America the Philosophical :: Philosophy Science Papers

America the PhilosophicalAlthough convention dictates that America is an unphilosophical sort of country, fonder of Super Bowls than supervenience, the development of philosophy away from Socratic strategies that appropriate eternal right answers to the classical philosophical problems suggests a second look is in order. This is particularly true if one accepts many of the notions currently in the place about post-modern or post-analytic philosophy that its roots lie in classical rhetoric and pragmatism, or that its notion of truth holds the latter to be what issues from the most open sort of informed deliberation possible. In that case, it begins to seem as if America is to philosophy as Italy is to art, or Norway to skiing a perfectly designed environs for the practice. This, at least, is the provocation intended by this paper. America the Philosophical? It sounds like Canada the Exhibitionist or France the Unassuming a mental miscue, a delusional schoolman tic, a Dead-On-Arr ival body emitting gases of pure intellectual wish-fulfillment. Everyone knows that Americans dont take philosophy seriously, dont know much about it, dont pay any attention to it, and couldnt name a contemporaneous academic philosopher if their passports depended on it. As historian Richard Hofstadter drily observed in his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1962), In the United States the play of the mind is possibly the only form of play not looked upon with the most tender indulgence.But if the title phenomenon of Hofstadters classic indeed boasts a long, historical background, the peculiar attitude say at philosophy softens that hostility by increasing the dosage of unfamiliarity or contempt. Philosophy often seems sufficiently unthreatening to the practical on-the-go American that Arthur Schlesingers ache old charge that on these shores, Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the businessman feels overwrought. The American middl e manager confronted with a devoted philosophy type is most credibly to recycle the old cliche, What are you going to do, open a philosophy store?, and leave it at that. If, of course, the information has been accurately downloaded. Tell your middlebrow seatmate on an commuter train flight that youre in philosophy and the reply is likely to be, Oh, thats great. My niece is in psychology too.The infrequent philosophy blips on Americas media screens suggest that philosophy doesnt quite register on the American psyche with the gravitas professionals in the field might like. According to the Macys window of American gossip, the New York Posts Page Six, model emeritus Lauren Hutton regards Camille Paglia, the medias 15-minute joy-toy of the 80s, as the greatest living American philosopher.