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Whitestone Foundation ### Get in touch The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT) is a publication of The Whitestone Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation registered in the state of Colorado. [Contact Us](/contact/) --- [Built with Eleventy](https://www.11ty.dev/) | Design: [HTML5 UP](https://html5up.net/) | Maintained by [Adam DJ Brett](https://adamdjbrett.com) | [Credits](/credits/) [Listed at Duotrope](https://duotrope.com/magazine/journal-cultural-religious-theory-20464?ref=lst-7vbKB-7r3u0g8&pc=L-7VBKB) JCRT The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory JCRT The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory - [Home](/) - [Archives](/archives/) - [03.1](/archives/03.1/) # The Primal Roots of American Philosophy: Pragmatism, Phenomenology, and Native American Thought William D. Dean January 1, 2001 | doi.org/10.17613/81ew2-7yz15 Download Article Download Citation (RIS) Download Citation (JSON) ## Table of Contents Dean - The Archaeology of American Thought - JCRT 3.1 ## Book Profile: The Archaeology of American Thought #book-profile-the-archaeology-of-american-thought Bruce Wilshire, *The Primal Roots of American Philosophy: Pragmatism, Phenomenology, and Native American Thought*. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. 241 pages. ISBN: 0-271-02026-1. William Dean Iliff School of Theology --- After 300 years, that great majority of philosophers who have regularly dismantled traditions of wisdom now seem like a rather predictable group. By those standards, today’s true philosophical radicals are those who risk their reputations by affirming these traditions. Even so, it is still implicitly believed that good philosophers judiciously destroy, leaving judiciously, construction to the bad ones. Thus, for example, when Richard Rorty wrote *Achieving Our Country* to endorse just one of America’s traditions (the liberal political tradition) . . . well, this was slightly embarrassing. --- [Copyright © held by the author(s).](https://jcrt.org/copyright/) 2001 William Dean. All rights reserved. Updated 07/28/21. [jcrt.org/archives/03.1/dean](https://jcrt.org/archives/03.1/dean/) --- - Given these terms, Bruce Wilshire’s intriguing *The Primal Roots of American Philosophy* is truly radical and slightly embarrassing. He uncovers the primal roots of American philosophy not to logic-chop, but to transplant those roots at the headwaters of today’s American philosophy. Further, he seeks to defend not just one tradition but an entire set of ideas implicit in classical pragmatism, as well as in much Native American thought and Continental phenomenology. If academic philosophy has been the revenge of the intellect on traditions of wisdom, Wilshire’s book is the revenge of a particular traditional wisdom on academic philosophy. - Wilshire has written a somewhat personal description of how classical pragmatism (hereafter called “urpragmatism”) overcame Enlightenment dualisms (mind-body, self-world, sacred-secular, cognition-emotion, objective-subjective, human-animal, epistemological-ontological, conscious-unconscious, psychological-parapsychological, necessary-contingent, etc.). His description is not uncontroversial, for it emphasizes the more metaphysical and religious ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, William Ernest Hocking, and Henry Bugbee–just those ideas that have been so adroitly set aside by today’s neo-pragmatists. - This all comes to a head in his praise and excoriation of Richard Rorty, noting where he extends the urpragmatic approach and where, hardly noting the fact, he conveniently drops some of its major motifs. After having put Rorty on the run, Wilshire diplomatically refuses to make it a route. This is about as exciting as contemporary philosophy gets, which may not seem like much but, at Wilshire’s hands, is quite a bit. - In addition to defending and extending the motifs of unpragmatism, Wilshire claims that, in its anti-dualisms, it has great affinities with what he calls “Native American thought.” Hence, the book’s subtitle: *Pragmatism, Phenomenology, and Native American Thought*. In part, this points the way to what one day might be defended as not only “primal roots” but as a “primal American philosophy” itself. Some readers, however, might be puzzled by how Wilshire could speak of “Native American thought” when he looks carefully at only one speech by Black Elk and then allows that to stand for all such thought. - Wilshire finds highly suggestive anomalies and mutual borrowings between phenomenology and American pragmatism but does not adequately explain how Continental European phenomenology could be part of what he calls a primal *American* philosophy. - Wilshire closes this book with a suggestive and painful story from his own life, and thereby practices just that philosophical honesty, directness, and anti-professionalism that he preaches. The story is too remarkable and too delicate to be properly represented here, but its vividness rewards the reader. - My only serious criticism seems slightly unfair to an author whose work is so impressively interdisciplinary and multi-faceted. Nevertheless, it should be noted that he neglects the fact that hundreds of theologians and philosophers of religion for fifty years have been attempting to accomplish a renewal of a pragmatic, radically empirical, and organismic perspective much like his own. I refer to most process, empirical, and pragmatic religious thinkers directly or indirectly affected by James, Dewey, and Alfred North Whitehead, many of whom came out of the University of Chicago–thinkers such as Henry Nelson Wieman, Charles Hartshorne (in part), Bernard Meland, and Bernard Loomer, and their numerous academic and ministerial successors today. - This is an excellent text for anyone who wants to recover the capacious earlier American philosophical project in ways congenial to emerging trends of thought. It is a seminal and daring book for anyone who wants to distinguish American from European philosophy and to shape it in indigenous ways–particularly, in conversation with Native Americans. © the author(s). Free to read; see the [copyright notice](/copyright/) for reuse terms. Keywords: american-philosophy pragmatism phenomenology native-american-thought radical-empiricism process-philosophy enlightenment-dualism bruce-wilshire richard-rorty william-james john-dewey charles-sanders-peirce alfred-north-whitehead black-elk Share Openly [The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT)](https://jcrt.org) is an online, peer-reviewed, academic publication published by [The Whitestone Foundation](http://thewhitestonefoundation.org/), a 501c3 corporation located in Boulder, Colorado. ISSN 1530-5228. Articles are open access under a [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) license; authors retain copyright. Indexed by [EBSCO](https://www.ebsco.com/). Listed with [Duotrope](https://duotrope.com/magazine/journal-cultural-religious-theory-20464?ref=lst-7vbKB-7r3u0g8&pc=L-7VBKB). Website © The Whitestone Foundation dba The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 1999-2026. 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