America the Philosophical :: Philosophy Science Papers

America the Philosophical Although 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 presume 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 air 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 wide-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 environment 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 academic tic, a Dead-On-Arrival body emitting gases of pure intellectual wish-fulfillment. Everyone knows that Americans don't take philosophy seriously, don't know much about it, don't pay any attention to it, and couldn't name a contemporary 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 perhaps the only form of play not looked upon with the most tender indulgence." But if the title phenomenon of Hofstadter's classic indeed boasts "a long, historical background," the peculiar attitude directed 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 Schlesinger's stinging old charge — that on these shores, "Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the businessman" — feels overwrought. The American middle manager confronted with a devoted philosophy type is most likely 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 flight that you're "in philosophy" and the reply is likely to be, "Oh, that's great. My niece is in psychology too." The infrequent philosophy blips on America's media screens suggest that philosophy doesn't quite register on the American psyche with the gravitas professionals in the field might like. According to the Macy's window of American gossip, the New York Post’s "Page Six," model emeritus Lauren Hutton regards Camille Paglia, the media's 15-minute joy-toy of the `80s, as "the greatest living American philosopher.