Cargill, Oscar

From Philosopedia

Cargill, Oscar (1898—1971) A professor of English at New York University and author of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1950), Cargill wrote the present author in 1954 about his views on humanism:

I certainly would not apply the term “naturalistic humanism” to my own thinking. Whereas I think I would be satisfied with the phrase “scientific humanism,” if I understand what Julian Huxley means by that term. I am afraid that I am a “do-gooder” and an experimentalist in the sense that John Dewey and William James were experimentalists. I object to the phrase “naturalistic humanism” because naturalism means to me determinism. So far as I can see, one’s thinking is determined only by the heritage of one’s time and one may make choices among the ideologies represented by that intellectual heritage. I objected very much years ago when a critic termed by thinking positivistic criticism.

{WAS, 17 August 1954}