The title of Stewart’s biography is a tribute to Alain Locke’s seminal work, The New Negro: An Interpretation. This 1925 anthology highlighted the works of several up-and-coming black writers of the 20th century, planting these authors and, thus, a new black intellectual movement squarely in the public eye. While Alain Locke and John Dewey did not work directly together, Dewey’s philosophical approaches, specifically aesthetic valuation, significantly influenced Locke’s life. John C. Stewart provides a dense and thorough illustration of Locke’s use (...) of aesthetic valuation in his personal, professional, and educational experiences. Locke was pursuing his doctoral degree at Harvard University in Dewey’s discipline at... (shrink)

Well-versed in contemporary social science and in alternative views of theology and metaphysics, Walter Muelder has remained a practicing idealistic thinker for many years. The subtitle of this substantial volume is: “Forty Years of Communitarian Personalism.” Commencing with a brilliant forty-two page autobiographical statement, the volume contains nineteen essays, dating from 1939–1979, on various theoretical and practical themes. Without being combative or even polemical, Muelder straightforwardly deals with controversial issues and significant religious implications of philosophical Personalism, showing affinity with, if (...) not reliance upon, Ritschl, Bowne, Knudson, and Brightman. While not directly philosophical in character, one finds a philosophical perspective underlying every essay. They constitute a remarkable series of insights into the social nature of human personality and the ethical requirements laid upon society, the nation, and the church. They represent the practical outworkings of a technically trained mind, whose eminent leadership in the most forward areas of religious and social thought has not been duly appreciated. (shrink)

_Taking Religious Claims Seriously_ is a systematic, critical, and comprehensive study of the fundamental questions of the philosophy of religion: religious experience, the existence and nature of God, religious knowledge and truth, good and evil, immortality of the soul, religious diversity, religious claims about the person, faith, and the religious way of life. In this study the author seeks to capture the reality and meaning of the religious as such: What is the foundation of religion? Under what conditions is an (...) authentic religious way of life possible? His method of inquiry is phenomenological. The author begins his discussion with a general characterization of the basic features of all the literate and illiterate religions of the world. He then identifies the ideas, beliefs, and concerns which are common to these religions: What are the central claims of these religions? How did the various religions understand these claims? The author makes a serious attempt to clarify these claims and explore the possibility for a reconcilation between them. For him, the foundation of religion is the religious experience, and the essence of this experience consists in a serious, cognitive, and meaningful encounter with the Ultimate Being. This being is the ground of the world and human life. This book is a comparative, pluralistic study of the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In a review of a book by the British idealist, A. E. Taylor, some years ago, C. D. Broad commented: “What of the nightmarish appearance, stupid perseveration and meaningless fecundity in organic nature? If the teleologist would consider the ways of the locust and the lemming, he would be a sadder and perhaps a wiser man.” Of course, others besides idealists are teleologists, but in the idealist tradition since Plato, the question of overall teleology has been a fundamental one. It (...) may be that idealists have a peculiar problem in trying to reconcile apparent dysteleological facts with their overall belief in purpose. The question is a basic one. It may also be regarded as a watershed dividing Eastern idealists, especially Indian, from their Western counterparts. (shrink)

This is the sixteenth title and eighteenth volume of an authoritative edition of William James’s works, sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies. All university libraries everywhere and all college libraries in the United States should have this magnificent series.

To understand any genuine theism we must recognize at once that we are dealing with a problem of a different order than technical puzzles in epistemology or conundrums in modal logic. That is not to say that theism is above rational investigation, that acceptance of it presupposes some special access, or that it cannot be examined philosophically. But it cannot be discussed fruitfully unless there is some grasp of what refined religious feeling in fact is. A lot of discussion about (...) God comes from the lips of people who have never visited temple, mosque, or meeting house, and who have not tried to find out what it is like to have a religious attitude toward an object of belief for forty years without a break. They have little interest in understanding the experience of prayer or finding out what it is like to commit oneself sincerely to a religious ideal. Invariably they know little about the teachings and claims of the eleven world religions, but they surely know how to find an assortment of flaws in St. Thomas’s “Five Ways” and they are consummate experts in showing up weaknesses in Paley’s “watchmaker” argument. They have a veritable field day in ridiculing the extravagances of uncritical Fundamentalism. (shrink)

The balance between creative thinking and creative scholarship is a hard one to achieve, partly because the lure to be original is in conflict with the desire to be fair to the insights of past thinkers and partly because one can never be quite sure whether his scholarship is mere pedantry or actually constitutes significant discovery. In his essay, “On Books and Reading,” Schopenhauer distinguishes those who have “read themselves stupid” from those who take time to ruminate and set their (...) own thoughts to work. “A spring never free from the pressure of some foreign body at last loses its elasticity,” he writes, “and so does the mind if other people’s thoughts are constantly forced upon it.” Thomas Hobbes once observed that if he had read as much as other persons of his acquaintance he would have known no more than they. But the trouble is that if one does not read enough of what others have thought, he may repeat mistakes they made or turn down some cul-de-sac which is not worth exploring or is profoundly trivial. More common in philosophy is the arrogant upstart who has fastened onto some formula which he treats as a talisman enabling him to decide what to ignore and what to study. For a time, there were some philosophers who thought that anyone before Hume was not worth reading, and there are still a few who think anyone following in the footsteps of Descartes must surely be wrongheaded. (shrink)