Benjamin Paul Blood (November 21, 1832 – January 15, 1919) was an

American philosopher This is a list of American philosophers; of philosophers who are either from, or spent many productive years of their lives in the United States. {, border="0" style="margin:auto;" class="toccolours" , - ! {{MediaWiki:Toc , - , style="text-ali ...

, mystic and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

. His idiosyncratic work explored his development of his pluralist philosophy, culminating in the posthumously published book ''Pluriverse''.

Biography

He was born in

Amsterdam, New York Amsterdam is a city in Montgomery County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 18,219. The city is named after Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The City of Amsterdam is surrounded on the northern, eastern ...

. His father, John Blood, was a prosperous landowner. Blood was known as an intelligent man but an unfocused one. Initially, his writing consisted of letters, either to local newspapers or to friends such as

James Hutchison Stirling James Hutchison Stirling (22 June 1820 – 19 March 1909) was a Scottish idealist philosopher and physician. His work ''The Secret of Hegel'' (1st edition, 1865, in 2 vols.; revised edition, 1898, in 1 vol.) gave great impetus to the study of H ...

Alfred Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...

and

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. H. M. Kallen wrote of Blood:

He was born in 1832 and lived for eighty-six years. During that time he wrote much, but unsystematically. His favorite form of publication was letters to newspapers, mainly local newspapers with a small circulation. These letters dealt with an astonishing diversity of subjects, from local petty politics or the tricks of spiritualist mediums to principles of industry and finance and profundities of metaphysics.

Early books included ''The Philosophy of Justice Between God and Man'' (1851) and ''Optimism: The Lesson of Ages'' (1860), a Christian mystical vision of the pursuit of happiness from Blood's distinctly American perspective; on the title page of the book, Blood described it as "A compendium of democratic theology, designed to illustrate necessities whereby all things are as they are, and to reconcile the discontents of men with the perfect love and power of ever-present God." During his lifetime he was best known for his poetry, which included ''The Bride of the Iconoclast'', ''Justice'', and ''The Colonnades''. According to Christopher Nelson, Blood was a direct influence on William James' ''The Varieties of Religious Experience'' as well on James's concept of

Sciousness Sciousness, a term coined by William James in ''The Principles of Psychology'', refers to consciousness separate from consciousness of self. James wrote: When James first introduced "sciousness" he held back from proposing it as a possible prime ...

, prime reality consciousness without a sense of self. After experiencing the

anesthetic An anesthetic (American English) or anaesthetic (British English; see spelling differences) is a drug used to induce anesthesia ⁠— ⁠in other words, to result in a temporary loss of sensation or awareness. They may be divided into two ...

nitrous oxide Nitrous oxide (dinitrogen oxide or dinitrogen monoxide), commonly known as laughing gas, nitrous, or nos, is a chemical compound, an oxide of nitrogen with the formula . At room temperature, it is a colourless non-flammable gas, and has a ...

during a dental operation, Blood concluded that the gas had opened his mind to new ideas and continued experimenting with it. In 1874, he published a 37-page pamphlet, ''The Anesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy''.Nelson, Christopher. "The Artificial Mystic State of Mind: WJ, Benjamin Paul Blood, and the Nitrous-Oxide Variety of Religious Experience", ''Streams of William James'', The William James Society, Volume 4, Issue 3 (Fall 2002) He married twice; to Mary Sayles, and following her death, to Harriet Lefferts. He had six children from the first marriage, and a daughter from the second. Blood died in Amsterdam, New York. His final work, ''Pluriverse'', was published posthumously.

Selected bibliography

*
Optimism: The Lesson of Ages
', 1860 *
The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy
', 1874 *
Pluriverse: An Essay in the Philosophy of Pluralism
', 1920 (posthumous)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blood, Benjamin Paul 1832 births 1919 deaths 19th-century American philosophers American Christian mystics Idealists Pluralism (philosophy) Poets from New York (state)

Biography

Selected bibliography

See also

References