19th Century American Philosophy

    The most original and influential early nineteenth century philosophical writers arose
not in the universities, however, but among the Concord Transcendentalists, who include
Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), Frederic Henry Hedge (1805-90), George Ripley
(1802-80), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), Margaret Fuller (1810-50), and Henry
David Thoreau (1817-62). Among these, Emerson and Thoreau stand out for the their
power as writers, and for their influence on such subsequent philosophers as James,
Dewey, Nietzsche, and Ghandi. Emerson, the fifth in a line of Unitarian ministers,
resigned his post at the Second Unitarian Church of Boston in 1832, set out on a journey
to Europe, and returned the next year to begin a highly visible career as a lecturer and
writer. Emerson's sources include the classical philosophy he studied at Harvard, English
and German Romantic poetry and philosophy, Hinduism and other non-Western
philosophies and, of course, Christianity. Emerson's first book, Nature calls for a new,
'original relation to the universe'. (Emerson, 1836: 7). His controversial 'Divinity School
Address' (1838) condemns the 'Monster' of historical Christianity and urges the divinity
graduates to find their own original natures, without which they can offer nothing to
others. One makes the most sense to others, Emerson holds, by diving deeply into one's
own heart. Emerson's First Series (1841) and Second Series (1844) of essays offer
striking aphorisms and powerful paragraphs advocating a life of "self-reliance,"
expanding "circles," deep-seeing "intellect," and balanced "experience." Representative
Men (1850) and The Conduct of Life (1860) are important later works.

    Thoreau's masterpiece Walden (1854) records his life in the woods near Concord,
Massachusetts from July 4, 1845 to September 6, 1847. Thoreau thought of philosophy as
a practice: a life of 'simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust' (1854:
15). Walden is a record of that practice, and a series of reflections on nature and human
life. Thoreau finds the mass of men and women living 'lives of quiet desperation' (1854:
8), driving themselves like slaves. In Walden's long opening chapter on Economy,
Thoreau construes his life at Walden as an 'experiment' to show how little is really
necessary for life, and, by contrast, how needlessly complex most people's lives happen
to be. Later chapters blend descriptions of Walden Pond with reflections on the peculiar
power of literature--'the work of art nearest to life itself', (1854: 102), on reading,
vegetarianism, spring, ice, living in the present, and neighborliness. Thoreau's other
works include his essays "Walking" (1862), and the influential "Civil Disobedience"
(1849).

    After the Civil War, two of the many philosophical clubs scattered throughout the east
and midwest America played a special role in the development of American philosophy.
The 'St. Louis Hegelians' were led by William Torrey Harris (1835-1909) and Hans
Conrad Brokmeyer (1826-1906). Brokmeyer emigrated to the U. S. from Prussia in 1844,
practiced law, and eventually became lietenenant governor of Missouri. A leader in the
German community, he worked on a translation of Hegel's Logic, which circulated in
manuscript. Harris, a native of Connecticut who left Yale in his junior year, taught school
in St. Louis and eventually became United States Commissioner of Education. He studied
Bronson Alcott and Emerson, Goethe and Victor Cousin; with Brokmeyer, he founded
the St. Louis Philosophical Club in 1866 and The Journal of Speculative Philosophy in
1867. The latter was the first technical philosophical journal in America or England, and
published papers not only by American and English Hegelians such as Harris and Edward
Caird, but by Peirce, Dewey, and William James (parts of The Principles of
Psychology were first published in the journal). A few weeks of joint philosophical
efforts amongst the midwest and eastern "idealists" and the university professors of
philosophy occurred during the summers of 1879-83, when the Concord School, founded
by Emerson and Alcott, enlisted Harris, William James, Benjamin Peirce (Charles's
father, a Harvard professor of mathematics), James McCosh (last of the Princeton
Scottish realists), George Sylvester Morris (the Hegelian teacher of Dewey and Royce at
Hopkins), and Emerson himself as lecturers.

    The Cambridge Metaphysical club had its origins in James's 1868 proposal to Oliver
Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935) that they establish 'a philosophical society to have
regular meetings and discuss none but the very tallest and broadest questions' (Kuklick
1974: 47). Underway by 1871, the club centered around six men, all with Harvard
degrees: James and Holmes, Charles Peirce (1839-1914), Chauncey Wright (1830-75),
Nicholas St. John Green, and Joseph Bangs Warner. Green, a Boston attorney, introduced
the thought of the British psychologist and philosopher Alexander Bain (1818-1903) to
the group, particularly his definition of belief as 'that upon which a man is prepared to
act.' Wright was a mathematician employed by the Nautical Almanac as a 'calculator', and
an occasional lecturer in psychology and physics at Harvard. He applied Darwin's
evolutionary theory to the development of consciousness in such publications as
'Evolution of Consciousness (1873), where he maintains that consciousness comes about
not from any new capacity but from using an old capacity--forming images--in a new
way.