The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms as a Philosophy of Pluralism

Thora Ilin Bayer, Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans

RANDALL AUXIER, in his editorial statement and his article that follows it in the first issue of The Pluralist, describes the origins of pluralism and characterizes the possibilities it has for contemporary philosophy. Auxier points out that the birth of pluralism in the United States can be traced back to the conversations that took place in the philosophical club meetings in Boston in the 1870s of which Borden Parker Bowne and George Holmes Howison were prominent members and who later were led to the personalist movement. Auxier points out that although Jean Wahl in his Pluralist Philosophies of England and America credits Bowne as the first to use "pluralism" in English, Wahl attributes the original use of the term to Rudolf Hermann Lotze's Metaphysik (1879). The spirit of Lotze's philosophy is pluralistic in that he held that all philosophical systems should remain open to new possibilities rather than claim completeness and thus close off inquiry.