the solidity of physical objects exists for us because we project ourselves into
them—we take the role of the physical object—and imagine ourselves pushing
back (Mead, 1938: 426–432). Lest this make the world too human-centric,
Mead suggests that perspectives exist objectively in the sociality of nature, as
planets, molecules, and the like constitute one another by their interaction
(Mead, 1932: 47–66, 162–174). It is as if Mead had solved the Berkeleyan
problem of “esse est percipi” by attributing the qualities of a mind to every-
thing in nature, and identifying mind with the sharing of perspectives in social
action.
Even in their heyday, the pragmatists did not dominate American philoso-
phy. By the 1920s, Dewey was famous, but largely in connection with progres-
sive education, his application of pragmatism to the reform of the secondary
school curriculum, overturning the classical subjects in favor of life adjustment.
His bastion was not the philosophy departments but the university departments
of teacher training, which had grown up to coordinate the university revolution
with the burgeoning public high school system. In philosophy itself, Idealism
remained the dominant position down to the 1930s. Pragmatism was regarded
by professional philosophers as epistemologically unserious in its relativism
and human-centrism and inferior to the objectivity of Idealism (Schneider,
1963: 509–510). Personal Idealists continued to defend the individuality of
souls and the personhood of God. In the 1910s, James’s students, led by
Santayana and Perry, abandoned pragmatism for New Realism, which fitted
comfortably into naturalistic secularism but also reduced the leverage and
prestige of a distinctively philosophical vantage point. The next big wave in
philosophy, the analytical-logicist style introduced in the 1930s, was to sweep
all this away with uncompromising militancy. As in England, Idealism and its
hybrids dominated American philosophy during the two generations of the
introduction of the German-style research university. When full-scale religious
secularization of higher education was complete, Idealism was rejected.
Idealism in Italy, Scandinavia, and Japan
In Italy too Idealism arose in connection with the struggle for secularizing
educational reform. The papacy had opposed national unification as a threat
to its territorial possessions and privileges in the conservative states. From the
period of political unification (1859–1870), nationalists were anti-clericals,
fighting to wrest education from the church by constructing a centralized
school system, modeled on the German educational laws (Barbagli, 1982). Italy
had a large number of independent universities, the result of long-standing
political divisions and of the spate of foundings throughout the Middle Ages.
Before national unification, the universities still taught scholasticism. After
Intellectuals Take Control: The University Revolution^ •^683