George Cotkin
Biographic Data
| ID | 525221 |
|---|---|
| NAME | George Cotkin |
| GIVEN NAMES | George |
| FAMILY NAME | Cotkin |
| SIGNATURE | COTKIN G |
| AFFILIATIONS | California Polytechnic State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Feast of Excess: A Cultural History of the New Sensibility
"In 1952, John Cage shocked audiences with 4'33", his compositional ode to the ironic power of silence. From Cage's minimalism to Chris Burden's radical performance art two decades later (in one piece he had himself shot), the post-war American avant-garde shattered the divide between low and high art, between artist and audience. They changed the cultural landscape. Feast of Excess is an engaging and accessible portrait of 'The New Sensibility,'…
Picking His Nose at Tradition
A Conversation About Morals and History
In the April 2008 issue (volume 69, issue number 2) of the Journal of the History of Ideas, George Cotkin published his article, "History's Moral Turn." Four essays responding to Cotkin's article, written by Neil Jumonville, Michael O'Brien, James Livingston, and Lewis Perry, were also published in the April 2008 issue. In this essay, "A Conversation about Morals and History," Cotkin addresses the critiques of each of these four historians
History's Moral Turn
History is in the midst of experiencing a "moral turn." This shift has resulted from the culture wars, challenges to objectivity and truth, and various world crises. Understanding moral issues through historical narratives requires a dialogue between historians and philosophers. Philosophers need to appreciate historians' attention to circumstance and context, while historians need to be familiar with philosophical concepts such as moral luck and…
Illuminating Evil: Hannah Arendt and Moral History
Hannah Arendt's well-known examinations of the problem of evil are not contradictory and they are central to her corpus. Evil can be banal in some cases (Adolf Eichmann) and radical (the phenomenon of totalitarianism) in others. But behind all expressions of evil, in Arendt's formulations, is the imperative that it be confronted by thinking subjects and thoroughly historicized. This led her away from a view of evil as radical to one of evil as ba…
Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth
Robert B. Westbrook is best known for his magisterial study, John Dewey and American Democracy (1991). In that work he surveyed the entirety of Dewey's philosophical corpus while also placing him in historical context. In addition, he attempted to establish the continuing relevance of Deweyan pragmatism and democracy. In this collection of essays, written over a little more than the last decade, a new sensibility emerges, of tragedy and limits. W…
Existential America
In Existential America, historian George Cotkin argues that the existential approach to life, marked by vexing despair and dauntless commitment in the face of uncertainty, has deep American roots and helps to define the United States in the twentieth century in ways that have never been fully realized or appreciated.". "As Cotkin shows, not only did Americans readily take to existentialism, but they were already heirs to a rich tradition of think…
Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America
Book Review| April 01 2002 Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America, Christopher Clausen. George Cotkin George Cotkin Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2002) 21 (3): 79–80. https://doi.org/10.2307/27502854 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation George Cotkin; Faded…
A Pragmatist's Progress: Richard Rorty and American Intellectual History
“There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all,” sang Bob Dylan. His rather arch lyrics capture the fate of the philosopher Richard Rorty, as the contributors to this volume acknowledge Rorty's important failures but also diminish his success. Rorty demanded recognition with publication of his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature in 1979. There Rorty skewered philosophers' foundational stone of a correspondence theory of truth. …
French Existentialism and American Popular Culture, 1945–1948
(1998). French Existentialism and American Popular Culture, 1945–1948. The Historian: Vol. 61, No. 2, pp. 327-340
The Correspondence of William James. Vol. 1: William and Henry, 1861-1884
The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy
Journal Article The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. By Christopher Lasch. (New York: Norton, 1995. x, 276 pp. $22.00, ISBN 0-393-03699-5.) Get access George Cotkin George Cotkin California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 3, December 1995, Pages 1298–1299, https://doi.org/10.2307/29452…
The Chicago Pragmatists and American Progressivism
Middle-Ground Pragmatists: The Popularization of Philosophy in American Culture
Middle-ground pragmatists boasted highly respectable academic credentials.Durant, Randall, and Edman all received their Ph
Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life
Sanders Peirce was born in September 1839 and died five months before the guns of August 1914. He is perhaps the most important mind the United States has ever produced. He made significant contributions throughout his life as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, geodesist, surveyor, cartographer, a historian of science, a lifelong student of medicine, and, above all, a philosopher, whose special fields were logic and semiotics. He is widely cre…
Reluctant Modernism: American Thought and Culture, 1880-1900
Journal Article Reluctant Modernism: American Thought and Culture, 1880–1900. By George Cotkin. (New York: Twayne, 1992. xvi + 188 pp. Cloth, $28.95, ISBN 0-8057-9054-3. Paper, $12.95, ISBN 0-8057-9059-4.) Get access Ellen Fitzpatrick Ellen Fitzpatrick Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 79, Issue 4, March 1993, Pages 1631–1632, https://doi.org/10.2307/208…
Henry Adams: Selected Letters
Journal Article Henry Adams: Selected Letters. Ed. by Ernest Samuels. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. xvi + 587 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-674-38757-0.) Get access George Cotkin George Cotkin California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 79, Issue 4, March 1993, Pages 1624–1625, https://doi.org/10.2307/2080285 Published: 01 …
Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, & Lewis Mumford
Journal Article Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, & Lewis Mumford. By Casey Nelson Blake. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. xviii + 365 pp. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $12.95.) Get access George Cotkin George Cotkin California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, V…
William James, Public Philosopher
Journal Article William James, Public Philosopher. By George Cotkin. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. xiv + 218 pp. $32.50.) Get access Casey Blake Casey Blake Indiana University, Bloomington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 77, Issue 4, March 1991, Pages 1386–1387, https://doi.org/10.2307/2078348 Published: 01 March 1991
Truth or Consequences
William James: Public Philosopher
The 'Fourteen Doors' Outward of William James's Philosophy
Gerald E. Myers. William James: His Life and Thought. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. 627 pp. Illus. Eugene Fontinell. Self, God, and Immortality: A Jamesian Investigation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986. 297 pp. William James. Essays in Psychical Research. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 684 pp. Frederick J. Down Scott, ed. William James: Selected Unpublished Correspondence, 1885-1910. Columbus: Ohio State Univer…
Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James as Public Philosophers
Additional informationNotes on contributorsGeorge CotkinThe author, Associate Professor of History at California Polytechnic State University, wishes to thank James Hoopes and Bruce Kuklick for their comments on this essay, as well as Houghton Library, Harvard University, and Mr. Alexander James for permission to quote from the James Family Papers. David Hollinger and Robert Rydell have offered the author guidance and insight on William James for…
The Socialist Popularization of Science in America, 1901 to the First World War
THROUGHOUT MUCH OF THE nineteenth century the ascendent star of science was closely tied to the rise of the middle class.Science reflected their optimism and aided them in understanding a world and society in constant motion.The middle class embraced science in a hearty manner and as a labor of love they sought to popularize it in America.By the turn of the century, the middle class enthusiasm for popularization had abated somewhat, but science w…
Fathers and Sons, Texts and Contexts: Henry James, Sr., and William James
Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth
Robert B. Westbrook is best known for his magisterial study, John Dewey and American Democracy (1991). In that work he surveyed the entirety of Dewey's philosophical corpus while also placing him in historical context. In addition, he attempted to establish the continuing relevance of Deweyan pragmatism and democracy. In this collection of essays, written over a little more than the last decade, a new sensibility emerges, of tragedy and limits. W…
William James, Public Philosopher
Journal Article William James, Public Philosopher. By George Cotkin. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. xiv + 218 pp. $32.50.) Get access Casey Blake Casey Blake Indiana University, Bloomington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 77, Issue 4, March 1991, Pages 1386–1387, https://doi.org/10.2307/2078348 Published: 01 March 1991
Middle-Ground Pragmatists: The Popularization of Philosophy in American Culture
Middle-ground pragmatists boasted highly respectable academic credentials.Durant, Randall, and Edman all received their Ph
History's Moral Turn
History is in the midst of experiencing a "moral turn." This shift has resulted from the culture wars, challenges to objectivity and truth, and various world crises. Understanding moral issues through historical narratives requires a dialogue between historians and philosophers. Philosophers need to appreciate historians' attention to circumstance and context, while historians need to be familiar with philosophical concepts such as moral luck and…
Illuminating Evil: Hannah Arendt and Moral History
Hannah Arendt's well-known examinations of the problem of evil are not contradictory and they are central to her corpus. Evil can be banal in some cases (Adolf Eichmann) and radical (the phenomenon of totalitarianism) in others. But behind all expressions of evil, in Arendt's formulations, is the imperative that it be confronted by thinking subjects and thoroughly historicized. This led her away from a view of evil as radical to one of evil as ba…
The Socialist Popularization of Science in America, 1901 to the First World War
THROUGHOUT MUCH OF THE nineteenth century the ascendent star of science was closely tied to the rise of the middle class.Science reflected their optimism and aided them in understanding a world and society in constant motion.The middle class embraced science in a hearty manner and as a labor of love they sought to popularize it in America.By the turn of the century, the middle class enthusiasm for popularization had abated somewhat, but science w…
Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America
Book Review| April 01 2002 Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America, Christopher Clausen. George Cotkin George Cotkin Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2002) 21 (3): 79–80. https://doi.org/10.2307/27502854 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation George Cotkin; Faded…
The Spencerian and Comtian nexus in Gompers’ labor philosophy: The impact of non‐Marxian evolutionary thought
(1979). The Spencerian and Comtian nexus in Gompers’ labor philosophy: The impact of non‐Marxian evolutionary thought. Labor History: Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 510-523
Books reviewed
Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790–1975. By Dolores Hayden. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976. ix, 401 pp. $16.95. Urban Masses And Moral Order In America, 1820–1920. By Paul Boyer. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. xi, 387 pp. $18.50. Urban Slavery in the American South, 1820–1860: A Quantitative History. By Claudia Dale Goldin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. xvi, 168 pp. $12.95. Harpers Ferr…
The Socialist Popularization of Science in America, 1901 to the First World War
THROUGHOUT MUCH OF THE nineteenth century the ascendent star of science was closely tied to the rise of the middle class.Science reflected their optimism and aided them in understanding a world and society in constant motion.The middle class embraced science in a hearty manner and as a labor of love they sought to popularize it in America.By the turn of the century, the middle class enthusiasm for popularization had abated somewhat, but science w…
Fathers and Sons, Texts and Contexts: Henry James, Sr., and William James
Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James as Public Philosophers
Additional informationNotes on contributorsGeorge CotkinThe author, Associate Professor of History at California Polytechnic State University, wishes to thank James Hoopes and Bruce Kuklick for their comments on this essay, as well as Houghton Library, Harvard University, and Mr. Alexander James for permission to quote from the James Family Papers. David Hollinger and Robert Rydell have offered the author guidance and insight on William James for…
The 'Fourteen Doors' Outward of William James's Philosophy
Gerald E. Myers. William James: His Life and Thought. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. 627 pp. Illus. Eugene Fontinell. Self, God, and Immortality: A Jamesian Investigation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986. 297 pp. William James. Essays in Psychical Research. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 684 pp. Frederick J. Down Scott, ed. William James: Selected Unpublished Correspondence, 1885-1910. Columbus: Ohio State Univer…
Truth or Consequences
William James: Public Philosopher
Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, & Lewis Mumford
Journal Article Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, & Lewis Mumford. By Casey Nelson Blake. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. xviii + 365 pp. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $12.95.) Get access George Cotkin George Cotkin California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, V…
William James, Public Philosopher
Journal Article William James, Public Philosopher. By George Cotkin. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. xiv + 218 pp. $32.50.) Get access Casey Blake Casey Blake Indiana University, Bloomington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 77, Issue 4, March 1991, Pages 1386–1387, https://doi.org/10.2307/2078348 Published: 01 March 1991
Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life
Sanders Peirce was born in September 1839 and died five months before the guns of August 1914. He is perhaps the most important mind the United States has ever produced. He made significant contributions throughout his life as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, geodesist, surveyor, cartographer, a historian of science, a lifelong student of medicine, and, above all, a philosopher, whose special fields were logic and semiotics. He is widely cre…
Reluctant Modernism: American Thought and Culture, 1880-1900
Journal Article Reluctant Modernism: American Thought and Culture, 1880–1900. By George Cotkin. (New York: Twayne, 1992. xvi + 188 pp. Cloth, $28.95, ISBN 0-8057-9054-3. Paper, $12.95, ISBN 0-8057-9059-4.) Get access Ellen Fitzpatrick Ellen Fitzpatrick Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 79, Issue 4, March 1993, Pages 1631–1632, https://doi.org/10.2307/208…
Henry Adams: Selected Letters
Journal Article Henry Adams: Selected Letters. Ed. by Ernest Samuels. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. xvi + 587 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-674-38757-0.) Get access George Cotkin George Cotkin California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 79, Issue 4, March 1993, Pages 1624–1625, https://doi.org/10.2307/2080285 Published: 01 …
The Chicago Pragmatists and American Progressivism
Middle-Ground Pragmatists: The Popularization of Philosophy in American Culture
Middle-ground pragmatists boasted highly respectable academic credentials.Durant, Randall, and Edman all received their Ph
The Correspondence of William James. Vol. 1: William and Henry, 1861-1884
The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy
Journal Article The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. By Christopher Lasch. (New York: Norton, 1995. x, 276 pp. $22.00, ISBN 0-393-03699-5.) Get access George Cotkin George Cotkin California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 3, December 1995, Pages 1298–1299, https://doi.org/10.2307/29452…
French Existentialism and American Popular Culture, 1945–1948
(1998). French Existentialism and American Popular Culture, 1945–1948. The Historian: Vol. 61, No. 2, pp. 327-340
Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America
Book Review| April 01 2002 Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America, Christopher Clausen. George Cotkin George Cotkin Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2002) 21 (3): 79–80. https://doi.org/10.2307/27502854 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation George Cotkin; Faded…
A Pragmatist's Progress: Richard Rorty and American Intellectual History
“There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all,” sang Bob Dylan. His rather arch lyrics capture the fate of the philosopher Richard Rorty, as the contributors to this volume acknowledge Rorty's important failures but also diminish his success. Rorty demanded recognition with publication of his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature in 1979. There Rorty skewered philosophers' foundational stone of a correspondence theory of truth. …
Existential America
In Existential America, historian George Cotkin argues that the existential approach to life, marked by vexing despair and dauntless commitment in the face of uncertainty, has deep American roots and helps to define the United States in the twentieth century in ways that have never been fully realized or appreciated.". "As Cotkin shows, not only did Americans readily take to existentialism, but they were already heirs to a rich tradition of think…
Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth
Robert B. Westbrook is best known for his magisterial study, John Dewey and American Democracy (1991). In that work he surveyed the entirety of Dewey's philosophical corpus while also placing him in historical context. In addition, he attempted to establish the continuing relevance of Deweyan pragmatism and democracy. In this collection of essays, written over a little more than the last decade, a new sensibility emerges, of tragedy and limits. W…
Illuminating Evil: Hannah Arendt and Moral History
Hannah Arendt's well-known examinations of the problem of evil are not contradictory and they are central to her corpus. Evil can be banal in some cases (Adolf Eichmann) and radical (the phenomenon of totalitarianism) in others. But behind all expressions of evil, in Arendt's formulations, is the imperative that it be confronted by thinking subjects and thoroughly historicized. This led her away from a view of evil as radical to one of evil as ba…
A Conversation About Morals and History
In the April 2008 issue (volume 69, issue number 2) of the Journal of the History of Ideas, George Cotkin published his article, "History's Moral Turn." Four essays responding to Cotkin's article, written by Neil Jumonville, Michael O'Brien, James Livingston, and Lewis Perry, were also published in the April 2008 issue. In this essay, "A Conversation about Morals and History," Cotkin addresses the critiques of each of these four historians
History's Moral Turn
History is in the midst of experiencing a "moral turn." This shift has resulted from the culture wars, challenges to objectivity and truth, and various world crises. Understanding moral issues through historical narratives requires a dialogue between historians and philosophers. Philosophers need to appreciate historians' attention to circumstance and context, while historians need to be familiar with philosophical concepts such as moral luck and…
History (17 works) · History (15 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Art history (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Classics (8 works)