John Herman Randall, Jr.

John Herman Randall (born February 14, 1899 in Grand Rapids , Michigan , † December 1, 1980 in New York ) was an American historian and philosopher . He was known for a number of publications on the history of philosophy and his pragmatic philosophy.

Life

Randall came from a Baptist family . The father played an important role in Randall's philosophical development. He thought religion was important without believing in a personal God . Almost from the cradle - so the mother said - the father talked to his son about religious, intellectual, ethical and literary problems. Randall graduated from Morris High School in New York City. He was named the best student in Latin. He then studied at Columbia University . Randall became a committed and scientifically very interested student. John Dewey and Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge were among his teachers. As a student he developed a secularized attitude towards the Christian faith. The father followed Randall's studies with great interest. Years later they wrote the book Religion and the Modern World together . In 1918 he received his first qualified degree from Columbia University. He was accepted into the philosophy support program and received his doctorate in 1922 with a social history thesis on the history of American workers.

In the same year he married Mercedes Irene Moritz . They had two sons. Mercedes Irene Randall worked as a writer, teacher and editor. She was a member of the International Women's League for Peace and Freedom . Randall worked at Columbia University for life. He was loved to listen to because he used vivid images in his lectures to stimulate lively ideas in his audience. Randall had an excellent memory. He could z. B. remember within a minute of quotable passages from the work of other philosophers. Randall was eloquent on the one hand, but also shy and irritable when he couldn't bring up what he wanted to say. He suffered from anxiety. After the death of his parents (1946 and 1948) he stopped writing for years and only continued to teach. Ten years later he wrote the two-volume success story of philosophy (The Career of Philosophy) .

Aristóteles, painting by Luis Alberto Costales

Aristotle was one of his favorite ancient philosophers. With his interpretation of the ' Logos ' he discovered a lot in Aristotle that was also one of the foundations of his own philosophizing. Randall could do little with Plato . He thought he was a harmless, philanthropic ironic who was mainly occupied with organizing round tables on new ideas that interested him and other Greeks. Plato put down the important contributions of these rounds of talks in writing. Most of the contributions of his interlocutors, however, he had showered with doubts. Randall emphasized that Plato also preferred observing people or beautiful poems and songs to a lifestyle based on thought.

In 1933/1934 Randall undertook - supported by a Guggenheim grant - a research project on the Averroists (Aristotelians) of the 14th to 16th centuries at the University of Padua . He discovered and claimed that the Averroists were not - as it was supposed - the 'formalistic fossils' that opposed modern science. One could rather assume that they were involved in various scientific areas in promoting developments and contributing fruitful ideas. Randall's research - published in The Development of Scientific Method in the School of Padua (1940) - proved to be largely correct.

In 1954, Randall was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . His retirement began in 1967. He held courses with other lecturers for another five years, including the theologian Paul Tillich from Germany . In 1976, Randall suffered a stroke and was unable to speak or write until his death four years later.

Focus of his scientific work

History of philosophy

Randall philosophized on the judgment of others within the tradition of American pragmatists . He considered himself a naturalist , i. H. in the understanding of a non-religious philosopher at the time, who was primarily concerned with current problems. Pragmatists look at the problems of their time with their contemporary views. For philosophical pragmatists, the history of philosophy also provides texts and ideas to be inspired to find possible solutions to current and expected problems. However, this approach has the disadvantage, among other things, of producing various out-of-time and content-related distortions of the history of philosophy. In this way, among other things, texts were created that interpreted deceased philosophies with ideas that were originally foreign to them and that may even run counter to them. Another disadvantage is that - as Randall described in the first volume of The Career of Philosophy - trivial scientific developments were constructed. Scholarly histories of the 19th century assumed that before the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo people lived in abysmal darkness and in dark superstition . Copernicus and Galileo would then have brought the light of science to their fellow human beings - almost overnight - and pushed Aristotle off the pedestal. Randall therefore proposed to proceed more comprehensively and to pursue cultural history instead of the usual history of philosophy . The latter should be a reflection that stimulates social development and deals with the interaction of convictions, ideals and members of contemporary society.

Metaphysics and religion

From a philosophical point of view, metaphysics and religion are of little use. They do not provide knowledge that people cannot access through experience. Nevertheless, metaphysics and religion provide orientation in one respect: metaphysical or religious symbols - like the ideas of Plato or the words of Jesus - functioned like lighthouses. They shed light on the current problem and could make new possibilities for action visible to people. For Randall, religion was an 'emotional base', a 'way of life'. With this intuitive , metaphysical-religious view, Randall also shaped his conception of a culture of personality . The individual was the center of his future philosophy. In contrast to the actual conditions of his time, people are in a position with or without religion to create a better world for one another. Randall did not consider the Christian religion to be a special case in history . The apostle Paul invented and disseminated a mystery system of salvation that was very similar to the cult of Isis and other mystery religions of his time.

Aristotle

Amazing, but coherent - so say knowledgeable readers - is Randall's Aristotle interpretation. Randall claimed, among other things, that it was a consequence of erroneous scholastic interpretations to call Aristotle a monotheistic theologian . In Aristotle's world and texts, there is not 'one mover' but 'trillion mover'. So his philosophy is 'pluralistic'. Along with Aristotle, he also asserted that people can acquire reliable knowledge of the world, especially with the help of natural sciences. What people talk about is also there, said Randall. He also referred to the idea of ​​Aristotle, for whom the all (to pan) is a whole, includes everything and precedes everything. He considered Kant's epistemology to be superfluous because it denied this assumption. What Aristotle called soul , Randall interpreted as a function in the execution of perceptible processes. “The soul of an ax is cutting.” (The soul of an ax is cutting.), He explained to his students.

Publications

• The Western Mind , 2 vol., 1924.
• The Making of the Modern Mind , 1926.
• Our changing civilization. How science and the machine are reconstructing modern life. Frederick Stokes, New York 1929, German as: The change of our culture. Translated into German by Lotte Matschoss, Cotta, Stuttgart / Berlin 1932.
• The Role of Knowledge in Western Religion , 1958.
• Nature and Historical Experience , 1958.
• Aristotle , 1960.
• The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science , 1961.
• How Philosophy Uses Its Past , 1963.
• Career of Philosophy in Modern Times, 2 vol., 1962–65.
• Plato , 1970.
• Hellenistic Ways of Deliverance and the Making of the Christian Synthesis , 1970.
• Philosophy After Darwin , 1977.

Web links

• Texts by JH Randall available at UNZ.org
• Texts by JH Randall available at ARCHIVE.org

Individual evidence

1. ^ Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. - Cf. George Santayana: The Works of George Santayana: The letters of George Santayana. 1933-1936. Vol. 5. Book 5, p.95.
2. ↑ See FA Christie: Review of Making of the Modern Mind by John Herman Randall. The American Historical Review, Oxford University Press, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Oct., 1926), pp. 79-81. Partially published.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Richard Popkin: With all flaws. Memories of a Philosophy Historian. Hamburg 2008, p. 20.  
3. ↑ See John Herman Randall, Jr .: In Memoriam Paul Oskar Kristeller, Ernest Nagel, Fritz Stern, James Gutmann and Richard H. Popkin. Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 42, No. 3 (Jul-Sep, 1981), pp. 489-501. Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press.
4. ↑ See John Herman Randall Jr .: A Pathfinder to Modern Thought. (A maker of modern mind.) A son remembers. Archived copy ( Memento of the original from December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The majority of his résumé and a lot of information about his scientific work come from this Internet document. Others are occupied individually. 
5. ↑ Cf. George Cotkin: Middle-Ground Pragmatists: The Populatization of Philosophy in American Culture. California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
6. ↑ See Richard Popkin: Randall and British Empiricism. In the S. The High Road to Pyrrhonism. Reprint by Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis 1993, pp 39 - 53. - Colin Koopman: Pragmatism as Transition: Historicity and Hope in James, Dewey, and Rorty. Columbia University Press, New York Chichester, 2009, pp. 63-64.
7. ↑ See FA Christie: Review of Making of the Modern Mind by John Herman Randall. The American Historical Review, Oxford University Press, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Oct., 1926), pp. 79-81.
8. ↑ See Louis K. Dupré: Symbols of the Sacred. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans Publishing Company 2005, pp 51-52.
9. ↑ See The Culture of Personality . New York / Boston 1912, foreword. Text available at Archive.org .
10. ^ Randall: Hellenistic Ways of Deliverance and the Making of the Christian Synthesis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, p. 154.
11. ^ Librarian
12. ↑ See Randall, Aristotle , p. 71.
13. ↑ See Christopher P. Long: Aristotle on the Nature of Truth. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. XII, 55.