LEADER 04444nam 2200613 a 450 001 9910963188103321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a9780826272072 010 $a082627207X 035 $a(CKB)2560000000015207 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000411628 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11268543 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000411628 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10356611 035 $a(PQKB)10558819 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3440741 035 $a(OCoLC)646067849 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse26879 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3440741 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10400599 035 $a(Perlego)1693866 035 $a(EXLCZ)992560000000015207 100 $a20091001d2010 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcn||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aAmerica and the political philosophy of common sense /$fScott Philip Segrest 210 $aColumbia, Mo. $cUniversity of Missouri Press$dc2010 215 $axiv, 283 p 225 1 $aThe Eric Voegelin series in political philosophy 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 08$a9780826218735 311 08$a0826218733 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $aCommon sense and the common sense tradition -- Witherspoon's "plain common sense" -- McCosh's scientific intuitionism -- The common sense basis of James's pragmatic radical empiricism -- The common sense basis of James's moral and social theory. 330 8 $aFrom Aristotle to Thomas Jefferson, seminal thinkers have declared "common sense" essential for moral discernment and civilized living. Yet the story of commonsense philosophy is not well known today.               In America and the Political Philosophy of Common Sense, Scott Segrest traces the history and explores the personal and social meaning of common sense as understood especially in American thought and as reflected specifically in the writings of three paradigmatic thinkers: John Witherspoon, James McCosh, and William James. The first two represent Scottish Common Sense and the third, Pragmatism, the schools that together dominated American higher thought for nearly two centuries.   Educated Americans of the founding period warmly received Scottish Common Sense, Segrest writes, because it reflected so well what they already thought, and he uncovers the basic elements of American common sense in examining the thought of Witherspoon, who introduced that philosophy to them. With McCosh, he shows the furthest development and limits of the philosophy, and with it of American common sense in its Scottish realist phase. With James, he shows other dimensions of common sense that Americans had long embraced but that had never been examined philosophically.               Clearly, Segrest's work is much more than an intellectual history. It is a study of the American mind and of common sense itself-its essential character and its human significance, both moral and political. It was common sense, he affirms, that underlay the Declaration of Independence and the founders' ideas of right and obligation that are still with us today. Segrest suggests that understanding this foundation and James's refreshing of it could be the key to maintaining America's vital moral core against a growing alienation from common sense across the Western world.   Stressing the urgency of understanding and preserving common sense, Segrest's work sheds new light on an undervalued aspect of American thought and experience, helping us to perceive the ramifications of commonsense philosophy for dignified living. 410 0$aEric Voegelin Institute series in political philosophy. 606 $aCommon sense 606 $aPhilosophy, American 606 $aPolitical science$xPhilosophy 615 0$aCommon sense. 615 0$aPhilosophy, American. 615 0$aPolitical science$xPhilosophy. 676 $a320.01 700 $aSegrest$b Scott Philip$01811810 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910963188103321 996 $aAmerica and the political philosophy of common sense$94363899 997 $aUNINA