author
Horace Meyer Kallen
1882–1974
A philosopher and educator who helped shape the idea of cultural pluralism in the United States, he argued that democracy could make room for many identities instead of melting them into one. His life and work connected immigration, Jewish thought, education, and public debate in a way that still feels strikingly modern.
2 Audiobooks
Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude
by John Dewey, Boyd Henry Bode, Harold Chapman Brown, Horace Meyer Kallen, George H. Mead, Addison Webster Moore, Henry Waldgrave Stuart, James Hayden Tufts
College prolongs infancy
by Horace Meyer Kallen
About the author
Born in Bernstadt, Prussian Silesia, in 1882, he came to the United States as a child in 1887 with his family. He studied philosophy at Harvard, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1903 and his doctorate in 1908, and later taught at Harvard, the University of Wisconsin, and the New School for Social Research.
He is best remembered as an important American philosopher of cultural pluralism. Rather than embracing the old "melting pot" ideal, he argued that a democratic society could be strengthened by preserving distinct cultural traditions within a shared civic life.
His work also reached into Jewish intellectual life and public affairs, including writing on Zionism and international peace. Across his long career, he wrote widely as a teacher, critic, and public thinker, and he died in 1974.