Morton White - Böcker

In 1787, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison wrote The Federalist to rally support for the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. In spite of the pragmatic intentions of the authors, they often implicitly expressed themselves in philosophical language, drawing from the major philosophers of their day, notably Locke and Hume. In this book, Morton White presents the first synoptic view of the major philosopical ideas in The Federalist. Using the tools of philosophy and intellectual history, he examines the theories and disciplines used in different degrees by the founding fathers in defence of the Constitution.'Thoroughly researched and carefully argued; this is an important book.'The Library Journal

A Philosopher’s Story is the autobiography of a prominent philosopher whose interactions with other leading thinkers and experiences at major institutions of higher learning over a period of time of more than fifty years make this an informative introduction to the intellectual life of late twentieth century America. During his academic career, Morton White has been involved in a number of controversies that have raised profound issues. One concerned the role of religion at Harvard in the 1950s; another was precipitated by the student rebellion at Harvard in the 1960s; and a third surrounded the question of academic governance at the Institute of Advanced Study during the 1970s. Throughout his academic career he has been an intellectual bridge-builder who has tried to avoid the pitfalls off wooliness and obscurity while uniting his widely spread interests. This is a professor’s story with many distinguishing features. Like other examples of the author’s writing, it reflects many different aspects of American thought and society during the twentieth century.

The author examines three fundamental concepts: existence, a priori knowledge, and value. These concepts have been recurrent concerns of western philosophy and also reveal important similarities and differences between the movements from which the author takes his departure.

One of the most important philosophers of recent times, Morton White has spent a career building bridges among the increasingly fragmented worlds of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. From a Philosophical Point of View is a selection of White's best essays, written over a period of more than sixty years. Together these selections represent the belief that philosophers should reflect not only on mathematics and science but also on other aspects of culture, such as religion, art, history, law, education, and morality. White's essays cover the full range of his interests: studies in ethics, the theory of knowledge, and metaphysics as well as in the philosophy of culture, the history of pragmatism, and allied currents in social, political, and legal thought. The book also includes pieces on philosophers who have influenced White at different stages of his career, among them William James, John Dewey, G. E. Moore, and W. V. Quine. Throughout, White argues from a holistic standpoint against a sharp epistemological distinction between logical and physical beliefs and also against an equally sharp one between descriptive and normative beliefs.White maintains that once the philosopher abandons the dogma that the logical analysis of mathematics and physics is the essence of his subject, he frees himself to resume his traditional role as a student of the central institutions of civilization. Philosophers should function not merely as spectators of all time and existence, he argues, but as empirically minded students of culture who try to use some of their ideas for the benefit of society.

In this book, one of America's leading philosophers offers a sweeping reconsideration of the philosophy of culture in the twentieth century. Morton White argues that the discipline is much more important than is often recognized, and that his version of holistic pragmatism can accommodate its breadth. Going beyond Quine's dictum that philosophy of science is philosophy enough, White suggests that it should contain the word "culture" in place of "science." He defends the holistic view that scientific belief is tested by experience but that such testing is rightly applied to systems or conjunctions of beliefs, not isolated beliefs. He adds, however, that we test ethical systems by appealing to feelings of moral obligation as well as to sensory experiences. In the course of his lucidly written analysis, White treats central issues in the philosophy of science, of religion, of art, of history, of law, of politics, and of morality. While doing so he examines the views of Quine, Tarski, Goodman, and Rawls, and shows how they are related to the approaches of Peirce, James, Duhem, Russell, Dewey, Carnap, and the later Wittgenstein.He also discusses the ideas of the legal philosophers Holmes and Hart from a holistic standpoint. White demonstrates how his version of pragmatism bridges the traditional gulf between analytic and synthetic truth as well as that between moral and scientific belief. Indeed, the high point of the book is a brilliant presentation of his view of ethics, based on the idea that our scientific theories face the tribunal of observation whereas our ethical views face the joint tribunal of observation and moral feeling. Scholars and students of the history of ideas and of philosophy will welcome A Philosophy of Culture as the highly finished product of more than sixty years of philosophical reflection by an important thinker.