Hook, Sidney, ed. American Philosophers at Work: The Philosophic Scene in the United States. New York: Criterion, 1956.

Abstract

"This volume has grown out of an attempt to meet the natural and almost universal curiosity about what American philosophers are doing, about what lies at the center of their contemporary intellectual concern. And it should be as instructive to those who live in America as to those who live elsewhere. Instead of offering a summary and interpretation of the doctrine, allegiances, and classifications of American philosophers, which inevitably reflects an editorial bias, it seems desirable, and a welcome departure from previous accounts of American philosophy, to give representative American philosophers an opportunity to present their own selections from their writings, to reveal them, so to speak, at work. The fact that it shows American philosophers in work clothes rather than holiday dress makes more authentic the evidence of what they are thinking about and how. All important philosophical movements are represented in this collection as well as all the regions of the country, but in the nature of the case it was impossible to include all important individual thinkers. Nothing is to be inferred about the philosophic distinction of any thinker from his absence in this book. Whatever the philosophical status of space and time no editor can abridge their tyranny in the world of everyday existence. 

I permit myself a few onservations about the character of American philosophy as evinced in these self-selections, observations, the validity of which the reader may judge in the light of his own reading. American philosophy is no parochial affair but an integral part of the Continental, and especially the English tradition in philosophy. American philosophers are much better informed of philosophical movements in foreign countries, the nature of their problems and interests than are their colleagues in foreign countries about American philosophy. To this day William James is almost the only great American figure known abroad and even he is judged in terms of antecedently held views about the nature of pragmatism rather than in the light of a fresh and sympathetic reading of his work. American philosophers, with some notable exceptions, no longer practice philosophy in the grand tradition, essaying wholesale views about the nature of man, existence, and eternity. Inspired by the results won in the sciences, they do not even practice philosophy in the grand manner but concentrate on the patient analysis of specific problems aiming at results which although piecemeal are more likely to withstand criticism. The natural consequence is an estrangement from the interests of educated laymen who feel that technical philosophy is remote from their concerns. And to be sure, no longer can he who runs read philosophy. He must study it, sometimes with pencil and paper in hand. On the other hand, scientists who are not philosophically trained find little illumination in the scientific analysis of philosophers whom they tend to regard as mere camp followers of scientific progress. This, despite the fact that in the absence of philosophical sophistication of  the report, the scientist makes to the nonscientist of the strange new world discovered by modern science is apt to generate confusion and needless paradox." - from the Introduction