![]() Moreover, the subjects of this book all tended in a rather anti-metaphysical direction. While a small group of people met episodically in Cambridge, perhaps even bearing the label “The Metaphysical Club,” we know little about their meetings and this book is not about that club. However revealing the subtitle, the book’s title is misleading. ![]() This book is a pragmatic history of pragmatism, not a reckless and criterion-less postmodern story. But while Professor Menand avoids asserting the kind of authority that comes from claims to a comprehensive history, he nonetheless accepts the canons of historical truth-telling that govern the discipline. And the ideas that form the subject of his study hardly constitute a reified “mind.” The language of a story is useful here, as the author recognizes that one might tell many kinds of stories about the same subject relative to one’s questions, one’s interests, one’s perspective. ![]() ![]() The subtitle suggests a humility presumably lost on a previous generation of writers, those who half a century ago could write about “ the American mind” or “ the conservative mind.” Menand writes “ a story,” not “ the history,” of his subject. Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club is a history of ideas, or as he characterizes it in the subtitle, A Story of Ideas in America. ![]()
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