American Philosophy from Edwards to Quine

The six original essays in this volume, all by distinguised scholars, capture the heart of American Philosophy. Jonathan Edwards is the greatest philosopher-theologian of colonial America. Prior to Emerson, no other thinker remotely approaches Edwards in intellectual endowment, range of interests, or the depth and subletly with which he treated a variety of philosophical topics. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau together represent the high point of American transcendentalism. Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey are the Big Three of American pragmatism. Philosophical idealism reached its American zenith in Josiah Royce, a thinker whose vast erudition and formidable intelligence breathed new life into a point of view widely thought to be moribund. George Santayana is, with Emerson, the poet of American philosophy. Willard Van Orman Quine is one of America's most distinguished late-twentieth-century philosphers and very probably the most influential. Contributors to this volume are: Roland A. Delattre, A. Robert Caponigri, Max H. Fisch, Peter Fuss, Frederick A. Olafson, and Willard Van Orman Quine. The contributions include an extensive introduction by Robert W. Shahan and Kenneth R. Merrill.