John J. McDermott's anthology, The Philosophy of John Dewey, provides the best general selection available of the writings of America's most distinguished philosopher and social critic. This comprehensive collection, ideal for use in the classroom and indispensable for anyone interested in the wide scope of Dewey's thought and works, affords great insight into his role in the history of ideas and the basic integrity of his philosophy. This edition combines in one book the two volumes previously published separately. Volume 1, The Structure of Experience, contains essays on metaphysics, the logic of inquiry, the problem of knowledge, and value theory. In volume 2, The Lived Experience, Dewey's writings on pedagogy, ethics, the aesthetics of the live creature, politics, and the philosophy of culture are presented. McDermott has prefaced each essay with a helpful explanatory note and has written an excellent general introduction to the anthology.

This book traces the trajectory of John J. McDermottas philosophical career through a selection of his essays. Many were originally occasional pieces and address specific issues in American thought and culture. Together they constitute a mosaic of McDermottas philosophy, showing its roots in an American conception of experience. Though he draws heavily on the thought of William James and the pragmatists, McDermott has his own unique perspective on philosophy and American life. He presents this to the reader in exquisitely crafted prose. Drawing inspiration from American history, from existentialist themes, and from personal experiences, he offers a dramatic consideration of our cultureas failures and successes.McDermott crosses disciplinary boundaries to draw on whatever works to help make sense of theissues with which he is dealingaissues rooted in medical practice, political events, pedagogical habits, and the worlds of the arts. His work thus resists simple categorization. It is precisely this that makes his vibrant prose appealing to so many both inside and outside the world of American philosophy.

Now back in print, and in paperback, these two classic volumes illustrate the scope and quality of Royce's thought, providing the most comprehensive selection of his writings currently available. They offer a detailed presentation of the viable relationship Royce forged between the local experience of community and the demands of a philosophical and scientific vision of the human situation. The selections reprinted here are basic to any understanding of Royce's thought and its pressing relevance to contemporary cultural, moral, and religious issues.

"Essays in Religion and Morality" brings together a dozen papers of varying length to these two themes so crucial to the life and thought of William James. Reflections on the two subjects permeate, first, James's presentation of his father's "Literary Remains"; second, his writings on human immortality and the relation between reason and faith; third, his two memorial pieces, one on Robert Gould Shaw and the other on Emerson; fourth, his consideration of the energies and powers of human life; and last, his writings on the possibilities of peace, especially as found in his famous essay "The Moral Equivalent of War."

These speeches and essays were written over a period of twenty-four years. The fact that James did not collect and publish them himself in a single volume does not reflect on their intrinsic worth or on their importance in James's philosophical work, since they include some of the best known and most influential of his writings. All the essays, throughout their varied subject matter, are consistently and characteristically Jamesian in the freshness of their attack on the problems and failings of humankind and in their steady faith in human powers.

The U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrates that in the twenty-first century the U.S. will become more involved in stability operations as it continues to deny sanctuaries for transnational and non-state threats. The reprioritizing of stability operations and current operations has led the military to realize that a more comprehensive and inclusive process for building post conflict peace needed to be developed. A new framework referred to as Amnesty, Reconciliation, and Reintegration (AR2) addresses this. The framework explains that a lasting peace is built or shaped by enabling a common societal level change to take place. This societal level change is brought about by reforming or creating new and inclusive elements of society that generally fall into the economic, political, or security dimensions of society. The monograph examines the policies of the two different Reconstruction plans executed in the United States after the U.S. Civil War though the lens of AR2. The Reconstruction case study provides an example of how a failure to understand the interaction of the different societal dimensions prevents a lasting peace from being built.

"Essays in Philosophy" brings together twenty-one essays, reviews, and occasional pieces published by James between 1876 and 1910. They range in subject from a concern with the teaching of philosophy and appraisals of philosophers to analyses of important problems.

Several of the essays, like "The Sentiment of Rationality" and "The Knowing of Things Together," are of particular significance in the development of the views of James's later works. All of them, as John McDermott says in his Introduction, are in a style that is "engaging and personal...witty, acerbic, compassionate, and polemical." Whether he is writing an article for the "Nation" of a definition of "Experience" for Baldwin's "Dictionary" or "The Mad Absolute" for the "Journal of Philosophy," James is always unmistakably himself, and always readable.

This book traces the trajectory of John J. McDermottas philosophical career through a selection of his essays. Many were originally occasional pieces and address specific issues in American thought and culture. Together they constitute a mosaic of McDermottas philosophy, showing its roots in an American conception of experience. Though he draws heavily on the thought of William James and the pragmatists, McDermott has his own unique perspective on philosophy and American life. He presents this to the reader in exquisitely crafted prose. Drawing inspiration from American history, from existentialist themes, and from personal experiences, he offers a dramatic consideration of our cultureas failures and successes.McDermott crosses disciplinary boundaries to draw on whatever works to help make sense of theissues with which he is dealingaissues rooted in medical practice, political events, pedagogical habits, and the worlds of the arts. His work thus resists simple categorization. It is precisely this that makes his vibrant prose appealing to so many both inside and outside the world of American philosophy.

Josiah Royce (1855-1916), one of the outstanding classical American philosophers, is regarded by many as the foremost American idealist. A transitional book in the development of Royce's thought, The Philosophy of Loyalty is a key to understanding his influence on the development of pragmatism. Royce's basic argument is clear. Individual wills are a given, and social training is a natural aspect of community. But the two are not fully compatible, and conflicts naturally emerge. Loyalty to a cause unites many individuals into a community, but fanatical loyalty to causes often has inimical results. Long out of print and never before available in paperback, The Philosophy of Loyalty has many beneficial implications for understanding contemporary social passions and outlooks, especially for our own fragmented American culture. As Royce himself asserted nearly ninety years ago, in the preface of this book, "I am writing...not merely and not mainly for philosophers, but for all those who love...ideals, and also for those who love...their country - a country so ripe at present for idealism, and so confused, nevertheless, by the vastness and the complication of its social and political problems". Royce speaks to these continuing concerns in a voice that is perceptive, learned, and sensitive to the human situation, and he offers powerful conceptual tools for our own troubled times.

A pioneer in early studies of the human mind and founder of that peculiarly American philosophy called Pragmatism, William James remains America's most widely read philosopher. Generations of students have been drawn to his lucid presentations of philosophical problems. His works, now being made available for the first time in a definitive edition, have a permanent place in American letters and a continuing influence in philosophy and psychology.

The essays gathered in the posthumously published "Essays in Radical Empiricism" formulate ideas that had brewed in James's mind for thirty years as he sought a way out of the philosophical dilemmas generated by the new psychology of the late nineteenth century. They constitute the explanatory core of his doctrine of radical empiricism, a doctrine that charts his course between the absolute idealism he could not accept and, at the other extreme, the law of associationism, which reduces knowledge to sheer contiguity of ideas. In his introduction John J. McDermott describes the historical background and the genesis of James's theory and considers the objections raised by its opponents.