Dissertation Abstract
An American Theism:
Edwards, Peirce, Dewey, and the Philosophy of Return
by
Roger Allen Ward
Degree: Ph.D.
Year: 1996
Pages: 00270
Institution: The
Advisor: Advisers Carl G. Vaught Douglas R.
Anderson
Source: DAI, 57, no. 04A (1996): p. 1658
This thesis on an American Theism is intended to
follow the perspective of American philosophy John Smith presents in
Smith
develops the insight that Edwards's "sense of the heart" stands at
the heart of American philosophy. Smith's work demonstrates how the sense of
the heart is taken up in various forms in the classical American philosophers,
Peirce, Dewey, and Royce. In Smith's work this sense appears primarily in a
positive way. In this dissertation I claim that this same sense continues to
operate in American philosophy and culture as a sense of a lack. American
philosophy manifests this feeling of lack as the absence of a project or a
defining sense that can hold both philosophy and philosophers together. I
intend to show that we need both the presence of the sense of the heart as
Edwards first defines it and its directing absence to express the core of
American thought. The presence and absence of the sense of the heart is what I
hope to articulate as the ground for an American Theism.
Three
sections comprise this dissertation. First, I examine Jonathan Edwards in order
to develop a clearer understanding of the structure and content of his
"sense of the heart." In section two, I draw the thought of C. S.
Peirce together with Edwards around the self and semiosis. Section three
contains a discussion of John Dewey's project of social change through
democracy and education. I propose that Dewey's thought longs for a completion
that evokes the sort of Authority that is present in Edwards's reflective work.
My general claim is that American philosophy is held together in terms of
content and structure in the life and work of Edwards that can expand into a
substantial critique of contemporary reflective and political problems. I call
this platform of thought "American Theism." I demonstrate this sort
of speech in a closing response to the philosophy of Cornel West.
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: PHILOSOPHY
RELIGION,
GENERAL THEOLOGY
Accession
No: AAI9628201
Provider: OCLC
Database: Dissertations