The Metaphysical Club: A Story of ideas in America by Louis Menand, Farrar,
Strauss and Giroux, $27, ISBN 0374199639
WHAT are ideas for? The response to this great question forged by four
remarkable Americans鈥攖hat they are contingent guides to action, not
beacons on the path to truth鈥攚as the most prominent strain in American
thought from the Civil War to the Cold War.
In his unusually ambitious book, Louis Menand shows how this position, known
as pragmatism, was the joint creation of the pioneer psychologist William James,
logician Charles Sanders Pierce, jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes and philosopher
John Dewey. He then relates how fitting a creed it was for modernising the US,
why the ideological certainties of the Cold War saw it fall from favour, and why
parts of it may have renewed appeal in a newly pluralist era.
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Pragmatism鈥檚 four creators had wide interests: in science, law, philosophy,
theology, evolution, probability theory and astronomy. And they were interested
in each other. Holmes and James were close friends as young men, and were
briefly joined by the brilliant but erratic Pierce in the group called the
Metaphysical Club in Boston in the 1870s.
Collective biography is a superb way to tackle intellectual history. But it
is harder work than writing individual biographies, which perhaps explains why
it is rarely used. Dealing with subjects as prolific and complex as these must
have been daunting, but Menand rises to the challenge. He writes superbly,
whether evoking the horrors of the Civil War that showed Holmes the limits of
absolute truths, or summarising philosophy from Kant to Hegel. Menand shows how
the thought of the four was formed, and what they agreed about and where they
differed鈥攚hy their ideas influenced American law, politics and education,
and modern conceptions of free speech and academic freedom. An ambitious book,
yes. And a satisfying read because it succeeds so completely.