The Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897 celebrated the centennial of Tennessee’s admission to the United States. This chapter argues that the use of Greek and Grecian architecture at Nashville was connected to Nashville’s reputation as a city of learning and culture. During the nineteenth century, Nashville was known as the Athens of the South and of the West. A life-sized replica of the Parthenon was the fair’s premier building. Archaeological accuracy and color were also essential to creating the fair’s Parthenon. Other buildings incorporated classical motifs from different periods, demonstrating the flexibility and fluidity of ancient architecture and embodying the neo-antique. This classical architecture embodied Nashville’s arrival as a city, but it also celebrated the New South and reflected the codification of the racist Jim Crow laws. Thus, the appropriation of classical architecture to justify institutional racism is examined. Egyptian architecture played a prominent role here. Shelby County erected a pyramid for its pavilion, which was an exceptional use of Egyptian architecture at United States fairs. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the enduring importance of the rebuilt Nashville Parthenon (and its Athena statue) as a symbol of culture and democracy for the city.

The conclusion summarizes the book’s core arguments – specifically, that studying the reception of ancient architecture at the world’s fairs at Chicago, Nashville, Omaha, St. Louis, and San Francisco furthers our understanding of the complex and possibly conflicting and contradictory ways in which the ancient world and its architecture were understood in the United States between 1893 and 1915. The appropriation of classical architecture for museums and fine art galleries emerges as a major theme. While classical architecture could be used to justify empire and institutional racism, it could also symbolize democracy and cultural sophistication. The fluidity and flexibility of ancient architecture underscore why it was so widely and creatively adapted in the United States. The physical legacy of these fairs – the buildings that survived and the parks – is also considered. In addition, the conclusion discusses the decline of ancient architecture as one of the most potent ways in which fair organizers expressed their cultural, political, and economic goals; the rejection of historical forms was vital to the birth of architectural Modernism. In sum, neo-antique architecture at American world’s fairs helped the nation and various cities to forge imagined ties to a glorious past, frame the present, and envisage the future.

Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, or White City, marked the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery” of the “New World” and showcased Chicago’s ambition to be a modern metropolis. While Chicago’s architecture is often labeled as Beaux-Arts or Roman, this chapter argues that the architecture of its key buildings and central spaces embodied the bricolage of the neo-antique. The White City established neo-antique architecture as the preferred architectural idiom for American world’s fairs. This architecture also demonstrated that the United States was now a cultural, economic, and political powerhouse. The lasting impact of the White City’s architecture is evident in urban planning, especially in the City Beautiful movement and in civil buildings built after the fair. Other buildings at the fair, such as Haiti’s pavilion, also utilized classicizing architecture. For Haiti, the ideals of democracy and the cultural cachet of classical culture informed the choice of classical architecture here. Ancient Egyptian architecture also appeared in the form of a replica of the Temple of Luxor, located in the Midway Plaisance, the fair’s entertainment zone, aiming to educate and entertain visitors. The reception of ancient architecture at the White City reflects the complex and sometimes contradictory relationship between nineteenth-century America and the ancient world.

Consistent with and extending from observations made in the previous chapters, I show that there is a fundamental problem with attempts at reducing ourselves, as settlers of matters that aren’t already settled, to mental states and/or events and offer an explanation as to why.

In our scientific era, there has been wide speculation about the demise of conventional notions about our agency. Some believe our scientific discoveries render these ideas not just archaic but implausible. Others have developed various reductive notions about our agency with the idea that such notions are, in some respect, more empirical. It is within this context that, here, I examine our conventional thought and talk regarding our agency, and the basis for thinking it is at odds with the revelations of science.

In this chapter, I extend and defend the position that productive action is, in some respect, the causing of change; the forming of an intention is the process of forming an intentional state; an intentional state is a disposition; and that the manifestation of a disposition is irreducibly the process of a substance that has the disposition to give or cause a certain response giving or causing that response under the conditions particular to manifesting that disposition.