Reconstructing Individualism : A Pragmatic Tradition from Emerson to Ellison / James M. Albrecht.
2012
B832 .A345 2012eb
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Title
Reconstructing Individualism : A Pragmatic Tradition from Emerson to Ellison / James M. Albrecht.
Author
ISBN
9780823242122
Published
New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2012]
Copyright
©2012
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (368 p.)
Item Number
10.1515/9780823242122 doi
Call Number
B832 .A345 2012eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
141/.40973
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.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
Series
American Philosophy
In
Available in Other Form
print 9780823242092
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Table of Contents
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction. "Individualism Has Never Been Tried"
Part One. Emerson
One. What's the Use of Reading Emerson Pragmatically?
Two. "Let Us Have Worse Cotton and Better Men"
Part Two. Pragmatism
Three. Moments in the World's Salvation
Four. Character and Community
Five. "The Local Is the Ultimate Universal"
Part Three. A Tragicomic Ethics in the Emersonian Vein
Six. Saying Yes and Saying No
Notes
Index
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction. "Individualism Has Never Been Tried"
Part One. Emerson
One. What's the Use of Reading Emerson Pragmatically?
Two. "Let Us Have Worse Cotton and Better Men"
Part Two. Pragmatism
Three. Moments in the World's Salvation
Four. Character and Community
Five. "The Local Is the Ultimate Universal"
Part Three. A Tragicomic Ethics in the Emersonian Vein
Six. Saying Yes and Saying No
Notes
Index