American Philosophy-A Love Story

This is one of these books that I was desperate not to finish reading, it is so good. It is an unusual book to fall into that category as it is a unique mix of the story of American philosophy as it intermixes with continental philosophy with a dollop of personal history and the history of the people involved. It is the story of William Hocking, his wife Agnes, their love story, a love story of the mind and the love story of John Kaag and his wife Carol Hay.

But it isn’t just about that, rather it is a broad and expansive overview of the evolution of American philosophy, some would call is pragmatism, and recitations of that uniquely American product with its European forebears and contemporaries. The scholarship of Prof. Kaag is impressive, but more impressive is his ability to tell the story of the flesh and blood people who created this story and history. His ability to disseminate the essential meanings and lessons from the history to the lay mind is beyond impressive. I envy his students in that not only are they getting exposed to a top philosophical mind , but they are benefitting from learning from a world level story teller.

The basics are that Prof Kaag stumbled upon Hocking’s estate, West Wind and in so doing he came into a treasure trove of books that made up William Hocking’s library. He was able to step in to help Hocking’s granddaughters catalog and sort through their beloved grandfather’s library and papers and he was able to expose himself to the thoughts and histories of one of the great American philosophers, now long forgotten by the rest of the world.

Prof Kaag comes to this work with a pedigree and a burden: he is undergoing a crisis in his professional and personal life. The work, however, allows him to let the philosophy take him through his crisis and to guide him through life. One major theme of the book is the explanation of what philosophy once was: based on experiential knowledge and used to resolve real world problems; and what philosophy has evolved into: a specialized and technical trudge through indecipherable language and rigid, technical formalisms. By dissecting the writings of the American philosophical greats: James, Hocking, Peirce, Royce, and Jane Addams through the lens of the continental greats which inspired much of the discussions: Descarte, Hegel, Schilling, Plato, Socrates, Kant et. Al. Prof. Kaag was able to make the connection between the continental philosophers and the American philosophers, i.e. create the causal and rational path that links these sometime disparate seeming schools of philosophy.

The remarkable part is that he was able to accomplish this task easily and pleasurably through his narrative and his willingness to expose his own personal history through incorporating it into the narrative. 

Other reviewers have expressed disappointment in Prof. Kaag’s light handed touch on his own personal romance with his colleague and now wife. They wanted more romance, such is the desire of the book reviewers for titillation. They assumed wrongly, that the love story that Prof. Kaag hinted at in the book title referred to his own story. It may be, but of great meaning in this story is the parallel paths walked by the author and his wife along with Hocking and his wife Agnes. And finally between Hocking and Pearl Buck, after Agnes’s passing.

One personal note of intellectual pleasure is that Prof. Kaag has combined much of what I have been reading lately and included them into the context of this book. His reference to some modern writings and cultural references coincides with some of the other books and ideas I have been dealing with recently. It was as if he was prescient in foretelling my own life at this point in time.

This was an outstanding read and an intellectual roller coaster ride.  I loved the ride and I am now distraught that it is over.

The Power of Meaning by Emily Esfahan Smith

I really wanted to love this book, but I can only muster up a like. I was hoping for a modern update to Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”, indeed, the author Emily Esfahan Smith, cites Frankl’s work. She even uses the book as a part of her examination of the power of meaning.

In reading this book, I gathered that this was meant to be one of the many books that came out which ape’s Malcom Gladwell’s mode of storytelling: examining a subject closely through econometric to tell a story. Many books have resulted from using Gladwell’s method and many successful books have resulted, even though the success of the storytelling has been uneven. Not everyone can be Malcolm Gladwell. This is yet another one that is disappointing.

Emily Esfahan Smith is a very talented writer; I have read her work in The Atlantic. She has a voice that captured my attention. So it is that I was greatly disappointed in her treatment of meaning here.

She first created four main pillars that underlie the idea of meaning, these pillars, according to her, makes the idea of meaning powerful: Belonging, Purpose, Storytelling, and Transcendence. Those comprise of chapters 2-5 of the book. Chapter 1: The Meaning Crisis, where she convinces us that the topic is important was well written and makes a very strong case. It made her case and drew me in. I was dubious about the value of Belonging and Storytelling as being central to her argument, but she made a good case for belonging, but not so much for storytelling, but I knew that would be a difficult one to justify because it was a weak pillar to start with.

I was very surprised and disappointed with the purpose chapter, I felt that would be a central theme to the entire book and I felt that the cases cited and the generally the tone and attack that she took with the chapter was tepid at best. In general, the chapters on purpose, storytelling, and transcendence felt rushed and not very well thought out.

The transcendence chapter, I felt, would be a very important chapter. I thought that her own personal background in the Sufi tradition would lead her to expanding and shedding light on transcendence throughout many non-Christian spiritual practices, yet, she chose to focus on Christian transcendence as cases and examples. I believe that in order for her to make her point about the universality of the power of meaning, she needed to create an ethos of universality and demonstrate that the subject of which she is expounding on is indeed, itself universal. I believe she succeeded in a very limited manner. I wouldn’t say she failed, just did not succeed in as large a manner as I would have expected.

I thought the cases she explored in support of her are not well written, they sounded kind of forced. Even though her emphasis is on storytelling, she failed at storytelling. The attraction of this kind of case study journalism is to give heft to the argument with legitimate scholarly econometrics but then also engage the reader by linking the cold sterile numbers with human passion and emotional response. She failed in that regard.

The next two chapters: Growth and the Culture of Meaning were disparate in terms of effectiveness. Growth chapter, while not as weak as the weaker chaters in the book was still unsettling in its lack of passion. She used the ideas from Frankl, the ideas on grit and resilience from Angela Duckworth, and the growth mindset from Carole Dweck to add intellectual depth to the growth chapter, but did not specifically talk about Duckworth and Dwecks idea, it seems that she assumed that everyone are already well versed in their works. I was and was able to glean a bit of what she was referring to in advance of her citation of both Duckworth and Dweck, but it is too bad that she did not give the readers a bit more information before making her final point.

Th last two chapters, the Culture of Meaning and the conclusion were the strongest chapters, outside of The Meaning Crisis chapter. The Culture of Meaning chapter was seemingly Smith at her most free and maximum engagement. She made her points in a very lucid manner, her storytelling was excellent, perhaps because the story about her brush with Story Corp was a better story and her own personal engagement in the process lit a fuse in her. That led naturally to her conclusion, which was stronger than the rest of the book.

I think this was a missed opportunity to make a point about meaning, purpose, transcendence, and what it all means to us in our society today, and how this all could help guide us through the miasma which is our cultural maze. If I were dismissive and cruel, I would call it a Cliff’s Notes updating  of Frankl with a lot of economic studies cited, that was my first reaction. But after much thought and re-reading, I felt that this was a good try at revisiting the same landscape, and a valiant effort at using all the modern day psychology and econometric studies to take an updated look at meaning, a rather ambitious undertaking. I think she fell short, which is not an altogether unexpected result, but a disappointing one nevertheless.

I think a better plan of attack and more motivated storytelling could have made the difference.