A classic volume by a noted philosopher, available again. John William Miller (1895-1978) taught at Williams College, where from 1945 to 1960 he was Mark Hopkins Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy. His extraordinary teaching is described in Masters: Portraits of Great Teachers, edited by Joseph Epstein. While deeply indebted to Plato, Kant, and Hegel, Miller arrived at a strikingly original reinterpretation of the history of philosophy, which, he believed, resolved long-standing epistemological and moral problems generated by that history. In The Definition of the Thing, an...

The Philosophy of History with Reflections and Aphorisms consists of essays and some notes written by John William Miller between 1943 and 1974. Criticizing all attempts to interpret history on premises not themselves historical, Miller holds that "to view history philosophically is to consider it as a constitutional mode of experience, a way of organization no less fundamental than physics or logic."

Discusses the nature of psychology, compares the theories of psychoanalysis and behaviorism, and shows the unity of general and abnormal psychology.

Erudite and eloquent, John William Miller's writing engages readers with his "earthy" treatment of basic philosophical questions. Designed as an introduction to a compelling historicist philosophy, this volume presents Miller's best and most representative essays in a single, authoritative edition. Miller (1895-1978) taught at Williams College, and he is well known for his extraordinary teaching (described in Masters: Portraits of Great Teachers). He was also a philosopher of the first rank, who arrived at a strikingly original reinterpretation of the history of philosophy and the perennial...

They speak to anyone who has been baffled by the old conflict between personal freedom and causal order. More widely, they examine the role of action in the projection of any general order, including the physical. They find history as the career and evolution of self-criticizing and self-correcting action. They reject all "theories" of history, whether as a chaos or an episode in an ahistoric totality. They propose a common source of science and the humanities, of laboratory and the Muses. Key words here are act and action. They contrast with passivity and with the convention that requires us...