The Ways of Wisdom: Popular Philosophy in Modern America

This paper discusses the history, literary forms, and cultural uses of an important though heretofore insufficiently examined genre of philosophy in twentieth-century American life: wisdom literature. It seeks to offer a more expansive view of the role of philosophy in modern America by integrating popular moralists and the cultural work of their best-selling books into our understanding of American thought. Though diverse in conception and tone, classicist Edith Hamilton's The Greek Way (1930), mythologist Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), philosopher of religion Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane (1959 [1957]), and Robert Pirsig's, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), exemplify the persistent concern among public moralists that the examined life is lacking and yet needful in modern America. Each in their own way enlist “wisdom” as a salve for modern problems, but also as a corrective to modern “knowledge” they deemed crowded with facts and absent human truths. All were committed to a philosophy for the daily life of nonscholars and sought to prevent it from provincializing itself in the Academy. Likewise, they similarly presented the pursuit of wisdom, not as an intellectual exercise, but as a spiritual discipline. By examining the common themes and strategies of writers of wisdom literature, this paper will explore how the effort to make moral inquiry a way of life has been a longstanding cultural practice in America.