In 1872, a group of men that included future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., father of modern psychology William James, and eccentric polymath Charles Sanders Peirce, formed a philosophical society, called the "Metaphysical Club," to exchange and discuss ideas. While very little is known about how this conversational club was conducted over its nine months of life, we do know that each of its individual members made significant contributions to a uniquely American philosophy called pragmatism, and that pragmatism would in turn greatly influence everything from legal theory to education.
My guest today profiles the lives and thinking of each of these interesting men in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. His name is Louis Menand, he's a Professor of English at Harvard, and today we have a conversation about what the philosophy of pragmatism is about, why Holmes, James, and Peirce, as well as the intellectual John Dewey, arrived at, embraced, and forwarded its principles, and how pragmatism shaped American life between the Civil War and WWI. We end our conversation with why pragmatism fell out of favor, and whether it remains salient today.
Resources Related to the PodcastThe Myths of Trauma
Leadership Lessons from a Disastrous Arctic Expedition
Jane Austen for Dudes
Get a Handle on Your Shrinking Attention Span
The Survival Myths That Can Get You Killed
Escape the Happiness Trap
Dante's Guide to Navigating a Spiritual Journey
Move the Body, Heal the Mind
Kit Carson's Epic Exploits
How to Win Friends and Influence People in the 21st Century
Advice on Achieving Any Long-Haul Dream
Key Insights From the Longest Study on Happiness
Heal the Body With Extended Fasting
7 Journaling Techniques That Can Change Your Life
Get Fit, Not Fried — The Benefits of Zone 2 Cardio
Why You Don’t Change (But How You Still Can) [ENCORE]
How Testosterone Makes Men, Men [Encore]
The Unexpected Origins of Our Christmas Traditions
The Affectionate, Ambiguous, and Surprisingly Ambivalent Relationship Between Siblings
Why Homer Matters
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free