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The Metaphysical Club is the winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for History.
A riveting, original book about the creation of modern American thought.
The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Its members included Oliver Well Holmes, Jr., future associate justice of the United States Supreme Court; William James, the father of modern American psychology; and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist, and the founder of semiotics. The Club was probably in existence for about nine months. No records were kept. The one thing we know that came out of it was an idea -- an idea about ideas. This book is the story of that idea.
Holmes, James, and Peirce all believed that ideas are not things "out there" waiting to be discovered but are tools people invent -- like knives and forks and microchips -- to make their way in the world. They thought that ideas are produced not by individuals, but by groups of individuals -- that ideas are social. They do not develop according to some inner logic of their own but are entirely depent -- like germs -- on their human carriers and environment. And they thought that the survival of any idea deps not on its immutability but on its adaptability.
The Metaphysical Club is written in the spirit of this idea about ideas. It is not a history of philosophy but an absorbing narrative about personalities and social history, a story about America. It begins with the Civil War and s in 1919 with Justice Holmes's dissenting opinion in the case of U.S. v. Abrams-the basis for the constitutional law of free speech. The first four sections of the book focus on Holmes, James, Peirce, and their intellectual heir, John Dewey. The last section discusses some of the fundamental twentieth-century ideas they are associated with. This is a book about a way of thinking that changed American life."
- Sales Rank: #77302 in Books
- Published on: 2002-04-10
- Released on: 2002-04-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.24" h x 1.54" w x 5.53" l, 1.38 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 576 pages
- Louis Menand
- movements
- philosophy
Amazon.com Review
If past is prologue, then The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand may suggest an intellectual course for the United States in the 21st century. At least Menand, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, thinks so. This enthralling study of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey shows how these four men developed a philosophy of pragmatism following the Civil War, a period Menand likens to post-cold-war times. Together, "they were more responsible than any other group for moving American thought into the modern world."
Despite this potentially forbidding theme, The Metaphysical Club is not a dry tome for academics. Instead, it is a quadruple biography, a wonderfully told story of ideas that advances by turning these thinkers into characters and bringing them to life. Menand links them through the Metaphysical Club, a conversational club formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872. It lasted but a few months, and references to it appear only in Peirce's writings (its real significance seems rather limited), though Holmes and James were both members. (Dewey was much younger than these three, and more an heir than a contemporary.) It is difficult to describe in a sentence or two what they accomplished, though Menand takes a stab at it: "They helped put an end to the idea that the universe is an idea, that beyond the mundane business of making our way as best we can in a world shot through with contingency, there exists some order, invisible to us, whose logic we transgress at our peril." Academic freedom and cultural pluralism are just two of their legacies, and they are linchpins of democracy in a nonideological age, says Menand.
A book like this is necessarily idiosyncratic, yet at the same time this one is sweeping. It presents an accessible survey of intellectual life from roughly the end of the Civil War to the start of the cold war. Dozens of figures receive fascinating thumbnail sketches, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Darwin to Jane Addams and Eugene Debs. The result is a grand portrait of an age that will appeal to anyone with even a modest interest in the history of philosophy and ideas. --John Miller
From Publishers Weekly
The Metaphysical Club was an informal intellectual gathering of philosophers and academics that met in Cambridge, Mass., for only nine months in 1872. Menand, known for his contributions to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, follows the evolution of pragmatism as it emerged from the minds of four of the club's "members": Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey. The Metaphysical Club describes how the lives of these great thinkers interconnect in an enjoyable, though sometimes complex, narrative. Leyva's reading is fluid and clean. His delivery, that of an enthusiastic yet slightly removed academic, transports the listener to a classroom seat, alert and ready to take notes. Unlike those audiobooks in which the enthralled listener cannot wait to listen to each subsequent tape in order to see what happens next, listeners may find themselves rewinding the tape to repeat bits here and there, or just turning it off from time to time to digest the thoughts introduced. This audiobook is stimulating for our nation today, as Menand stresses the important role of intellectuals in times of chaos (in this case, after the Civil War), when people's beliefs are put to the test. Based on the Farrar, Straus & Giroux hardcover (Forecasts, Mar. 12, 2001). (Sept.)n
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Menand (English, CUNY) acknowledges at the outset the ephemeral nature of the informal discussion group known as "the metaphysical club," stating that it "was probably in existence for only nine months, and no records were kept." Yet he sees in the work of its principals Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce a momentous change in the conditions of modern life, brought about in large part because of their thought and work. The three men met informally in Cambridge, MA, in 1872, and out of these meetings a new philosophy was born a uniquely American way of looking at the world, known as pragmatism. To tell this fascinating story, Menand produces a seamless narrative line that moves from the Civil War to the Supreme Court case in 1919 that became the basis for the constitutional doctrine of free speech. Along the way, the reader is introduced to myriad pertinent players and events that bring the era and the thinking vividly to life. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.
- Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Mgt. Lib., Washington, DC
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
An enthralling, entertaining, enlightening story of ideas in
By cs211
Louis Menand's exhaustively researched The Metaphysical Club describes the life and times of a handful of prominent American intellectuals from the Civil War era to the World War era, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and philosopher William James. Menand is ultimately successful in his primary aim, which is to show how abstract philosophical ideas can have a major impact on the quality of life experienced by everyday people.
Menand's narrative path encompasses many side journeys, sometimes not appearing to advance towards the end goal, and it is not until the last seventh of the book that we get treated to an overall description of the philosophy of pragmatism. The doings of the Cambridge Metaphysical Club are briefly summarized almost halfway through the book, and the reader at that point learns that the club itself is not (although it is the title of the book) what made the major impact on society; rather, it is what some of the club's members did over the course of many subsequent decades that changed American society.
The great pleasure in reading The Metaphysical Club comes from following Menand on these many side journeys, thereby learning about a cornucopia of subjects, from the politics of slavery, abolition and the Civil War, to what pre-Civil War proper Boston Brahmin society was like, to the impact that Darwin's ideas on evolution had, to the Dartmouth College case and the founding of the modern private American university, to the Pullman car strike, to the initial battles to establish the principle of academic freedom, all underscored with a recurring discussion of race attitudes over the decades.
If this list appears to be a bit of a grab-bag of subjects, that impression prevails while reading the book: although it is all connected, you never quite know what subject Menand is going to explore next. The Metaphysical Club is not the final authority on any of these subjects; rather, it is a top-quality survey work. The subtitle describes the book better than the title: it truly is "a story of ideas in America". It's not "the" definitive story; Menand is exercising his right to explore brief portions of subjects of interest to him and germane to the storyline. But if you are willing to grant him this authorial license, and not protest the course he chooses, then you will be enthralled, entertained, and enlightened.
As a work of history (it won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for history), Menand also succeeds in providing a great deal of context about the state of the world his subjects were living in, so that we 21st century readers can "see how almost unimaginably strange they and their world were, too." While there are certain timeless truths that were generated by these thinkers, it is also instructive to see just how much they were a product of their times, which (of course) applies equally as well to us, today.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Great (but that depends on how you look at 'great')
By Daniel H. Yeary
A fairly fast-paced history that follows the trail of Pragmatism from its origin onward via biographical sketches of the men involved in forming it. As has already been noted in other reviews, this is a book that you could probably spend months and months sifting through due to the density of the subject matter.
The author does an excellent job of shedding light on other subjects during the era, like slavery and the racial theories of prominent scientists. Let me assure you, if you look at the past through the views that most of us hold today, there were few men in any part of the country that didn't hold views on race to make you cringe. For example, as silly as it might seem now, the most serious scientists of their time were divided as to whether or not the white and black races evolved from one common ancestor or evolved entirely independent of one another...i.e., we were created differently from day one.
It's this very thing that reveals the beauty of science as something that builds on itself via verifiable data and, once your ideas fail the test, they go directly and swiftly into the dustbin of history.
Philosophical systems not being something that spring into someone's head fully formed, Menand does a great job tracing all of the twists and turns that ultimately lead to what we refer to as the philosophy of Pragmatism.
This book was much broader in scope than I thought it would be and intensely interesting in many ways. You'll likely add bios of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James & John Dewey to your wish-list after reading this.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent and fascinating
By Phoebe C. Ellsworth
A superb and highly readable account of four great American intellects and the birth of pragmatism.The sections on Holmes and James are especially good. The associations between all four are not as close as the title might suggest, but I did not find that a serious drawback.
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