The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
February 28, 2008
A riveting, original book about the creation of modern American thought.
Customer Review: Some interesting content, but hard to follow
I bought this book looking for a description of the philosophy of the American pragmatists - William James in particular, but John Dewey as well. This book includes both those figures, as well as Oliver Wendell Holmes and others. The book goes into a lot of detail on the era in which they lived (which the author believes is necessary to understand their philosophies - fair enough) as well as considerable detail about their personal lives. Also relevant.
I liked a lot of the information contained in the book, and thought it was worth reading to get that information. What I didn’t like was the organization of the book - the author introduces a new character, then goes off on multiple tangential histories. By the time he gets back to “the point”, I was often lost and had forgotten where he started.
Overall I felt this book was worth reading, but I didn’t get as much out of it as I think I could have if the structure had been a little more straightforward.
Customer Review: Beware of the Abridged Audio Edition
Louis Menand’s “The Metaphysical Club” poses a somewhat interesting quandry: is it a biography of C.S. Peirce, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Dewey? Is it a biography of the philosophy of Pragmatism? “The Metaphysical Club” can best be understood as an account of how the cluster of ideas that came to be called pragmatism was forged from the searing experiences of its progenitors’ lives.
Menand, whose prior work includes Pragmatism: A Reader rightfully begins his inquiry into the “birth” of pragmatism with Ralph Waldo Emerson. The driving force behind transcendentalism, Emerson can also be thought of as a progenitor of pragmatism. Menand does well to depict not only the intellectual connections between Emerson, Perice, James, Holmes and Dewey but also the personal connections between them. I do object though to the use of “The Metaphysical Club” as the fulcrum of this connection as it gives this “club” (which existed for about 3 months and of which Emerson and Dewey were not members) undue significance. Menand provides also linkages between the personal lives of the progenitors and the evolutions of their ideas as a way of depicting that ideas are not forged in a vacuum.
The unabridged edition would get 4 stars from me with the major drawback being the undue significance Menand places on “The Metaphysical Club.”
The abridged audio edition on the other hand is a confused disconnected mess. I found myself cringing mightily when the narrator, Henry Leyva, repeatedly mispronounced the name of C.S. Peirce - repeatedly mispronouncing it as “Pierce.” If “The Metaphysical Club” were a mere work of fiction, perhaps this mistake could be shrugged off, but in a purported work of intellectual history, it is inexcusable. The text itself fluctuates between fluidity and disorganized and a reader without a great deal of background in pragmatism would find himself utterly lost in the inelegant transitions the abridged edition makes.
Though I would recommend “The Metaphysical Club,” I cannot, in good conscience recommend the abridged audio edition. Buy from here…
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