Selected writings of James Hayden Tufts

About this book

Those familiar with the life and work of James Hayden Tufts tend to associate him with John Dewey, with whom he wrote both the 1908 and 1932 editions of the Ethics. Yet, as James Campbell here demonstrates, Tufts played a singular and important role in the American philosophical scene from 1892, when he began teaching at the newly opened University of Chicago, until his retirement in 1930. During this period, he, along with Dewey and George Herbert Mead, was instrumental. In the birth of a new school of philosophy, the Chicago School, which developed a powerful and compelling social pragmatism. In this collection of Tufts's writings, Campbell gives him a second chance to claim more than a minor role in American intellectual and philosophical history. In an introductory examination of Tufts's life and thought, Campbell offers the reader an understanding of Tufts and his place in the philosophical world. Then, emphasizing the fact that. Tufts's prime objective was to advance the common good through intelligent social reconstruction, Campbell presents pieces from throughout Tufts's long and productive career. Arranged chronologically, these selections represent the full range of Tufts's thought, from his concept of justice as the key value for harmonious community life to his views on religion and the evolutionary question. A carefully annotated bibliography of all of Tufts's writings completes this. Volume. Although Campbell succeeds in reestablishing Tufts's reputation as an important philosophical thinker, Tufts's writings are the real proof that he is a figure who deserves the opportunity to regain a place in our collective philosophical memory, both for the role that he played in the history of American thought and for the intellectual perspective that he developed.