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Source: Lingua. Language and Culture

Lingua. Language and Culture

Location: Romania
Author(s): Maria-Zoica Balaban
Title: American Philosophy. Volume I. Contemporary Philosophy A., Ratio et Revelatio Publishing
House, Oradea, 2014, ISBN 978-606-93664-7-9, Delia Marga editor
American Philosophy. Volume I. Contemporary Philosophy A., Ratio et Revelatio Publishing
House, Oradea, 2014, ISBN 978-606-93664-7-9, Delia Marga editor
Issue: 1/2015
Citation Maria-Zoica Balaban. "American Philosophy. Volume I. Contemporary Philosophy A., Ratio
style: et Revelatio Publishing House, Oradea, 2014, ISBN 978-606-93664-7-9, Delia Marga
editor". Lingua. Language and Culture 1:153-154.
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=306504
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Language and Culture

American Philosophy. Volume I.

Contemporary Philosophy A.,
Ratio et Revelatio Publishing House,
Oradea, 2014, ISBN 978-606-93664-7-9,
Delia Marga editor
Maria-Zoica Balaban *

B ook Review: Filosofa americană. Volumul I. Filosofia contemporană A.

(American Philosophy. Volume I. Contemporary Philosophy A.)
Editor: Delia Marga. Ratio et Revelatio Publishing House, Oradea, 2014. RATIO
Series coordinated by Florin George Călian. Introduction by Andrei Marga.
Texts Translations: Adrian Ciupe, Adriana Fekete, Cristina Inoan Tăpălagă,
Eugenia Irimiaş, Marius Jucan, Delia Marga, Ştefan Oltean, Maria Petruţ, Emilia
Plăcintar, Delia Popescu, Teodora Popescu,Virgil Stanciu, Mariana Toma.
Translated Authors: Josiah Royce, George Herbert Mead, Alfred North
Whitehead; Roy Wood Sellars,Wilfrid Sellars, Charles Morris, Charles
Stevenson, Morton White, Nicholas Rescher, Tomas Nagel, Noam Chomsky,
Donald Davidson.

American philosophy; human self; critical realism; being and being known;
methodological pragmatism;

American Philosophy. Volume I. Contemporary Philosophy A represents

the first attempt to create a comprehensive American philosophy guide for the Romanian
readers who are being given the possibility to have easier access to the most important
American philosophical writings from the very beginning till the present moment. As
the editor points out, the anthology was initially designed as a two volume book, the
first one comprising texts from the classical American philosophy, being published in
1999 (All Publishing House, Bucharest) whereas the second one should have consisted
of texts that belonged to the contemporary American philosophy, but the selected
writings couldn’t have been comprised in only two volumes. The new American
philosophy volume mainly focuses on the publishing of contemporary texts selection in
two volumes (A and B). The first volume (published in 1999) consisted of representative
writings for the classical period of the New World: Ralph Waldo Emerson – the one
who expressed the beginning of the self-consciousness of America as an independent/
* Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
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Lingua

autonomous cultural entity, Chauncey Wright – the predecessor of pragmatism birth as a

philosophy, the classics of American philosophy (Charles S. Pierce, William James, John
Dewey), Oliver Wendel Holmes and George Santayana. The present volume consists of
representative writings that belong to Josiah Royce (The Human Self, The Place of the
Self in Being), George Herbert Mead (Experimentalism as a Philosophy of History, The
Social Foundations and Functions of Thought and Communication and The Community
and the Institution), Alfred North Whitehead (Speculative Philosophy, Nature Lifeless,
Nature Alive), Roy Wood Sellars (Critical Realism), Wilfrid Sellars (Being and Being
Known), Charles Morris (Foundations of the Theory of Signs), Charles Stevenson (Kinds
of Agreement and Disagreement), Ernest Nagel (The Logic of Historical Analysis), Morton
White (Can History Be Objective?), Nicholas Rescher (Methodological Pragmatism),
Thomas Nagel (Subjective and Objective), Noam Chomsky (The View Beyond: Prospects
for the Study of Mind), Donald Davidson (A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge,
On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme). According to Andrei Marga, the writings of
Josiah Royce, George Herbert Mead and Alfred North Whitehead are writings that could
be considered reactions within the American tradition at its very beginning. In Andrei
Marga’s point of view, all these philosophers contributed to the “worldwide consolidation
of American philosophy” (9).
The B volume will include representative writings that belong to the contemporary
period: Arthur Danto, John Rawls, W.v.O.Quine, Saul Kripke, John Searle, Maurice
Mandelbaum, Thomas S. Kuhn, Michael Dummett, David Lewis, Richard Rorty, Hilary
Putnam and Robert Brandom. Andrei Marga considers that the most influential modern
conceptualizations have been borrowed and remade within the American philosophy
– new positivism and analytical philosophy, hegelianism, marxism, life’s historical
philosophy and life philosophy. In the last part of the introduction to the American
Philosophy volume, Andrei Marga concludes that “the the dynamics of philosophical
thinking is more emphasized in America, because the USA challenge not only the
experience of the most solid democracy from modern history, with the most innovative
scientific and technological research, but also the experience of a superpower in nowadays
globalised world” (10). Americans have the world’s largest economy, are first in volume
of trade, first in industry, first in food output and first in aid to others. Americans are not
afraid of challenge and competition. With the help of this book we can enter their world
without difficulty and, therefore, have an insight into their thought processes.

Lecturer Maria-Zoica Balaban, Ph.D. She is a member of the Department of Modern Languages
and Business Communication within the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of
Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She has been teaching Business English and Business
Communication Courses to the 1st 2nd and 3rd year students and the MA course - Language and Style
in the Professional Environment. Her main areas of interest are: teaching English for business purposes,
modern languages, Romanian as a foreign language, philosophy. (zoica.ghitan@econ.ubbcluj.ro)
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