The country had huge resources for making war, and those on both sides were very sure that they were right and that their cause mattered. So they went at it bloody, in the Civil War, and afterward some of the people who were in the thick of it said to themselves, "If this is what comes of being very sure about things, maybe we shouldn't be so sure."
That's a capsule of one point Louis Menand makes in his fine book The Metaphysical Club, explaining where American philosophy partly came from.
In Europe, after the reformation, preachers on the Protestant and Catholic sides went after each other's first principles, seeking to erode each other's certainty. The people watching all this took it that their eternal salvation depended on believing right, and the confusion just kept getting louder.
That's a capsule of one point William Abraham made, in an interview some years ago, explaining where Cartesian philosophy partly came from.
There's French epistemology and there's American epistemology, and both raise puzzles and suggest solutions. Is it more helpful for Americans to begin with the American stuff, because the Civil War is on our national timeline and somehow in our national consciousness? Or are these questions timeless, so that you can start anywhere?
Posted by shea0017 at February 28, 2006 6:27 PM