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proached as a superordinate entity with a virtual life and mission of its
own, distinguishable from the lives and missions of its main chairhold–
ers over those seventy years. It is this institutional reference which
makes the book unusual and probably unique. The Department is
taken as considerably more than a matrix for the fifteen philosophers
whose thought is depicted here, and whose lives were affected by The
Depa rtment, either because it elevated them to the rank of sovereign
princes, or cast them into the outer darkness where their work and
character were blasted by this maximal repudiation. Some of the most
interesting chapters concern these
rates,
gifted and ambitious men who
for whatever reason were not taken on and whose writing
in conse–
quence
petered out into eccentricity or vulgarity or portentousness:
Frank Abbot, Chauncy Wright, James Fisk, figures treated here with
dignity and authority, though there would be scant reason to summon
them from the shadows as thinkers of transhistorical merit. Yet it is not
these portraits, or those of the successfu l ones-and The Department
housed every major American philosopher in this period except one–
which gives this book its singular strength and interest. For these
individuals cou ld be covered simply as part of American Philosophy,
of which there are many routine histories. What fascinates us
throughout is The Department as a historical engine, interchanging
energies with the wider social environment, whether servicing through
reass urances the genteel religious requirements of the Bostonian of
1860, or, by 1930, stamping into professional form and exporting to
departments framed in its image the country round, the clever graduate
students drawn a lmosttropismaticall y to its li ght. Thus we learn how
The Department responded to the crisis of Darwinism; how it over–
came the shock of losing the philosophical masters of its Golden Age;
how it established a creditable Silver Age with thinkers like Perry,
Whitehead, and Hocking; how it stood with World War I in a stance of
ludicrous patriotism; how it showed its moral babbittry in coping with
J ews and women. At times history gives way to gossip, but one must in
the end simply express admiration for the imaginativeness and detail of
Professor Kuklick's project, for his archival resourcefu lness, and for the
lucidity of his expository powers. The question his book raises,
however, is whether, once due credit is given for his having organized
his history around what was unquestionably the most important
philosophy department in America at that time, we can indeed connect
in any interesting way the life of The Department with the thought of
its resident members. For on ly this possibility justifies writing institu–
tional history at this level.
I think it largely true that the major philosophy departments
