in your opinion
this has always been a tough question for me, since there aren’t that many famous american philosophers that are up there with the best European philosophers, there aren’t many original american philosophy schools?
is there anyone born in America that stand out for you?
William James
Eddie Vedder
“Philosopher” is kind of a vague appellation, but one could quite strongly argue for Thomas Jefferson.
James, Chomsky, and Peirce (yes, it’s spelled like that) would be candidates if you have to be primarily known as a thinker.
Emerson?
The answer is probably James, but I feel like Emerson and Thoreau need to be mentioned somewhere on the list. (And I see Eonwe beat me to Emerson.)
A pair of interesting dark horses are Robert Nozick and John Rawls, though “Best” seems a little lofty for those two. I want to add Russell Kirk and Bill Buckley somewhere on the top ten or twenty or so too.
Daniel Dennett, for me. Or Thoreau.
He and Lincoln both popped into my brain in the first wave. I will settle though possibly on Mark Train tied with Will Rogers.
I would go with the great American Existentialist philosopher, Popeye, the Sailor Man:
“I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam.”
I find the empathetic implications of Bugs Bunny’s “Nyah…what’s up, Doc?” intriguing, however, I do not subscribe to Daffy Duck’s cosmological denial (“I’m so crazy, I don’t even know this is impossible”) or the nihilistic rumblings of the Fuddists.
When it comes to putting philosophy into action, I can think of no more compelling example than the mighty three-toed sloth (whom I claim as my power animal).
William James was the first name that came to my mind. If I had more time to think about and research the question, he might or might not end up being my pick.
Do all philosophers have an ‘s’ in them?
I suppose one way of deciding who counts as a “philosopher” would be who’s listed in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It’s a fairly inclusive list, and Thomas Jefferson is on there.
I would answer the same way I would for the question, “What 3 Americans, living or dead, would you want to have dinner with?”
Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, and George Carlin. Get the best contemplator of each century.
(Does Franklin count as American? I like to think so…)
I would have gone with John Rawls being on the list.
I have often seen C.S Peirce considered to be the greatest American-born philosopher
i have seen many refer him to being the single greatest mind in american history (which is more disputable), but that is depth and broadness was amazing
his work in mathematical logic is fundamental and was working during the same time as Frege
among his other work in semiotics and pragmatism etc.
I nominate Bob Dylan.
John Rawls is the correct answer. Thomas Kuhn and WVO Quine are in the running though. I’d put them both above James.
Interesting, i notice alot of people put James above CS Pierce in terms of the pragmatists. I wonder if that’s because Pierce is a more obscure and/or technical philosopher
Quite possibly. James has the advantage that he could write well and produced several books that can be appreciated by the general reader, whereas
Admittedly, literary ability and accessibility aren’t the criteria by which to judge a philosopher as a philosopher, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a professional (academic) philosopher picked one of those other names over James as the “greatest American born philosopher.”