American philosopher

American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of American philosophers. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and shaping collective American identity over the history of the nation."

The political thinker and historian gave his own more detailed definition of a "Philosophical Method Among the Americans" in the opening paragraph of Book Two of Democracy In America.

I think that in no country in the civilized world is less attention paid to philosophy than in the United States... Nevertheless it is easy to perceive that almost all the inhabitants of the United States conduct their understanding in the same manner, and govern it by the same rules; that is to say, that without ever having taken the trouble to define the rules of a philosophical method, they are in possession of one, common to the whole people. To evade the bondage of system and habit, of family maxims, class opinions, and, in some degree, of national prejudices; to accept tradition only as a means of information, and existing facts only as a lesson used in doing otherwise, and doing better; to seek the reason of things for one's self, and in one's self alone; to tend to results without being bound to means, and to aim at the substance through the form; – such are the principal characteristics of what I shall call the philosophical method of the Americans...[In] most of the operations of the mind, each American appeals to the individual exercise of his own understanding alone.

The American philosophical tradition began at the time of the European colonization of the New World. The Puritans arrival in New England set the earliest American philosophy into the religious tradition (Puritan Providentialism), and there was also an emphasis on the relationship between the individual and the community. This is evident by the early colonial documents such as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639) and the Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641).

Thinkers such as John Winthrop emphasized the public life over the private, holding that the former takes precedence over the latter, while other writers, such as Roger Williams (co-founder of Rhode Island) held that religious tolerance was more integral than trying to achieve religious homogeneity in a community.

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