Carlin Romano's "America the Philosophical'

What's a former philosophy major to do when his favorite literary critic writes a 688-page book denigrating the most beloved philosopher in history as an authoritarian wuss?

In his magisterial America the Philosophical, Carlin Romano genuflects instead before Isocrates, a thinker that I've never even heard of, contending that this "unknown" Greek's anti-authoritarian meliorism is a forerunner of American pragmatism, the movement that has made America the philosophical model for the world, forever!

Well, as Socrates didn't say, an unexamined philosophy is not worth touting.

The heretofore-adored Socrates was anti-democratic and constantly pursuing "ultimate truths," a mortal sin to Romano, who prefers genial consensus, the secret of American pragmatism. Romano slyly undercuts my initial skepticism by reminding me that the last book by my secular saint, I. F. Stone, was a putdown of Socrates.

Red-blooded Catholics

How do I proceed? I'm a former philosophy major from the Jesuit University of Detroit who won the Midwestern Jesuit essay contest in 1949 with "Needed: More Red-blooded American Catholics," by which I meant lefties who believed in social justice and racial integration (two qualities Detroit sorely needed before it collapsed). Then I was off to graduate school at Western Reserve in Cleveland, where the brilliant Professor Mortimer Kaddish (who, sadly, died this year) wiped out my galloping Thomism with his three-credit course in logical positivism.

My dissertation was a study of the minor philosopher John Fiske, who popularized Social Darwinism. Fiske wrecked his prospects for a job teaching philosophy at Harvard by being caught reading August Comte in required Sunday chapel. After a short Harvard librarianship, he devised a national career of lecturing about American history to middlebrow audiences, which could be assembled by the new "mass medium" of the national railroad network. Fiske got softer and softer in his generalizations thereof, until he earned my scorn as the first president of the American Immigration Restriction League.

Romano's strongest argument for the importance of pragmatism— and consequently for the rejection of the Socratic tradition of cocksure certainties— is his description of how African Americans, women, Native Americans and gays painfully conquered the American Philosophical Association's initial rejection of their diversities.

(Especially harrowing are the stories of recent philosophy grads lining up for the few teaching jobs available. What a difference a generation made: My problem between 1957 and 1964 was deciding which job to take, from high school teacher to full professor/chairman with tenure.)

Dewey's pragmatism

Romano's amazing contention that America is the most philosophical of cultures ran smack into my failure to influence the high school/college agendas in making media meliorism effective. By 1982 I was persuaded to abandon academia for alternative journalism as I flinched at the emergence of formidable enemies of emptiness like Rush Limbaugh. How could America the Philosophical be taken seriously after the infantilization of our media and public schools?

I finally got Romano, after a very tough read. The meliorism of consensus emerged along with the pragmatism that prompted John Dewey to get involved with mass education (not to forget innovative businessman/philosopher like Philadelphia's own Dr. Barnes, or thoughtful do-gooders like Jane Addams at Hull House in Chicago). The key was Isocrates' anti-authoritarian meliorism. No final answers for eternity. Only thoughtful consensus for the present.

Sontag and Hefner

Romano enjoys a gift of deep gab. His account of his visit to the late Paul Fussell's house is itself worth all the painful grappling with his deeper hassles. And his visit with Hugh Hefner at his Holmby Hills playpen reminded me of my wide-eyed visit there with a TV conference party. Romano includes a list of his almost 200 visitees, as catholic as Susan Sontag and Bill Moyers.

May I recommend that his next book be a coherent gathering of those encounters? This volume is indeed ragged but rewarding. But what enlightening disorder!

As Romano settles down in his profession, we can look forward from the fecundity of his quick takes in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chronicle of Higher Education to a plenitude of deeply coherent speculations.