James Campbell (4) (–1948)

Cambell's A Thoughtful Profession is a history of the first twenty five odd years of the American Philosophical Association which is the largest and most important professional organization for U.S. based philosophers.

The book takes on a worthy topic (although perhaps of narrow interest...it's unlikely any non-members will read this book) and provides an authoritative chronicle of the beginnings of professional philosophy in the USA and the origin, simultaneously, of the organization which sustained this rapid professionalization.

No other book length study has been done on the APA which means that, for the time being, this is the standard history. Given that many records have been lost anf that this is the trailblazing work on the matter, it's hard not to think that Cambell's project has been a success.

As far as the original research and the basic narrative on the rise of the APA, I can't find anything to fault. Things get rather dry at various points, but this is an organizational history after all. One shouldn't be surprised to find lots of membership lists summary accounts of meetings and correspondence. This stuff is the foundation upon which the more interesting interpretive and narrative elements of the history are built.

Unfortunately, some of Campbell's interpretative choices seem off; one suspects that his views are clouded by the fact that his is marginalized from the standpoint of the contemporary U.S. philosophy scene. Campbell is philosopher working in the "American" tradition, which means he draws more from Dewey and some version of pragmatism than, say, Descartes, Hume, Kant or any 20th century analytic figures. Pragmatism was, perhaps unfairly, marginalized within professional philosophy for most of the 20th century (from the 30s on) and so those working in this tradition (as well as those working in the so-called continental tradition) have developed a kind of reactionary streak.

Thus, one of the major failings of the book is the extent to which Campbell consistently bemoans the fate American philosophy departments as they began to move away from questions of public interest and practical engagement and back towards standard metaphysics and epistemology. For Campbell, the professionalization of philosophy has been a generally negative phenomenon, one that led to the mid-century triumph of analytic philosophy. In his fretting over professionalization, Campbell engages with some dubious arguments and some dubious figures (like Bruce Whilshire). This doesn't *really* take away from the more objective historical stuff, but it does take away from the book as a whole.

A couple other concerns of mine are less severe.

In order:

1. Campbell's take on Common Sense Realism (both in general and more specifically in its American collegiate realization) and James McCosh seem to me to be a bit unfair. As a number of recent philosophers have returned to mine the insights of Thomas Reid and friends (Platinga, Wolterstorff, Lehrer...undoubtedly serious figures) it strikes me as ignorant to treat the common sense school and its decedents as little more than befuddled clerical types.

2. Some of the material is simply extraneous. There was no real rational for the two chapters on world war one and its effect on the APA since, as we learn, the effect was minimal. Similarly, the chapter devoted to one talk given by A.O. Lovejoy seems to be an obvious case of reformatting a stand alone article into a book chapter. Lovejoy is an interesting figure and the speech in question is itself interesting but the chapter devoted to him and it is excessive and, again, is offered without any real rational. It fits with some of the issues under discussion, but there is no reason given for devoting so much space to a single talk by a single philosopher. There are several other cases like these although I don't think it's necessary to catalog all of them. basically, it seems to me that the book could've been trimmed by at least fifty if not close to a hundred pages.

Lest it seem that I've begun to trash Campbell's effort, I do want to reiterate that I appreciate the book, that I learned from his work, and that the basic historical narrative seems correct and presented in an interesting enough manner.… (més)