Volume 21, 1998
Philosophy and Literature
Carlin Romano
Pages 63-69
America the Philosophical
Although convention dictates that America is an unphilosophical sort of country, fonder of Super Bowls than supervenience, the development of philosophy away from Socratic strategies that presume eternal right answers to the classical philosophical problems suggests a second look is in order. This is particularly true if one accepts many of the notions currently in the air about "post-modern" or "post-analytic" philosophy — that its roots lie in classical rhetoric and pragmatism, or that its notion of truth holds the latter to be what issues from the most wide-open sort of informed deliberation possible. In that case, it begins to seem as if America is to philosophy as Italy is to art, or Norway to skiing: a perfectly designed environment for the practice. This, at least, is the provocation intended by this paper.