Introducing Pragmatism: A Tool for Rethinking Philosophy

Description

This unique introduction fully engages and clearly explains pragmatism, an approach to knowledge and philosophy that rejects outmoded conceptions of objectivity while avoiding relativism and subjectivism. It follows pragmatism’s focus on the process of inquiry rather than on abstract justifications meant to appease the skeptic. According to pragmatists, getting to know the world is a creative human enterprise, wherein we fashion our concepts in terms of how they affect us practically, including in future inquiry. This book fully illuminates that enterprise and the resulting radical rethinking of basic philosophical conceptions like truth, reality, and reason. Author Cornelis de Waal helps the reader recognize, understand, and assess classical and current pragmatist contributions—from Charles S. Peirce to Cornel West—evaluate existing views from a pragmatist angle, formulate pragmatist critiques, and develop a pragmatist viewpoint on a specific issue Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Preface 1 Introduction 2 Peirce and the Principle of Pragmatism 2.1 The Limits of Thought 2.2 The Purpose of Thought 2.3 The Fixation of Belief 2.4 The Fixation of Meaning 2.5 Applications of the Pragmatic Maxim 2.6 The Pragmatic Conception of Truth 3 William James: Pragmatism and the Will to Believe 3.1 Birth of the Term “Pragmatism” 3.2 The Will to Believe 3.3 The Principle of Pragmatism 3.4 Applications of the Principle 3.5 Rationalism, Empiricism, Pragmatism 3.6 Truth as Agreement With Reality 3.7 Taking Truth Further 4 The Pragmatic Humanism of F.C.S. Schiller 4.1 Broadening the Will to Believe 4.2 Pragmatism 4.3 Humanism 4.4 The Making of Truth 4.5 Three Pragmatic Views on Truth 4.6 The Making of Reality 5 European Reception: France and Italy 5.1 French Philosophy of Action 5.2 The Leonardo Movement 5.3 The Magical Pragmatism of Giovanni Papini 5.4 Giovanni Vailati’s Logical Pragmatism 5.5 The Prezzolini–Calderoni Debate 6 Peirce Revisited: The Normative Turn 6.1 Peirce’s Later Years 6.2 Response to James’s Will to Believe 6.3 The Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism 6.4 In Search of a Proof 6.5 Phenomenology and the Normative Sciences 6.6 Pragmatism Versus Pragmaticism 6.7 Logic and Semiotics 6.8 Pragmatism as the Logic of Abduction 7 Josiah Royce and George Herbert Mead 7.1 Pure Pragmatism and the Absolute Knower 7.2 Toward a Community of Interpretation 7.3 The Social Pragmatism of George Herbert Mead 7.4 The Philosophy of the Act 7.5 The Social Nature of the Act and the Emergence of the Self 7.6 Mind, Language, and Pragmatism 7.7 Perspective Realism 8 Pragmatism and the Problems of Life: Dewey, Addams, and Bourne 8.1 Dewey’s Experimental Logic 8.2 A Theory of Knowledge 8.3 Whether All Judgments Are Practical 8.4 Pragmatism and the Problems of Life 8.5 Truth and Warranted Assertibility 8.6 Jane Addams: A Pragmatist in Action 8.7 Randolph Bourne: Pragmatism and Romantic Anarchy 9 Conceptual Pragmatism: From Lewis to Davidson 9.1 The Given, the A Priori, and Interpretation 9.2 Pragmatism, Truth, and Valuation 9.3 Logical Positivism 9.4 Pragmatism and Pragmatics 9.5 Verificationism 9.6 Quine’s More Thorough Pragmatism 9.7 On Worlds and World Making 9.8 Davidson and a Third Dogma 10 The European Reception Revisited 10.1 From Russell, to Ramsey, to Wittgenstein 10.2 The Pragmatism of Frank Ramsey 10.3 Ludwig Wittgenstein: Meaning as Use 10.4 Pragmatism and Phenomenology 10.5 Pragmatism and Philosophical Anthropology 10.6 Critical Theory Rejects Pragmatism 10.7 Jürgen Habermas: Critical Theory Turns to Pragmatism 11 The Neopragmatism of Richard Rorty 11.1 The Idol of the Mirror 11.2 The Impact of Sellars and Quine 11.3 From Correspondence to Conversation 11.4 Against Truth 11.5 Solidarity, Ethnocentricity, and Irony 12 Hilary Putnam: Philosophy With a Human Face 12.1 The Collapse of the Fact–Value Distinction 12.2 Whether Our Norms Are All Subjective 12.3 Pragmatism and Internal Realism 12.4 Natural Realism 13 Susan Haack: Reclaiming Pragmatism 13.1 The Empirical Justification of Beliefs 13.2 The Analogy of the Crossword Puzzle 13.3 Standards of Inquiry 13.4 Justification and Truth 13.5 Against Vulgar Pragmatism 14 Legal Pragmatism 14.1 Green’s Pragmatic Reading of Causation 14.2 Oliver Wendell Holmes on Legal Liability 14.3 Legal Pragmatism in the Twentieth Century 14.4 Dewey on Judicial Practice 14.5 The Legal Pragmatism of Richard Posner 14.6 Haack on Evidence and Inquiry in the Law 15 Prophetic Pragmatism and Feminist Inspirations 15.1 Feminist Pragmatism 15.2 The Social Self and the Male–Female Dichotomy 15.3 Alain Locke on the New Negro 15.4 Cornel West’s Prophetic Pragmatism 16 Pragmatism and the End(s) of Philosophy Annotated Reading Guide References and Select Bibliography Index