“While pragmatism may be the main method—for some of us like myself—the central commitment of “American philosophy” is to a pluralism of experiences mediated by the shared cultural horizon of the Americas that mesh together like a mosaic. Each tile is distinctly its own, but together they weave a beautiful tapestry if we can but only see it as such. In this way, American philosophy has a democratic ethos, a commitment to pluralism and a wariness toward dogmatisms that dissolve differences.“
J. Edward Hackett is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Religion and Literature at Southern University and A&M College. He is the author and editor of several books including William James’s Radically Empirical Philosophy of Religion (2025),The Legacies of Max Scheler (co-edited with Eric Mohr, 2025 Persons and Values in Pragmatic Phenomenology: An Exploration of Moral Metaphysics (2018), Phenomenology for the Twenty-First Century (co-edited with J. Aaron Simmons, 2016) and House of Cards and Philosophy (2015).
What does American Philosophy mean to you?
I think American philosophy asks context-dependent questions focusing on the experiences of those living in the Americas. One example might be Howard Thurman’s analysis of the religion of Jesus to offer spiritual strength in racist America, or James’s criticism of British Hegelians around how we experience conjunctive and disjunctive relations to foster a view of a processive universe. In every instance, there is a specific cultural horizon of contexts that do not transcend but illuminate historical moments. While pragmatism may be the main method—for some of us like myself—the central commitment of “American philosophy” is to a pluralism of experiences mediated by the shared cultural horizon of the Americas that mesh together like a mosaic. Each tile is distinctly its own, but together they weave a beautiful tapestry if we can but only see it as such. In this way, American philosophy has a democratic ethos, a commitment to pluralism and a wariness toward dogmatisms that dissolve differences. Put in more Jamesian terms, American philosophy is committed to pluralism, meliorism, fallibilism and a pragmatic method of inquiry, but I recognize there’s more to the tradition than that. These just happen to be my tools.
How did you become an American Philosopher?
I read William James with Richard Findler at Slippery Rock University and James’ Varieties of Religious Experience with my advisor, Ted Kneupper. Ted was a truth-seeker, and loved to host Krishnamurti film talks at his house.
When I was writing my dissertation at Southern Illinois University, Ken Stikkers tried to get me to see connections between Scheler and James. Because he was constantly bringing up James I started to read him seriously, even though it was fairly late in my education. (So late that another faculty member criticized me for not being “on brand”!) It was really Ken who leaned in on my interests and showed me that an openness to experience in Scheler’s phenomenology required James. Ken exemplified an openness to others’ experiences in his own work, and so his love of James became infectious. As a result, elements of James then entered my dissertation, which was about Scheler’s value ontology. James has been bleeding into my work ever since. Incidentally, Ken and Ted are to whom William James’s Radically Empirical Philosophy just happened to be dedicated (as well as Jason whom I mention below).
When I first came to SIU, I was a committed Husserlian who saw pragmatism as a celebration of psychologism. I am glad to say how wrong I was. I also owe a special shout-out to two of my fellow graduate students. Steven Miller took the brunt of my phenomenological over-confidence while hanging out in Doug Anderson’s office and Jason Hills told me on day one that the same concerns raised in Continental philosophy could all be found in the American pragmatists. Years later, I told Jason he was right.
How would you describe your current research?
Since my first book (Persons and Values in Pragmatic Phenomenology) I have continued to examine the relation between pragmatism and phenomenology. Eventually, I came to the view that radical empiricism is the only viable form that phenomenology should take. I have two books coming out in 2025: William James’s Radically Empirical Philosophy of Religion and a co-edited anthology with Eric Mohr titled The Legacies of Max Scheler.
My next book I’m writing is titled Levinas, Scheler, and the Infinite Value of Persons. It argues that Martin Luther King Jr.’s “beloved community” and Howard Thurman’s leadership of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples operationalized the commitment to infinite dignity that we find in Levinas and Scheler.
What do you do when you’re not doing American Philosophy?
I am a geek and a nerd. During the pandemic I played tabletop RPGs with good friends from SAAP and the game lasted 3.5 years. (We finished the Tomb of Annihilation D&D campaign in Fall 2023 under Randy Spencer as DM). Apart from that, I love to write novels. I’ve published two fantasy novels in the “Ravenhawk Chronicles”: Flight of the Ravenhawk and The Rise of the Azure Spire, with a third installment on the way. I have another novella with the same publisher coming out. I’m also working on YA novel about Morgana Lefay’s daughter, Moira, and the challenges of being teenager while your mother is the Immortal Mother of Mysteries.
Finally, I sit with a local sangha, a Vietnamese Zen temple in the Plum Village lineage and I sometimes shoot landscape photography. This Summer I would like to do a poetry reading group of Musō Soseki’s Sun at Midnight
What’s your favorite work in American Philosophy? What should we all be reading?
For me, four books stand out. The first two are by William James: A Pluralistic Universe (1909) and Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912). The third is Edgar S. Brightman’s The Moral Laws (1933) and the fourth is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (1967). As I sank deeper into the personalism of Scheler, I started to read the American personalists and it was then that I noticed that King studied with Brightman.