Compelling!

Interesting philosophical lesson interwoven with a compelling story. Narration was superb with changes in intonation for different poems and characters.

27 people found this helpful

American Philosophy In Action

Would you listen to American Philosophy again? Why?

For sure. It's packed with great historical information and then put into in a present day narrative. In this case, it's the author's own life showing us why knowing American philosophy is applicable and necessary. Loved the info on the editions of the books as well.
A must for any book collector!

Have you listened to any of Josh Bloomberg’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

This is the first one I have heard. He does a great job.

If you could give American Philosophy a new subtitle, what would it be?

How to live an American life according to the pioneers who came before...

31 people found this helpful

A Messy Book about a Messy Philosophy of Love

Which character – as performed by Josh Bloomberg – was your favorite?

Bloomberg reads well, but he needed a coach for some of the pronunciation. For most of the book he mispronounces C.S. Pierce as "Peer-ce" (which, to be fair, is how it looks). For the introduction and last chapter and a half, though, he gets it right -- to sound like "Purse."

There are other technical terms -- such as "misanthropy" -- that he just misses too.

I know I'm being picky, but this is philosophy, and it's distracting to get the sense that our narrator may not know it as well as our author does.

Any additional comments?

Inasmuch as this is a story, it comes up short. Ostensibly the account of how our narrator dug himself out of an experience of what we might call false consciousness – life in an unhappy marriage with a range of career choices before him – most of this is instead a record of the cataloguing of the library of William Ernest Hocking, a mostly forgotten one-time titan of American philosophy. We don’t get the details of a traditional love story – in fact, all of the romance between Kaag and the woman he eventually marries would fit in a handful of pages.

Of course, I realize the intent of that subtitle. It’s a reference to any number of potential love stories: not just Kaag and Carol, but also Kaag and the library, Hocking and his own wife, Hocking and life itself, and Kaag and a discipline he’d embraced only through his intellect rather than his full emotional register. We don’t get details of the meaningful but mundane romance that brings Kaag his new wife. Instead, we get a range of biographical sketches and interpretations of philosophical trends.

I am, in many ways, the target audience here. I’m a scholar of American literature, and I know the literary siblings of the philosophers who stand on center stage here. (That’s literally true in the case of William and Henry James, but it’s metaphorically true of the many writers who come in as friends of the philosophers in question.) I know the joy of finding some puzzle piece of information or insight in a forgotten text, and I have tried to share it with others myself. (And I have generally failed.)

So, my verdict is that this one is too much of a mess to be a full success. It’s part memoir, though I took it for fiction, and it’s part philosophical treatise. It fails to come entirely together… but I want to put an asterisk to that observation.

It takes a while, but Kaag eventually gives us a wide and working definition of what distinguishes American philosophy from the more familiar continental strain. There are vast schools of thought that find their roots in Descartes, that take as axiomatic that we begin thinking as individual selves. As Kaag develops a series of interconnected arguments, he presents us with a compelling alternative. That is, some thinkers (such as C.S. Pierce) proposed that our experience originates not in the self but in our interaction with others. It is not so much the thunderbolt of “I think, therefore I am,” as it is – and I paraphrase from my own understanding – “We love one another, therefore we are.”

That, of course, is the central notion of “love” at the heart of the subtitle, and it’s a powerful one. (It’s just one that I’m convinced could have come more efficiently and with more power in some other form – memoir would be fine, but it would need to be memoir that didn’t so fully parrot the structure of the novel and instead found some fresh approach.)

In fact, while I find the form of this book disappointing, I’m genuinely inspired by what Kaag has to share in these seemingly dry old characters. As he tells us, American philosophy stood in contrast to the continentals in that it attacked the problems of what it means to live an everyday life. It found a middle ground between pure logic and the abstract contemplation of morality. Because the founders of American philosophy, from Emerson through William James, Pierce, Josiah Royce, and eventually Hocking himself, wanted always to explore “experience” (something I knew to be at the heart of Emersonian thought but that it has taken Kaag to help me understand in this new light) they wrote about overlapping ideas.

In other words, one reason we have seen the tradition of American philosophy wither is that it is, from its axiomatic beginnings, messy. It doesn’t start with self, but with community, with a people between or among whom lies the potential for love. (For Emerson and his literary sibling Whitman, that love is both between individuals and in the nature of citizenship.)

So, to the asterisk in my judgement of the book over all: Kaag’s very moving take on the nature of this tradition is messy enough that it seems to have inspired a messy structure in its work. (And, if you want to see “messy” done masterfully, check out almost any of Emerson’s essays.) I think this book falls short of the masterpiece it suggests, but I think it does so in part because Kaag, for all that he embraces this tradition, sees it as a tradition that failed to keep its foothold in our culture. To put it sadly, he’s fallen in love with a ghost, and he can’t quite bring himself to pronounce his new love dead.

There’s real potential in the metaphor of the library, a decaying place that stood for a generation as the ultimate coming together of a century of the finest thinkers our nation could produce. And note that the library, put into an order that perhaps only Hocking himself fully understood, is beautifully and inspirationally messy.

I am certainly glad I read this one, but I can’t recommend it entirely to others. I’ll keep thinking about it, I’m sure, but I’ll be as aware of the faults in its structure as I am in the deep wisdom – and love – that it circles around so messily.

5 people found this helpful

Fascinating book marred by uneven narration

The book presents a fine overview of the history of philosophy in America. I am usually flexible when it comes to narrators, but Bloomberg made so many pronunciation errors my eyes got tired of wincing. Still recommended but with a warning.

2 people found this helpful

Awesome Book! But..

Would you consider the audio edition of American Philosophy to be better than the print version?
Yes, except the reader kept pronouncing Peirce's name wrong. Charles Sanders Peirce's last name should be pronounced like "purse" not "pierce."

What did you like best about this story?
The blend of American philosophy and the author's own search for meaning.

What about Josh Bloomberg’s performance did you like?
Remember, Peirce-->purse not "pierce."

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Pretty much!

38 people found this helpful

Disappointing on many levels...

As a once and current student of American Philosophy, I’m always interested in reviews of Transcendentalism to Pragmatism to Analytical to Postmodern schools of thought in the US... unfortunately this book has precious little to say about the drama of ideas and the social impact of those ideas of American Philosophy.

This book is focused on a forgettable and forgotten library of a forgettable and forgotten American Philosopher (and his wife) whose lives happened to intersect with more memorable notables of which make only passing appearances.

This book also reeks of epic snobbery and more Harvard mythologizing than one person can almost withstand. There is also a creepy undercurrent of necrophilia through an obsession of the long dead spouse of the forgotten American Philosopher that borders on disbelief, not too mention completely beside the point of a book that’s supposed to be about American Philosophy (or so I was suckered in by the title). But much in this book is beside the point.

If you’re looking for surveys or reviews or analysis of American Philosophy from the Transcendentalists to current (like Rorty, who is not mentioned at all!)... look elsewhere.

1 person found this helpful

Amazing Book

I read this back in 2017. Now, I've listened to the professional reader, Josh Bloomberg. Mr. Bloomberg did mispronounce a few words. Nevertheless, it is a great reading. Seldom do I read/listen to a book twice. This book deserves three passes. I will read again someday. I would love to visit West Wind, see the old Hocking Library. Maybe.

Beautifully Done

The consolation of philosophy updated! This is a good tour of the Golden age of American philosophy.

American Philosphy

Picked this up on a daily deal and admittedly this is not my normal subject matter but the memoir parts were just not interesting at all. It did encourage to look up a couple of philosophers I never heard of before so there is that.

A book about a journey with many discoveries

This story of the discovery of Ernest Hocking’s library and the treasures within will excite anyone who loves books, libraries and ideas. Professor Kaag has done a tremendous service to our understanding of an aspect of America’s intellectual identity by sharing his journey through this collection and his effort to preserve it. I hope this leads to further research.