The Pluralist: An Editorial Statement

Randall E. Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

A number of years ago I noticed a book called Falling in Love with Wisdom: American Philosophers Talk about Their Calling, edited by David D. Karnos and Robert G. Shoemaker (Oxford University Press, 1994). This is a collection of essays by contemporary philosophers concerning what led them into philosophy: as you might imagine, many of these are delightful stories. One of the stories that captured my attention was written by the well-known Dewey scholar, Thomas M. Alexander (who was not then my colleague). It was the story of three successive generations of philosophers in his family. I had been vaguely aware that Tom's father, Hubert G. Alexander (who has since passed away), was then still active in the Philosophy Department at the University of New Mexico, but I did not know about his grandfather, Hartley Burr Alexander. Three successive generations in academe is not too terribly unusual, especially in the Old World, but three in the discipline of philosophy, and in the United States, was something I had not heard of before (or since). Upon reading Tom's essay in Falling in Love with Wisdom, I became curious and procured some writings of Hubert G. and Hartley Burr Alexander, to see whether one might discern a genealogy of ideas borne upon the energies of a more concrete process of descent.