The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America

The Metaphysical Club

Author	Louis Menand
Publisher	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date	2001
Pages	384
ISBN	0-374-19963-9

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America is a Pulitzer Prize-winning 2001 book by Louis Menand, an American writer and legal scholar, which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for History. The book recounts the lives and intellectual work of the handful of thinkers primarily responsible for the philosophical concept of pragmatism, a principal feature of American philosophical achievement: William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey. Pragmatism proved to be very influential on modern thought, for example, in spurring movements in modern legal thought such as legal realism.

Menand traces the biography of each of these individuals, shows ways in which they were connected and how all were in a sense influenced by their times and by thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. The book begins by examining the family history and early life of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the future U.S. Supreme Court Justice, then describes how Holmes, James, Peirce, Dewey and others were acquainted with each other, and how their association led to James' development of pragmatism.

A main focus of the book is the influence of the American Civil War on Americans in general and on the subjects of this book, as well as how the Civil War inspired pragmatism. For Holmes, the Civil War destroyed his entire perspective on the world and greatly shaped his judicial philosophy. Holmes's judicial philosophy developed at roughly the same time as Dewey, James and Peirce were beginning to develop pragmatist ideas. Other influences treated by the book are the emerging sciences of statistics and evolutionary biology.

Menand's portrayal of pragmatism has been criticized by philosophers Susan Haack,^[1] Paul Boghossian,^[2] and Thomas L. Short.^[3]

Notes

↑ Haack, Susan (1997), "Vulgar Rortyism" in The New Criterion, v. 16, n. 3, November 1997. Eprint. Review of Menand's anthology Pragmatism: A Reader.
↑ Boghossian, Paul (2001), "The Gospel of Relaxation" in The New Republic, September 2001, critical review of Menand's The Metaphysical Club. MS-Word doc Eprint.
↑ Short, Thomas L. (2002), "Sham Scholarship" in Modern Age 44:4, Fall 2002. Critical review of Menand's The Metaphysical Club. First Things Eprint (the second review is the one by Short).

External links

The Metaphysical Club publisher site
"Menand brings pragmatists of the Metaphysical Club to life", by Ken Gewertz, Harvard Gazette 26 February 2004
The Metaphysical Club at Amazon.com
Shook, John R. (undated), "The Metaphysical Club" at the Pragmatism Cybrary. Includes an account of the Club and individualized accounts of Chauncey Wright, Nicholas St. John Green, Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, and Joseph Bangs Warner, along with bibliographies, complete ones in the cases of Wright and Green.

Preceded by Founding Brothers	Pulitzer Prize for History 2002	Succeeded by An Army at Dawn

Pulitzer Prize for History

1917–1919	1917: With Americans of Past and Present Days by Jean Jules Jusserand 1918: A History of the Civil War, 1861–1865 by James Ford Rhodes 1919: no award given

1920–1929	1920: The War with Mexico by Justin H. Smith 1921: The Victory at Sea by William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick 1922: The Founding of New England by James Truslow Adams 1923: The Supreme Court in United States History by Charles Warren 1924: The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation by Charles Howard McIlwain 1925: History of the American Frontier by Frederic L. Paxson 1926: A History of the United States by Edward Channing 1927: Pinckney's Treaty by Samuel Flagg Bemis 1928: Main Currents in American Thought by Vernon Louis Parrington 1929: The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861–1865 by Fred Albert Shannon

1930–1939	1930: The War of Independence by Claude H. Van Tyne 1931: The Coming of the War, 1914 by Bernadotte E. Schmitt 1932: My Experiences in the World War by John J. Pershing 1933: The Significance of Sections in American History by Frederick J. Turner 1934: The People's Choice by Herbert Agar 1935: The Colonial Period of American History by Charles McLean Andrews 1936: A Constitutional History of the United States by Andrew C. McLaughlin 1937: The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865 by Van Wyck Brooks 1938: The Road to Reunion, 1865–1900 by Paul Herman Buck 1939: A History of American Magazines by Frank Luther Mott

1940–1949	1940: Abraham Lincoln: The War Years by Carl Sandburg 1941: The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860 by Marcus Lee Hansen 1942: Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 by Margaret Leech 1943: Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes 1944: The Growth of American Thought by Merle Curti 1945: Unfinished Business by Stephen Bonsal 1946: The Age of Jackson by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. 1947: Scientists Against Time by James Phinney Baxter III 1948: Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVoto 1949: The Disruption of American Democracy by Roy Franklin Nichols

1950–1959	1950: Art and Life in America by Oliver W. Larkin 1951: The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815–1840 by R. Carlyle Buley 1952: The Uprooted by Oscar Handlin 1953: The Era of Good Feelings by George Dangerfield 1954: A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton 1955: Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History by Paul Horgan 1956: The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter 1957: Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1920 by George F. Kennan 1958: Banks and Politics in America by Bray Hammond 1959: The Republican Era: 1869–1901 by Leonard D. White and Jean Schneider

1960–1969	1960: In the Days of McKinley by Margaret Leech 1961: Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference by Herbert Feis 1962: The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763–1766 by Lawrence H. Gipson 1963: Washington, Village and Capital, 1800–1878 by Constance McLaughlin Green 1964: Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town by Sumner Chilton Powell 1965: The Greenback Era by Irwin Unger 1966: The Life of the Mind in America by Perry Miller 1967: Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West by William H. Goetzmann 1968: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn 1969: Origins of the Fifth Amendment by Leonard W. Levy

1970–1979	1970: Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department by Dean Acheson 1971: Roosevelt: The Soldier Of Freedom by James MacGregor Burns 1972: Neither Black Nor White by Carl N. Degler 1973: People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization by Michael Kammen 1974: The Americans: The Democratic Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin 1975: Jefferson and His Time by Dumas Malone 1976: Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan 1977: The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 by David M. Potter (Completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher) 1978: The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D. Chandler Jr. 1979: The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics by Don E. Fehrenbacher

1980–1989	1980: Been in the Storm So Long by Leon F. Litwack 1981: American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876 by Lawrence A. Cremin 1982: Mary Chesnut's Civil War by C. Vann Woodward 1983: The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 by Rhys L. Isaac 1984: no award given 1985: Prophets of Regulation by Thomas K. McCraw 1986: ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age by Walter A. McDougall 1987: Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution by Bernard Bailyn 1988: The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876 by Robert V. Bruce 1989: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson 1989: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–1963 by Taylor Branch

1990–1999	1990: In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines by Stanley Karnow 1991: A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich 1992: The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties by Mark E. Neely Jr. 1993: The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood 1994: no award given 1995: No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin 1996: William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic by Alan Taylor 1997: Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution by Jack N. Rakove 1998: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson 1999: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace

2000–2009	2000: Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 by David M. Kennedy 2001: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis 2002: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand 2003: An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942–1943 by Rick Atkinson 2004: A Nation under Our Feet by Steven Hahn 2005: Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer 2006: Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky 2007: The Race Beat by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff 2008: What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 by Daniel Walker Howe 2009: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed

2010-2019	2010: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed 2011: The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner 2012: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable 2013: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall 2014: The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor 2015: Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn

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The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America

See also

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External links