Distinguished University Professor receives summer grant to finish manuscript

May 10, 2010 | News, UToday
By Emily Hickey



Campbell

Campbell

Dr. James Campbell, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and the director of the American Studies Program, has received a stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities and plans to spend his summer reviewing the third volume in his four-book study of American pragmatism.

Campbell’s third volume is titled The Philosophy of William James, who coined phrases such as “the stream of consciousness,” “the will to believe,” “the sentiment of rationality” and other concepts of pragmatism — a practical approach to problems and affairs.

“I have been working on The Philosophy of William James off an on for about a decade,” Campbell said. “This re-surveying of the secondary literature and incorporation of the suggestions of the various perspectives is the last big job before I begin to work on the final shaping of the manuscript.”

Campbell’s first and second volumes examine the thoughts of John Dewey and Benjamin Franklin, and he plans for his fourth volume to explore the thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The internationally recognized expert on the American philosophical tradition began his career as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Innsbruck. He joined the UT Department of Philosophy in 1982 and was named a University Distinguished Professor in 2001.

He has written four books — Selected Writings of James Hayden Tufts (1992), The Community Reconstructs: The Meaning of Pragmatic Social Thought (1992), Understanding John Dewey: Nature and Cooperative Intelligence (1995) and Recovering Benjamin Franklin: An Exploration of a Life of Science and Service (1999). In addition to English, his ideas have been published in German, Polish, Chinese and Russian.

Campbell is documenting the first quarter-century of the American Philosophical Association. He is serving as president of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy from 2008 to 2010.

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