The Journal of Speculative Philosophy

Rosenthal’s book successfully fills a gap in the history and interpretation of American Pragmatism. The work not only provides an excellent introduction to the major topics in Lewis’s philosophy but also makes substantial arguments for his inclusion, with Peirce, James, and Dewey, as one of the central figures of American Pragmatism.

The first chapter begins with a compelling defense of Lewis’s importance in the Pragmatic tradition. In many cases, such a defense might be detrimentally partisan, an instance of “preaching to the converted.” In Lewis’s case, however, such a defense is necessary. Rosenthal points out that Lewis’s views often seem orthogonal to the mainstream of Pragmatism. She points to his academism, both personal and philosophical, as a major reason for his isolation. Unlike Dewey’s and James’s, Lewis’s philosophy is unapologetically technical. The central role of symbolic logic exemplifies this aspect of his work.

After her defense of Lewis’s importance, Rosenthal provides a brief intellectual biography. The substance of this narrative is the exposure of Lewis’s relationship to more canonical figures, like James, Royce, and Perry. The influence of those three figures becomes particularly important, as it allows Rosenthal to present Lewis’s view as a critical synthesis of all three. She says, “In developing the way of having traditional points of view ‘both ways’ throughout his long philosophical career, Lewis developed his own novel way of ‘having it’ that forged a pathway between traditional alternatives” (11). This description seems to identify the substance of Lewis’s importance. He is a mediator, establishing a conceptual medium that will allow the interaction of apparently opposed views. This character is particularly obvious in Lewis’s epistemology. His use of Kantian concepts in his pragmatic epistemology constitutes a middle way between Analytic philosophy, especially Logical Positivism, and Pragmatism.

The second and third chapters present a detailed examination of Lewis’s epistemological views. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of his “Conceptual Pragmatism.” Rosenthal points out that Lewis epistemology is strongly influenced, in its structure and terminology, by Kant. However, these chapters demonstrate the degree to which those views diverge from the structure of Kant’s position. Although Lewis adopts Kantian ideas, he reconstructs those ideas in a thoroughly Pragmatist way. Lewis advocates a triadic structure for knowledge. It is composed by an interaction of “the sensibly given and the concept—each of which is independent of the other—and the interpretation of the former by the latter” (25). The Kantian [End Page 74] influence on this view is obvious. Lewis’s innovation is to reconstruct this relation according to the pragmatist insight that the interpretation is the primary element. On Lewis’s view, it is human agency that applies a priori categories to given experience. These chapters provide a detailed defense of this position.

Chapter 4 considers the details of Lewis’s metaphysical views. Lewis’s metaphysics, according to Rosenthal, defends, “a reality that is in an ongoing process of evolving or restructuring itself ” (97). In this section, she identifies two significant senses of “metaphysics” in Lewis work, and her exposition distinguishes these senses while connecting both to epistemology. In one sense, “metaphysics” is identical with epistemology. The categories of the pragmatic a priori interpret the given to produce the world as experienced. The second sense of “metaphysics” is also concerned with the character of the given element of knowledge, which is not dependent on mental activity. This investigation establishes the conditions necessary for epistemological inquiry. It demonstrates that “the universe must be one that allows for the knowledge situation as Lewis’s pragmatic epistemology interprets it” (98). Rosenthal’s interpretation of these views supports the possibility of an interaction between Pragmatism and recent “analytic/linguistic philosophies” (126), especially the work of Donald Davidson. On her view, Lewis and Davidson are both responding to problems in a coherence theory of truth, without fully rejecting it...