Recent Philosophy: Volume Two—From Bentham to Dewey

Philosophy contends with the ultimate questions the human mind can ask. In Recent Philosophy, Étienne Gilson, Thomas Langan, and Armand Maurer, C.S.B., present the approaches and answers to those questions by the foremost philosophers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like its published companions in the History of Philosophy series (Medieval Philosophy and Modern Philosophy), Recent Philosophy avoids the trap of becoming an encyclopedia of names and dates, producing instead an emphatically doctrinal chronicle of post-modern philosophical activity.Volume Two comprises Armand Maurer’s studies of (1) English philosophy, covering Bentham and Mill and the emergence of utilitarianism; the advent of evolutionism via Darwin and Spencer; the continued development of idealism under the auspices of Coleridge; the return to realism ushered in by G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and A. N. Whitehead; and the intersection of linguistics and metaphysics, especially in the work of Wittgenstein; and (2) American philosophy, from its beginning of “philosophizing divines,” through New England Transcendentalism and the American takes on idealism and realism, and, finally, the stark world of pragmatism envisioned by William James and John Dewey. Read more