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Common Sense Philosophy and Politics in America: John Witherspoon, James Mccosh, and William James

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Common Sense Philosophy and Politics in America: John Witherspoon, James Mccosh, and William James Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2005 Common sense philosophy and politics in America: John Witherspoon, James McCosh, and William James Scott hiP lip Segrest Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Segrest, Scott hiP lip, "Common sense philosophy and politics in America: John Witherspoon, James McCosh, and William James" (2005). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1737. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1737 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. COMMON SENSE PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS IN AMERICA: JOHN WITHERSPOON, JAMES MCCOSH, AND WILLIAM JAMES A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Political Science by Scott Philip Segrest B.A., Baylor University, 1992 M.A., University of Dallas, 1996 December 2005 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The specific nature of this study keeps me mindful of what I owe to the scholarly and spiritual communities that have prepared, encouraged, and supported me. I am especially grateful to Professor Ellis Sandoz for his mentorship and for the inspiration of his work on Anglo-American political theory and on, surely, one of the most penetrating and underappreciated thinkers of the twentieth century, Eric Voegelin; to Professor Cecil Eubanks for heartening perspective and sound advice; to Professors Sandoz, Eubanks, James Stoner, Wayne Parent, and William Clark at Louisiana State University, and to Professors Leo de Alvarez, Richard Dougherty, Thomas West, and John Paynter at the University of Dallas, for making my graduate experience a deeply enriching and satisfying one; to David D. Corey for countless stimulating conversations about the meaning of human existence and what a science of politics should entail; to Elizabeth Corey for endless hospitality and many timely reminders; to David Gauthier for faithful friendship and regular commiseration; to Tara Montelaro for saving my academic hide times without number; to Jeremy and Simone Mhire, for supporting me in the final hour and making victory a little sweeter; to my sister JaNelle, who helped me through an especially rough stretch; to my parents, Philip and Gayle Segrest, for giving without stint, and the rest of my family— Sherilyn, Doug, and Steve—for being always available to me; and finally, to the Earhart Foundation for two precious years of funding. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………ii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………….iv INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………..1 WITHERSPOON’S ‘PLAIN COMMON SENSE’………………………………………40 MCCOSH’S SCIENTIFIC INTUITIONISM……………………………………………96 THE COMMON-SENSE BASIS OF JAMES’ PRAGMATIC RADICAL EMPIRICISM…………………………………142 THE COMMON-SENSE BASIS OF JAMES’ ETHICAL AND SOCIAL THEORY……………………………………..202 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………257 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………264 APPENDIX: ABBREVIATIONS OF JAMES’ WORKS…………………………….....271 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………272 iii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the political significance of the two leading strains of common sense thought in the history of American philosophy—Scottish Common Sense and Pragmatism—as suggested in the writings of John Witherspoon and James McCosh in the Scottish Common Sense line, and of the more famous co-founder of Pragmatism, William James. These two strains of American common sense are placed in context of the larger Western common sense tradition. Each is shown to aim at finding a solid middle ground epistemologically between skeptical doubt and idealistic certitude that could serve as a stable basis for moral and political life. Witherspoon, the first great advocate and popularizer of Scottish Common Sense in America, gave the United States its first coherent, systematic common sense political theory, and that theory is here traced out as a common sense theory of politics for the first time. The first systematic text-based treatment of the moral and social thought of McCosh, the last great proponent of Scottish Common Sense in the American setting, is also provided. In James’ case, the first systematic treatment of the place of common sense in his philosophic worldview is rendered, and it is argued in the process that he is rightly understood as a kind of common sense philosopher. Together, Witherspoon, McCosh, and James offer a vision of man and society that avoids the rigidity of dogmatic foundationalism, on the one hand, and the slackness of foundationless ethics and politics, on the other. iv INTRODUCTION This study considers the political significance of something called “common sense philosophy.” I can imagine two likely reactions to the proposed topic: Those generally skeptical about the value of philosophy for political life—who tend to see philosophy as 1 either vicious or uselessTPF F—willPT say, “It’s about time! Finally, a common sense philosophy of politics!” Those of a more philosophical bent, conversely, may well say, “What! Crude common sense is precisely what philosophy wants to transcend!” In my view, there is some validity in both responses. The basic conviction motivating this work, in fact, is that common sense without philosophy is inadequate to address assaults on the foundations of society or to reinforce foundations already cracked, while philosophy, if not anchored in common sense, tends to radicalize and ultimately to corrode social order still further. The best way to manage this subject, as with most subjects, is to be as concrete as possible. This is peculiarly essential in the matter of common sense philosophy, however, for the essence of common sense is to stay in close contact with life as it is lived, and the whole point of common sense philosophy is to keep our thinking concrete—that is, in touch with the particulars of real-world experience. In the interest of concreteness, then, I herein consider common sense philosophy as exemplified by three thinkers in the American common sense tradition, two of them—John Witherspoon and James McCosh—immigrants from Scotland hailing from the Scottish Common Sense school, and one—William James— a home-grown American product whose pragmatic “radical empiricism” breathed new life into common sense philosophizing. William James is not ordinarily identified with common sense philosophy, and so, first, a few words about him. James is most famous as a founder of Pragmatism (although he is more justly remembered for his classic magnum opus, The 1 TP PT Plato’s Republic VI, 487d. 1 Principles of Psychology). But one of the series of lectures published as Pragmatism, entitled “Pragmatism and Common Sense,” hints that the “pragmatic method” of philosophizing he recommends aims at a reworking of common sense, and presupposes that the common sense outlook is basically sound, though inadequate by itself—absent critical and scientific (and, it turns out, religious) support—for understanding the world and maximizing human fulfillment. In The Meaning of Truth, the compilation of essays published as “A Sequel to Pragmatism,” James explains to his critics that, “The whole originality of pragmatism, the whole point of it, is its use of the concrete way of seeing. It begins with concreteness, and 2 returns and ends with it.”TPF F PT Moreover, James’ own version of pragmatic philosophy, radical empiricism, is deeply rooted in common sense impressions. He repeatedly points out in his posthumously published Essays on Radical Empiricism close affinities between the radically empiricist way of seeing the world and the way of common sense. (I would argue, further, that Pragmatism generally, in its classic form—in the writings of James, Charles S. Peirce, and John Dewey—exhibits the basic hallmarks of the common sense perspective. But proving this in the cases of Peirce and Dewey is beyond the scope of this book.) James has been one of the most written-about philosophers and public intellectuals in American 3 history,TPF F PT yet no one, to my knowledge, has until now ever systematically examined the role of common sense in James’ thought. 2 TP PT James, The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to Pragmatism, eds. Fredson Bowers and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 115-16. 3 TP PT The volume of secondary literature on James is prodigious. The best secondary work on James in the last fifteen years, in my view, is Charlene Haddock Seigfried, William James’s Radical Reconstruction of Philosophy (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990). The Cambridge Companion to William James, ed. Ruth Anna Putnam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) provides a fine collection of fairly recent essays. Gerald E. Myers’ William James: His Life and Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986) is the most comprehensive critical interpretation of James’ thought, and serves as a less sympathetic answer to Ralph Barton Perry’s classic, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1936). The most complete treatment of
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