Our upcoming Lyceum speaker

 Tadd Ruetenik is Professor of Philosophy at St. Ambrose University. He is the author of The Demons of William James: Religious Pragmatism Explores Unusual Mental States (2018) and Secretary of the William James Society.  

What does American philosophy mean to you?  

Since the term “American” signifies continents, “American philosophy” does not signifies more than “United States philosophy.” I take it to refer to philosophy related to life in the Western Hemisphere, and in contrast especially to Europe.  

I do not see a particular need to assert that American philosophy is strongly tied to  pragmatism. In fact, I have come to see that term “pragmatism” as problematic, since in almost all popular usage it means either an unscrupulous power play on  the world, or some kind of compromise that favors non-populist centrist politics. I  know that many philosophy terms have common usages that differ or even work  against the word in its philosophical sense—“idealism” and “metaphysics,” for  example—but I am having difficulty motivating myself for the battle of meanings. I  have been drawn to the term “pluralism,” or better, “radical pluralism” to describe  the philosophy in this part of the globe. If it wasn’t so occult-sounding, I’d suggest  “transcendental pluralism” which can refer to the problem of “the one and the many” that William James, perhaps presciently, said was the fundamental problem  of philosophy. But then we would still begin to run into troubles with the common  usages of the word. Perhaps I’ll be able to retire at that point.  

How did you become an American philosopher?  

Since an early age I have had a personal antipathy for nationalism, patriotism, and any types of large, political allegiance, especially as this relates to the United States. My early interests were in existentialism and philosophy of religion, and it does puzzle me a bit why I became interested in American philosophy to begin with. After a world religions course at a community college piqued my interest in philosophy, I enrolled at Eastern Michigan  University. The counselor had recommended I take just 4 courses, but I was a somewhat  older student, and thought I was ready for more, so I picked up the phone—it was the  beginning of touch-tone registration back in the early 1990s—and I added the first  philosophy class I could find. This happened to be American Philosophy, and was taught by a great professor for whom this was not in her area of specialization. There was something of a radical and environmentalist take to the class, but I remember being  especially drawn to Emerson and Thoreau... (continues)