Encyclopedia of American Idealism: Toward a Novel Method and System of Philosophy

“Tomaini’s Encyclopedia of American Idealism will definitely bring fresh air into our academic debates, so it fully more than deserves to be published.”— Slavoj Žižek, International Director, Birkbeck College, University of London

In the words of eminent Philosopher Cornel West, Tomaini’s Encyclopedia of American Idealism: Toward a Novel Method and System of Philosophy attempts to “encompass the insights of intellectual giants,” both contemporary and past. Tomaini’s Encyclopedia, which is named in the Hegelian sense of that word, primarily calculates the scholarly question: how might G.W.F. Hegel’s system and method be overcome? Flipping the Western canon on its head in order to counter the behemoth scope and density of the Hegelian system, the Encyclopedia revises innumerable fundamental tenets of philosophy, producing at its onset a new method of philosophy – Reconstruction, contra Derrida’s Deconstruction – and instituting by its conclusion a new philosophical system assembled atop Kant and Hegel’s school of German Idealism. Beginning with dialectics, Tomaini outlines an approach to rival Hegel’s and develops this system further. The Encyclopedia of American Idealism also incorporates epistemology, metaphysics, cognitive science, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, metalinguistics, aesthetics, ethics, and politics. Finally, it culminates in a theoretical model for International Relations rooted in Immanuel Kant’s concept of Perpetual Peace.