Benjamin Paul Blood
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Benjamin Paul Blood (November 21, 1832 – January 15, 1919) was an
American philosopher American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can neverthe ...
, mystic and
poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...
. His idiosyncratic work explored his development of his pluralist philosophy, culminating in the posthumously published book ''Pluriverse''.


Biography

He was born in
Amsterdam, New York Amsterdam () is a city in Montgomery County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 18,219. The city is named after Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The city of Amsterdam is bordered on the northern and ea ...
. His father, John Blood, was a prosperous landowner. Blood was known as an intelligent man but an unfocused one. Initially, his writing consisted of letters, either to local newspapers or to friends such as
James Hutchison Stirling James Hutchison Stirling (22 June 1820 – 19 March 1909) was a Scottish idealist philosopher and physician. His work ''The Secret of Hegel'' (1st edition, 1865, in 2 vols.; revised edition, 1898, in 1 vol.) gave great impetus to the study of He ...
,
Alfred Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of ...
and
William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th c ...
.
Ralph Barton Perry Ralph Barton Perry (July 3, 1876 – January 22, 1957) was an American philosopher. He was a strident moral idealist who stated in 1909 that, to him, idealism meant "to interpret life consistently with ethical, scientific, and metaphysical truth ...
wrote of Blood:
He was born in 1832 and lived for eighty-six years. During that time he wrote much, but unsystematically. His favorite form of publication was letters to newspapers, mainly local newspapers with a small circulation. These letters "dealt with an astonishing diversity of subjects, from local petty politics or the tricks of spiritualist mediums to principles of industry and finance and profundities of metaphysics."
Early books included ''The Philosophy of Justice Between God and Man'' (1851) and ''Optimism: The Lesson of Ages'' (1860), a Christian mystical vision of the pursuit of happiness from Blood's distinctly American perspective; on the title page of the book, Blood described it as "A compendium of democratic theology, designed to illustrate necessities whereby all things are as they are, and to reconcile the discontents of men with the perfect love and power of ever-present God." During his lifetime he was best known for his poetry, which included ''The Bride of the Iconoclast'', ''Justice'', and ''The Colonnades''. According to Christopher Nelson, Blood was a direct influence on William James' ''The Varieties of Religious Experience'' as well on James's concept of Sciousness, prime reality consciousness without a sense of self. After experiencing the
anesthetic An anesthetic (American English) or anaesthetic (British English; see spelling differences) is a drug used to induce anesthesia ⁠— ⁠in other words, to result in a temporary loss of sensation or awareness. They may be divided into t ...
nitrous oxide Nitrous oxide (dinitrogen oxide or dinitrogen monoxide), commonly known as laughing gas, nitrous, or factitious air, among others, is a chemical compound, an Nitrogen oxide, oxide of nitrogen with the Chemical formula, formula . At room te ...
during a dental operation, Blood concluded that the gas had opened his mind to new ideas and continued experimenting with it. In 1874, he published a 37-page pamphlet, ''The Anesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy''.Nelson, Christopher. "The Artificial Mystic State of Mind: WJ, Benjamin Paul Blood, and the Nitrous-Oxide Variety of Religious Experience", ''Streams of William James'', The William James Society, Volume 4, Issue 3 (Fall 2002) He married twice; to Mary Sayles, and following her death, to Harriet Lefferts. He had six children from the first marriage, and a daughter from the second. Blood died in Amsterdam, New York. His final work, ''Pluriverse'', was published posthumously.


Selected bibliography

*
Optimism: The Lesson of Ages
', 1860 *
The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy
', 1874 *
Pluriverse: An Essay in the Philosophy of Pluralism
', 1920 (posthumous)


See also

*
American philosophy American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can neverthe ...
*
List of American philosophers American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can neverthe ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blood, Benjamin Paul 1832 births 1919 deaths 19th-century American philosophers American Christian mystics Idealists Pluralism (philosophy) Poets from New York (state)