No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
Rev. Joseph Haven (1816-1874), born and reared in Massachusetts, was professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy in Amherst College when, in 1857, he authored Mental Philosophy, of the finest textbooks on the subject as taught in American higher education in the second half of the nineteenth century. Haven's textbook was instrumental in the intellectual development of no less personage than America's great social critic, Thorstein Veblen. Looking back from the vantage point of academic history and writing in 1939 on American psychology before William James, Jay Wharton Fay called Haven's work a monument of scholarship and one of the great texts of the pre-experimental period, well-organized, written in clean, straight-forward style, uncommonly free from the rhetorical flourishes characteristic of the period. Fay says: It has an excellent bibliography [103 authorities], and gives valuable historical sketches of the various theories of Sensation, Memory, Imagination, Realism and Nominalism, Logic, Aesthetics, Cause, Instinct, Sensibilities, and Freedom of the Will. work is eclectic, but shows clearly the influence of [Sir William] Hamilton. In moot points it states the arguments on either side of the question, arrives at definite position, and supports it by clear and cogent reasoning. Fay includes part of the publishers' note from the new edition of 1883: 'It soon became the most popular text-book on this subject....So great has been the demand for this book, that the stereo-typed plates have been entirely worn out, in printing edition after edition.'1 Fay's twentieth century praise for Haven's textbook squares with the praise at the time of its publication, including anonymous mid-nineteenth century reviewers. In the periodical North American Review, reads: It is distinguished by complete and exhausting division, lucid arrangement, and style at once concise and clear, simple and elegant. It makes no pretence to originality of speculation; but it shows that every topic discussed has passed through the crucible of the author's own mind, and where we could not anticipate novelty, we find freshness of statement and illustration....We ought not to omit saying, that each leading division of this treatise is closed by an historical sketch of the progress of thought and the range of speculation on that portion of intellectual science. New Englander (forerunner to Yale Review) asserts: The work of Prof. Haven on Mental Philosophy, recently published by Messrs. Gould & Lincoln, is in its form the best of the several textbooks on Mental Philosophy which have been recently offered to the American public. Littell 's Living Age declares: Among the numerous text-books on the subject of mental philosophy, which have appeared within the last few years (including Pres. Wayland's, Pres. Mahan's, Prof. Hickock's [sic], and Prof. Henry's edition of Cousin's 'Psychology'), the present treatise is distinguished for its simplicity and its completeness....With the exception of the profound and admirable works of Prof. Hickock [sic], we must regard this volume as the most important contribution to mental science as yet furnished by any American scholar. Finally, Massachusetts Teacher and Journal of Home and School Education says: We regard this volume as the best text-book in Psychology, for High Schools and Colleges, which has yet been written in our country.2 Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) was America's most astute social critic, certainly in the first quarter of the twentieth century and perhaps in the entire century. Being philosopher, historian, economist, sociologist, social psychologist, anthropologist, he sought to understand the American social psyche. He mainly sought to understand social institutions, which was the study of the habits of American thought and the customs, laws, organizations, and forums that give expression and power to those habits of thought. …
Loading…
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.