"We
wished to be free to follow our
individual thinking and feeling into an
intelligent and
sympathetic world without having to bow before an incomprehensible
dogma or to anticipate the
shipwreck of our individual ends and values. We wanted full intellectual
freedom and yet the conservation of the values for which had stood
Church,
State,
Science, and
Art."
George Herbert Mead was an
American philosopher, born in the late 1800s, a close friend of
John Dewey and colleague of
William James and
Josiah Royce. Mead was basically a
pragmatist who advocated
thought over
emotion when making decisions. Must have had a few run-ins with confused
women who couldn't decide if he was
cool enough for them or not.
As a modern thinker for whom process and
evolution were central issues, Mead's philosophical roots are to be found in
Hegel and
Darwin. He understood
human nature as
social and problem-solving at its most fundamental level and the combined impact of these aspects of
human nature would advocate that we have made some fundamental mistakes in our attempts to understand the present international situation. Labeled as: a challenge to claims of alienation; a reminder about our responsibility to attempt to address our
problems; and a suggestion about how me might reconstruct contemporary international relations.