American Philosophy at Mid-Century

Where does American philosophy stand in 1950? What are its major resources, its current tensions and opportunities, its prospects for the foreseeable future? It is natural to raise these questions as we face a new half century and inevitable that any more than trivial answer we give to them will be partial, schematic and tendentious, a reflection in part of the bias and anxieties of the immediate situation whose wider bearings we are trying to ascertain. Nevertheless, the question should be asked and answered. For it is in the process of question and reply, of interpretation and criticism that we gain such understanding as is possible to us in an uncertain present. And in America in 1950 we need all the understanding we can get. This survey, partial, schematic and tendentious, is an effort to add something usable to the process in which such understanding is achieved.

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