Content area
Full Text
F. C. S. Schiller on Pragmatism and Humanism: Selected Writings 1891-1939, edited by John R. Shook and Hugh P. McDonald. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2008. 796 pp.
In 1925 Everett Lee Hunt contributed "Plato and Aristotle on Rhetoric and Rhetoricians" to Studies in Rhetoric and Public Speaking in Honor of James A. Winans. He approvingly noted the work of Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller (1864-1937). Hunt referenced Schiller, alongside Hegel, to justify his contention that Plato's judgment as to the worth of Protagoras should not be the final one. Schiller, the primary British pragmatist around the turn of the previous century, has not been favored with much attention since that time. Occasionally noted by philosophers, rarely noted by rhetorical scholars in Communication and English, Schiller deserves more. This collection, edited by John R. Shook and Hugh P. McDonald, helps correct the oversight. [Full disclosure: I served as a consulting editor for this collection.]
F. C. S. Schiller on Pragmatism and Humanism brings together an abundance of resources. There are forty-two essays spanning the range of his career. These essays are divided into seven parts: (1) First Principles: Humanism, Personalism, Pluralism, and Pragmatism; (2) First Philosophy: Metaphysics and Values; (3) Evolution and Religion; (4) Ethics and Politics; (5) Truth; (6) Meaning and Logic; and (7) Scientific Method. Each section comes complete with detailed introductions written by the editors. The book also includes a helpful index and an extensive bibliography. The latter, compiled by Shook, is a greatly improved version of A Bibliography of the Works of F. C. S. Schiller (1969) by Herbert L. Searles and Allan Shields.
Schiller was an anomaly even among pragmatists. Raised in England, trained at Eton and then Balliol College, Oxford, Schiller was educated in and rebelled against the nuances of British idealism. After a doomed course of study at Cornell University in the 1890s, Schiller spent most of his career as a Tutor at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Late in life he taught at the University of Southern California. Humorous where many were dour, sarcastic where discussions often called for discretion, Schiller blazed a controversial trail across the pages of numerous journals, penning hundreds of essays and reviews and over a dozen books. A close friend of pragmatist William James and...