Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Albrecht, James M., author.

Title Reconstructing individualism : a pragmatic tradition from Emerson to Ellison / James M. Albrecht
Edition 1st ed
Published New York : Fordham University Press, 2012

Copies

Description 1 online resource (376 pages)
Series American philosophy
American philosophy series.
Contents Introduction : "Individualism has never been tried": toward a pragmatic individualism -- pt. 1. Emerson -- What's the use of reading Emerson pragmatically?: the example of William James -- "Let us have worse cotton and better men": Emerson's ethics of self-culture -- pt. 2. Pragmatism: James and Dewey -- "Moments in the world's salvation": James's pragmatic individualism -- Character and community: Dewey's model of moral selfhood -- "The local is the ultimate universal": Dewey on reconstructing individuality and community -- pt. 3. A tragic-comic ethics in the Emersonian vein: Kenneth Burke and Ralph Ellison -- "Saying 'yes' and saying 'no'": individualist ethics in Ellison and Burke
Summary "America has a love-hate relationship with individualism. In Reconstructing Individualism, James Albrecht argues that our conceptions of individualism have remained trapped within the assumptions of classic liberalism. He traces an alternative genealogy of individualist ethics in four major American thinkers--Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, John Dewey, and Ralph Ellison. These writers' shared commitments to pluralism (metaphysical and cultural), experimentalism, and a melioristic stance toward value and reform led them to describe the self as inherently relational. Accordingly, they articulate models of selfhood that are socially engaged and ethically responsible, and they argue that a reconceived--or, in Dewey's term, 'reconstructed'--individualism is not merely compatible with but necessary to democratic community. Conceiving selfhood and community as interrelated processes, they call for an ongoing reform of social conditions so as to educate and liberate individuality, and, conversely, they affirm the essential role individuality plays in vitalizing communal efforts at reform"--Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Dewey, John, 1859-1952.
Ellison, Ralph -- Philosophy
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 -- Philosophy
James, William, 1842-1910.
SUBJECT Ellison, Ralph -- Philosophy
Dewey, John, 1859-1952 -- Philosophy
James, William, 1842-1910 -- Philosophy
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 -- Philosophy
Dewey, John, 1859-1952 fast
Ellison, Ralph fast
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 fast
James, William, 1842-1910 fast
Subject Individualism in literature.
Individualism -- United States -- History
Literature and society -- United States
Philosophy, American -- 19th century.
Philosophy, American -- 20th century.
Pragmatism in literature.
PHILOSOPHY -- Movements -- Idealism.
Individualism
Individualism in literature
Literature and society
Philosophy
Philosophy, American
Pragmatism in literature
United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2011042862
ISBN 9780823242122
0823242129
9780823246595
0823246590
9780823242115
0823242110