: questions of flux and process, continuity and change, and the means of finding value in a rapidly evolving world.