Amerikanische Philosophie
American philosophy most generally refers to the philosophical work done by Americans, both within the geographical confines of the United States and abroad.
17th century
The American philosophical tradition is widely considered to have begun at the time of the European colonization of the New World. The Puritan arrival in New York set the earliest American philosophy into the religious tradition, and there was also an emphasis on the relationship between the individual and the community. This is evident by the early colonial documents such as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639) and the Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641). Thinkers such as John Winthrop emphasized the public life over the private, holding that the former takes precedence over the latter, while other writers, such as Roger Williams held that religious tolerance was more integral than trying to achieve religious homogeneity in a community.
18th century
18th century American philosophy is often broken into two halves, the earlier half being marked by Puritan Calvinism, and the latter characterized by the American version of the European Enlightenment that is associated with the political thought of the founding fathers, namely, Thomas Jefferson.
Calvinism
Jonathan Edwards is considered to be "America's most important and original philosophical theologian."[1] Noted for his energetic sermons, such as "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (which is said to have begun the First Great Awakening), Edwards emphasized "the absolute sovereignty of God and the beauty of God's holiness."[1] Working to unite Christian Platonism with an empiricist epistemology, in the vein of Lockean sensation and Newtonian physics, Edwards was deeply influenced by George Berkeley, himself an empiricist, and Edwards derived his importance of the immaterial for the creation human experience from Bishop Berkeley. The non-material mind consists of understanding and will, and it is understanding, interpreted in a Newtonian framework, that leads to Edwards' fundamental metaphysical category of Resistance. Whatever features an object may have, it has these properties because the object resists. Resistance itself is the exertion of God's power, and it can be seen in Newton's laws of motion, where an object is "unwilling" to change its current state of motion; an object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will remain in motion.
As a Calvinist and determinist, Jonathan Edwards also rejected the freedom of the will, saying that "we can do as we please, but we cannot please as we please." It is not good works that lead to salvation. The grace of God stands as the sole arbiter of human fortune.
The Age of Enlightenment
While the early 18th century American philosophical tradition was decidedly marked by religious themes, the latter half saw an emphasis on the reliance of reason and science, and, in step with the thought of the Age of Enlightenment, a belief in the perfectibility of human beings, laissez-faire economics, and a focus on political matters.
The Founding Fathers, namely Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison, wrote extensively on political issues. In continuing with the chief concerns of the Puritans in the 17th century, the Founding Fathers debated the relationship between the individual and the state, as well as the nature of the state, that is, the state's relationship to God and religion. It was at this time that the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were written, and they are the result of debate and compromise. While the United States Constitution, along with its first ten amendments (also known as the Bill of Rights) does contain within it references to the Creator, the Founding Fathers were decidedly not religious, and instead mostly professed varying forms of deism, as was characteristic of other European Enlightenment thinkers, such as Maximilien Robespierre, François-Marie Arouet (better known by his pen name, Voltaire), and Rousseau.
19th Century
The 19th century saw the rise of Romanticism in America. The American incarnation of Romanticism was transcendentalism and it stands as a major American innovation. The 19th century also saw the rise of pragmatism, along with a smaller, Hegelian philosophical movement led by George Holmes Howison and was focused in St. Louis, though the influence of American pragmatism far outstripped that of the small Hegelian movement.
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism in the United States was marked by an emphasis on the human subjective experience, and can be viewed as a reaction against intellectualism in general and the mechanistic world-view in particular. Transcendentalism is marked by the holistic belief in an ideal spiritual state that 'transcends' the physical and empirical, and this perfect state can only be attained by one's own intuition and personal reflection, as opposed to the proscriptions and doctrines of organized religion. The most famous transcendentalist writers include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman.
The transcendentalist writers all desired a deep return to nature, and believed that real, true knowledge is intuitive and personal and arises out of personal immersion and reflection in nature, as opposed to scientific knowledge that is the result of empirical sense experience. Things such as scientific tool, political institutions, and the conventional rules of morality as dictated by traditional religion need to be transcended. This is found in Henry David Thoreau's Walden; or, Life in the Woods where transcendence is achieved through immersion in nature and the distancing of oneself from society.
The rise of Darwinism in America
The release of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory in his 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, resulted in a deep influence on American philosophy. John Fiske and Chauncey Wright both wrote about and argued for the re-conceiving of philosophy through an evolutionary lense. They both wanted to understand morality and the mind in Darwinian terms, setting a precedent for evolutionary psychology and evolutionary ethics.
Darwin's biological theory was also integrated into the social and political philosophies of Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. Herbert Spencer, who coined the oft-misattributed term "survival of the fittest," believed that societies were in a struggle for survival, and that groups within society are where there are becuase of some level of fitness. This struggle is beneficial to human kind, as in the long run the weak will be weeded out and only the strong will survive. Spencer, along with the industrialist Andrew Carnegie believed that the social implication of the fact of the struggle for survival is that laissez-faire capitalism is the natural political-economic system and is the one that will lead to the greatest amount of well-being.
Pragmatism
The most famous philosophical school of thought that is uniquely American is pragmatism.[2] It is considered to have began in the late nineteenth century in the United States with Charles Sanders Peirce. William James, and John Dewey. George Santayana expanded and continued the pragmatic philosophical tradition.