Arthur Oncken Lovejoy
Arthur Oncken Lovejoy | |
---|---|
History of ideas |
Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (October 10, 1873 – December 30, 1962) was an American
Life
Lovejoy was born in
As a professor of philosophy at
Lovejoy was active in the public arena. He helped found the
Philosophy
In the domain of epistemology, Lovejoy is remembered for an influential critique of the pragmatic movement, especially in the essay "The Thirteen Pragmatisms", written in 1908.[7] Abstract nouns like 'pragmatism' 'idealism', 'rationalism' and the like were, in Lovejoy's view, constituted by distinct, analytically separate ideas, which the historian of the genealogy of ideas had to thresh out, and show how the basic unit ideas combine and recombine with each other over time.[8] The idea has, according to Simo Knuuttila, exercised a greater attraction on literary critics than on philosophers.[citation needed] Lovejoy was also an opponent of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.[9] In 1930, he published a paper criticizing Einstein's relativistic concept of simultaneity as arbitrary.[10][11]
Legacy
William F. Bynum, looking back at Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being after 40 years, describes it as "a familiar feature of the intellectual landscape", indicating its great influence and "brisk" ongoing sales. Bynum argues that much more research is needed into how the concept of the great chain of being was replaced, but he agrees that Lovejoy was right that the crucial period was the end of the 18th century when "the Enlightenment's chain of being was dismantled".[12]
Works
- Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, (1935). (with ISBN 0-8018-5611-6
- The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (1936). Harvard University Press. Reprinted by Harper & Row, ISBN 0-674-36153-9.
- Essays in the History of Ideas (1948). Johns Hopkins U. Press.
- The Revolt Against Dualism (1960). Open Court Publishing. ISBN 0-87548-107-8
- The Reason, the Understanding, and Time (1961). Johns Hopkins U. Press. ISBN 0-8018-0393-4
- Reflections on Human Nature (1961). Johns Hopkins U. Press. ISBN 0-8018-0395-0
- The Thirteen Pragmatisms and Other Essays (1963). Johns Hopkins U. Press. ISBN 0-8018-0396-9
Articles
- "The Entangling Alliance of Religion and History," The Hibbert Journal, Vol. V, October 1906/ July 1907.
- "The Desires of the Self-Conscious," The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, Vol. 4, No. 2, Jan. 17, 1907.
- "The Place of Linnaeus in the History of Science," The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXXI, 1907.
- "The Origins of Ethical Inwardness in Jewish Thought," The American Journal of Theology, Vol. XI, 1907.
- "Kant and the English Platonists." In Essays, Philosophical and Psychological, Longmans, Green & Co., 1908.
- "Pragmatism and Theology," The American Journal of Theology, Vol. XII, 1908.
- "The Theory of a Pre-Christian Cult of Jesus," The Monist, Vol. XVIII, No. 4, October 1908.
- "The Thirteen Pragmatisms," The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. V, January/December, 1908.
- "The Argument for Organic Evolution Before the 'Origin of Species'," Part II, Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXXV, July/December, 1909.
- "Schopenhauer as an Evolutionist," The Monist, Vol. XXI, 1911.
- "Kant and Evolution," Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXXVII, 1910; Part II, Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXXVIII, 1911.
- "The Problem of Time in Recent French Philosophy," Part II, Part III, The Philosophical Review, Vol. XXI, 1912.
- "Relativity, Reality, and Contradiction", The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 1914.
- "Pragmatism Versus the Pragmatist." In: Essays in Critical Realism. London: Macmillan & Co., 1920.
- "Professional Ethics and Social Progress," The North American Review, March 1924.
- "The Dialectical Argument Against Absolute Simultaneity", The Journal of Philosophy, 1930.
- "Plans for the Future," Free World, November 1943.
Miscellany
- "Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr Von," A Cyclopedia of Education, ed. by Paul Monroe, The Macmillan Company, 1911.
- "The Unity of Science," The University of Missouri Bulletin: Science Series, Vol. I, N°. 1, January 1912.
- Bergson & Romantic Evolutionism; Two Lectures Delivered Before the Union, September 5 & 12, 1913, University of California Press, 1914.
References
- ^ Simo Knuuttila (ed.) Reforging the Great Chain of Being: Studies of the History of Modal Theories, Springer Science & Business Media, 2013 p.3
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2023-06-30.
- OCLC 33983842.
- ^ "Arthur O. Lovejoy". Johns Hopkins University. 28 June 2016. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
Lovejoy studied at Harvard under William James and Josiah Royce, the empiricist and idealist antipodes of turn of the century American philosophy. Though his philosophical sympathies were closer to James', Lovejoy carried out a sustained critique of pragmatism that reverberates to this day.
- ^ Feuer, Lewis S. (1977). "Arthur O. Lovejoy". The American Scholar. 46 (3): 358–366.
- ^ Sidney Axinn, "Wiener, Philip Paul (1905-92)", in: John R. Shook, ed., Dictionary Of Modern American Philosophers, Bristol: Thoemmes, 2005. Retrieved 17 July 2005.
- ^ "The Thirteen Pragmatisms, The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, nowThe Journal of Philosophy, Part I, 2 January 1908 p. 5-12. Part II, 16 January 1908, p. 29-39
- ^ Arthur O. Lovejoy, [The Great Chain of Being,] (1936) Harper & Row 1960 pp.5ff.
- ^ Sevick, Charles E. (1936). The Development of a Perceptual Realism. University of Wisconsin-Madison. p. 51. "Lovejoy retains what is essentially the view of space and time of nineteenth Century physics, and has been a vigorous opponent of the theory of relativity."
- ^ Pace, Edward Aloysius; Ryan, James Hugh. (1931). The New Scholasticism. American Catholic Philosophical Association. p. 87, p. 185
- ISBN 9781932717051
- ^ William F. Bynum: "The Great Chain of Being after Forty Years: An Appraisal", History of Science 13 (1975): 1-28
Further reading
- Campbell, James, "Arthur Lovejoy and the Progress of Philosophy,", in: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 39, No. 4, Fall, 2003.
- Diggins, John P., "Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Challenge of Intellectual History,", in: Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 67, Number 1, January 2006.
- Duffin, Kathleen E. "Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Emergence of Novelty," in: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 41, No. 2, Apr./Jun., 1980.
- Feuer, Lewis S., "The Philosophical Method of Arthur O. Lovejoy: Critical Realism and Psychoanalytical Realism," in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 23, No. 4, Jun., 1963.
- Feuer, Lewis S. "Arthur O. Lovejoy," in: The American Scholar, Vol. 46, No. 3, Summer 1977.
- Mandelbaum, Maurice. "Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Theory of Historiography," in: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 9, No. 4, Oct., 1948.
- Moran, Seán Farrell, "A.O. Lovejoy", in: Kelly Boyd, ed., The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Routledge, 1999.
- Randall Jr., John Herman, "Arthur O. Lovejoy and the History of Ideas," in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research"', Vol. 23, No. 4, Jun., 1963.
- Wilson, Daniel J., Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Quest for Intelligibility, University of North Carolina Press, 1980.
External links
- Works by Arthur O. Lovejoy at JSTOR.
- Dictionary of the History of Ideas article on the Great Chain of Being.
- Lovejoy Papers at Johns Hopkins University. Includes a short biography.
- Dale Keiger, Tussling with the Idea Man
- "The Chinese Origin of Romanticism", in: Essays in the History of Ideas, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1948.
- Works by Arthur Oncken Lovejoy at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)