Metaphysical Club
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The Metaphysical Club was a name attributed by the philosopher
Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for t ...
, in an unpublished paper over thirty years after its foundation, to a conversational philosophical club that Peirce, the future
Supreme Court Justice The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest-ranking judicial body in the United States. Its membership, as set by the Judiciary Act of 1869, consists of the chief justice of the United States and eight Associate Justice of the Supreme ...
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the philosopher and psychologist
William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
, amongst others, formed in January 1872 in
Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...
, and dissolved in December 1872. Other members of the club included Chauncey Wright, John Fiske,
Francis Ellingwood Abbot Francis Ellingwood Abbot (November 6, 1836 – October 23, 1903) was an American philosopher and theologian who sought to reconstruct theology in accord with scientific method. His lifelong romance with his wife Katharine Fearing Loring form ...
, Nicholas St. John Green, and Joseph Bangs Warner. Within the philosophical discussions of the original club,
pragmatism Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...
is said by Peirce to have been born. The name of the 1872 club was chosen "half-ironically, half-defiantly," according to Peirce, as the group rejected the radical foundationalist European metaphysics in favor of a moderate foundationalism, pursued critical thinking of a pragmatic and positivist nature. However there is in fact no record of a club of this name in the writings of any of its members apart from Peirce, at the time or later, although
Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
mentioned in a letter that his brother had joined "a metaphysical club." Upon Peirce's arrival at
Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
in 1879, he founded a conversation club there which was definitively named The Metaphysical Club, open to faculty members and graduate students. Amongst its members was John Dewey. The name ''The Metaphysial Club'' was adopted by
Louis Menand Louis Menand (; born January 21, 1952) is an American critic, essayist, and professor, best known for his Pulitzer-winning book '' The Metaphysical Club'' (2001), an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America. ...
for his 2001 book, '' The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America'', covering American philosophical thought in the second half of the nineteenth century and covering the ideas and lives of many of the members of Peirce's circles in Cambridge and in Johns Hopkins.Menand (2001)


References


Sources

* Menand, Louis, ''The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America'' (2001), New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (hardcover), (paperback)


Further reading

* Shook, John R. (n.d),
The Metaphysical Club
at the ''Pragmatism Cybrary''. Includes an account of the Club and individualized accounts of Chauncey Wright, Nicholas St. John Green, Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, and Joseph Bangs Warner, along with bibliographies, complete ones in the cases of Wright and Green. {{DEFAULTSORT:Metaphysical Club, The Philosophical societies in the United States Charles Sanders Peirce Organizations established in 1872 Organizations disestablished in 1872 1872 establishments in Massachusetts William James