Howard Wettstein

I have long felt that graduate education in philosophy, when successful, produces in its beneficiaries a strong antipathy, almost an allergic reaction, to “ism” words. “Naturalism,” nevertheless, is not one that is easy to eschew. This is not because of anything like a widely shared or especially intuitive doctrine associated with the term. The numerous doctrines offered by way of characterization often seem either suspicious because of their strength, or else platitudinous, too easy and not sufficiently restrictive. The appeal of naturalism is rather a matter of a tendency of thought, a powerful one despite its lack of easy definition.

The American Philosophers contains papers by current leading philosophers and political theorists that explore the work of the major American philosophers from the colonial period to the present, from Jonathan Edwards to David Kaplan. Contains a philosophically and historically broad exploration of the major schools of American philosophy Examines both the pragmatists and the later Twentieth Century analytic philosophers, as well as such shapers of the political and philosophical American scene as Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Emerson, and Jane Addams.