1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910826086303321

Autore

Albrecht James M

Titolo

Reconstructing individualism : a pragmatic tradition from Emerson to Ellison / / James M. Albrecht

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, : Fordham University Press, 2012

ISBN

0-8232-4212-9

9786613889911

1-283-57746-1

0-8232-4211-0

0-8232-4659-0

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (392 p.)

Collana

American philosophy

Classificazione

PHI020000PHI019000

Disciplina

141/.40973

Soggetti

Individualism in literature

Individualism - United States - History

Literature and society - United States

Philosophy, American - 19th century

Philosophy, American - 20th century

Pragmatism in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. “Individualism Has Never Been Tried” -- One. What’s the Use of Reading Emerson Pragmatically? -- Two. “Let Us Have Worse Cotton and Better Men” -- Three. Moments in the World’s Salvation -- Four. Character and Community -- Five. “The Local Is the Ultimate Universal” -- Six. Saying Yes and Saying No -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

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.