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Paul Carus

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Paul Carus

Paul Carus(German:[paʊlˈkaːʁʊs];18 July 1852 – 11 February 1919) was aGerman-Americanauthor, editor, a student ofcomparative religion[1]andphilosopher.[2]

Life and education[edit]

Carus was born inIlsenburg,Germany,and educated at the universities ofStrassburg(then Germany, now France) andTübingen,Germany. After obtaining his PhD from Tübingen in 1876[3]he served in the army and then taught school. He had been raised in a pious and orthodoxProtestanthome, but gradually moved away from this tradition.[4]

He leftBismarck'sImperial Germanyfor the United States, "because of his liberal views".[5]After he emigrated to the USA (in 1884) he lived in Chicago, and inLaSalle, Illinois.Paul Carus marriedEdward C. Hegeler's daughter, engineerMary Hegeler(Marie) and the couple later moved into theHegeler Carus Mansion,built by her father. They had seven children, the firstborn, Robert died at birth, but Edward (b. 1890), Gustave (b. 1892), Paula (b. 1894), Elisabeth or "Libby" (b. 1896), Herman (b. 1899), and Alwin (b. 1901) all lived long lives.[6]Mary ran the family business,Matthiessen-Hegeler Zinc Companyand theOpen Courtbusiness and later took on the editorial role after Carus' death, alongside their daughter Elizabeth.[7]

Career[edit]

In the United States, Carus briefly edited a German-language journal and wrote several articles for theIndex,theFree Religious Associationorgan.[1]

Soon after, he became the first managing editor of theOpen Court Publishing Company,founded in 1887 by his father-in-law.[5]The goals of Open Court were to provide a forum for the discussion of philosophy,science,and religion, and to make philosophical classics widely available by making them affordable.[6]

He also acted as the editor for two periodicals published by the company,The Open CourtandThe Monist.[3][8]

He was introduced toCharles Sanders Peirce,the founder ofAmerican Pragmatism,by Judge Francis C. Russell of Chicago. Carus stayed abreast of Peirce's work and would eventually publish a number of his articles.[9]

During his lifetime, Carus published 75 books and 1500 articles,[10]mostly through Open Court Publishing Company. He wrote books and articles on history, politics, philosophy, religion, logic, mathematics, anthropology, science, and social issues of his day. In addition, Carus corresponded with many of the greatest minds of the late 19th and early 20th century, sending and receiving letters fromLeo Tolstoy,Thomas Edison,Nikola Tesla,Booker T. Washington,Elizabeth Cady Stanton,Ernst Mach,Ernst Haeckel,John Dewey,and many more.

Carus's world view and philosophy[edit]

Carus considered himself atheologianrather than philosopher. He referred to himself as "anatheistwho loved God ".[11][12]

Carus is proposed to be a pioneer in the promotion ofinterfaithdialogue. He explored the relationship of science and religion, and was instrumental in introducing Eastern traditions and ideas to the West.[5]He was a key figure in the introduction ofBuddhismto the West,[4]sponsoring Buddhist translation work ofD.T. Suzuki,and fostering a lifelong working friendship with Buddhist Master,Soyen Shaku.Carus' interest in Asian religions seems to have intensified after he attended theWorld's Parliament of Religions(in 1893).

For years afterwards, Carus was a strong sympathizer of Buddhist ideas, but stopped short of committing fully to this, or any other, religion. Instead, he ceaselessly promoted his own rational concept which he called the "Religion of Science." Carus had a selective approach and he believed that religions evolve over time. After a battle for survival, he expected a "cosmic religion of universal truth" to emerge from the ashes of traditional beliefs.[4]

Carus proposed his own philosophy similar topanpsychismknown as 'panbiotism', which he defined as "everything is fraught with life; it contains life; it has the ability to live."[13]

Religion of Science[edit]

Carus was a follower ofBenedictus de Spinoza;he was of the opinion that Western thought had fallen into error early in its development in accepting the distinctions between body and mind and the material and the spiritual. (Kant'sphenomenalandnoumenalrealms of knowledge; Christianity's views of thesouland thebody,and thenaturaland thesupernatural). Carus rejected such dualisms, and wanted science to reestablish the unity of knowledge.[14]The philosophical result he labeledMonism.[1]

His version ofmonismis more closely associated with a kind ofpantheism,although it was occasionally identified withpositivism.[12]He regarded everylaw of natureas a part of God's being. Carus held that God was the name for acosmic ordercomprising "all that which is the bread of our spiritual life." He held the concept of apersonal Godas untenable. He acknowledgedJesusChrist as a redeemer, but not as the only one, for he believed that other religious founders were equally endowed with similar qualities.[12]

His beliefs attempted to steer a middle course between idealisticmetaphysicsandmaterialism.He differed with metaphysicians because they "reified"words and treated them as if they were realities, and he objected to materialism because it ignored or overlooked the importance of form. Carus emphasized form by conceiving of the divinity as a cosmic order. He objected to any monism which sought the unity of the world, not in the unity of truth, but in the oneness of a logical assumption of ideas. He referred to such concepts ashenism,not monism.[12]

Carus held thattruthwas independent of time, human desire, and humanaction.Therefore, science was not a human invention, but a humanrevelationwhich needed to be apprehended; discovery meant apprehension; it was the result or manifestation of the cosmic order in which all truths were ultimately harmonious.[12]

Criticisms of Carus' ideas[edit]

It is claimed that Carus was dismissed byOrientalistsand philosophers alike because of his failure to comply with the rules of either discipline.[15]

Legacy[edit]

The legacy of Paul Carus is honored through the efforts of theHegeler Carus Foundation,theCarus Lecturesat theAmerican Philosophical Association(APA),and thePaul Carus Award for Interreligious Understanding[16]by theCouncil for a Parliament of the World's Religions (CPWR).Mary Hegeler Carusand their daughter Elizabeth Carus took on the editorial role after Carus' death.[7]

Bibliography[edit]

His publications include:

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^abcOriental Ideas in American Thought,fromDictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas,edited by Philip P. Wiener (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1973–74).
  2. ^William H. Hay, "Paul Carus: A Case-Study of Philosophy on the Frontier", inJournal of the History of Ideas,17 (1956), 498–510.
  3. ^abThe Monist:An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry,featuring essays from scholars around the globe.
  4. ^abcThe American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844–1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent,by Thomas A. Tweed (Paperback), page 65-67
  5. ^abc"Open Court: About Us".opencourtbooks.com.
  6. ^abHistory of the Heleger Carus Foundation – The Hegeler Carus MansionArchived28 September 2007 at theWayback Machine
  7. ^ab"Advancing Research with the Open Court · The Life of Mary Hegeler Carus · SCRC Virtual Museum at Southern Illinois University's Morris Library".scrcexhibits.omeka.net.Retrieved19 March2021.
  8. ^Andreas Daum,“'The Next Great Task of Civilization': International Exchange in Popular Science. The German-American Case, 1850–1900", inThe Mechanics of Internationalism: Culture, Society, and Politics 1850–1914.Oxford University Press, 2001, 309–11, 314, 317.
  9. ^William James and Yogaacaara philosophy: A comparative inquiryArchived26 September 2011 at theWayback Machine,by Miranda Shaw, (University of Hawaii Press, 1987), page 241, note 4
  10. ^History of the Heleger Carus Foundation – Open Court Publishing CompanyArchived28 September 2007 at theWayback Machine
  11. ^The Gospel of Buddha,by Paul Carus, page 26
  12. ^abcdeRecent American ThoughtArchived2 March 2008 at theWayback Machine,fromThe Radical AcademyArchived30 March 2008 at theWayback Machine
  13. ^Skrbina, David.(2005).Panpsychism in the West.MIT Press. p. 149.ISBN0-262-19522-4
  14. ^Meyer, Donald Harvey (Winter 1962). "Paul Carus and the Religion of Science".American Quarterly.14(4): 597–607.doi:10.2307/2710135.JSTOR2710135.
  15. ^Future Religion – Making an American BuddhaArchived10 November 2013 at theWayback Machine,by Judith Snodgrass. A review of republishedThe Gospel of Buddha
  16. ^The Paul Carus Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Interreligious MovementArchived16 June 2006 at theWayback Machine.See also:Carus Award 2004Archived27 September 2007 at theWayback Machine
  17. ^"History of the Devil Index".sacred-texts.com.
  18. ^Owens, Frederick William (1910)."Review:The Foundations of Mathematicsby Paul Carus ".Bull. Amer. Math. Soc.16:541–542.doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1910-01969-8.
  19. ^"Review:The Mechanistic Principle and the Non-Mechanicalby Paul Carus ".The Harvard Theological Review.7(2): 271–272. April 1914.doi:10.1017/s0017816000011196.
  20. ^Salter, William Mackintire(July 1915)."Review of 4 books:Nietzsche and Other Exponents of Individualismby Paul Carus;The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzscheby H. L. Mencken;The Philosophy of Nietzsche: An Exposition and an Appreciationby Georges Chatterton-Hill;Nietzsche, sein Leben und seine Werkeby Richard M. Meyer ".The Harvard Theological Review.8(3): 400–408.doi:10.1017/s0017816000008993.

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