Classical American Philosophy: Poiesis in Public

In Classical
American Philosophy: Poiesis in the Public Square, Rebecca Farinas takes
seven major figures from the American philosophical canon and examines their
relationship with an artistic or scientific interlocutor. It is a unique
insight into the origins of American philosophy and through case studies such
as the friendship between Alain Locke and the biologist E.E. Just and the
collaboration between Jane Addams and George Herbert Mead, Farinas provides a
new insight into these thinkers’ ideas.

Her new perspective allows her to
move beyond relational aesthetics to consider these theorists’
phenomenological, metaphysical, religious and cosmological ideas and reapply them
to the modern world. Indeed, the partnerships she examines have proved
especially valuable to newer philosophical fields like value theory, ethics,
pedagogy and semiotics. Her links between art and science also provide new
vantage points on our society’s continuing artistic endeavours and
technological advances and introduce an exciting new perspective on early
American philosophy and its ensuing movements.