Description
Book Synopsis
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 contributionsfrom Charles S. Peirce to Cornel Westevaluate existing views from a pragmatist angle, formulate pragmatist critiques, and develop a pragmatist viewpoint on a specific issue.
The book discusses:
Table of Contents
1. Introduction, 2. Peirce and the Principle of Pragmatism, 3. William James: Pragmatism and the Will to Believe, 4. The Pragmatic Humanism of F.C.S. Schiller, 5. European Reception I: France and Italy, 6. Peirce Revisited: The Normative Turn, 7. Josiah Royce and George Herbert Mead, 8. Pragmatism and the Problems of Life: Dewey, Addams, and Bourne, 9. Conceptual Pragmatism From Lewis to Davidson, 10. The European Reception Revisited, 11. The Neopragmatism of Richard Rorty, 12. Hilary Putnam: Philosophy with a Human Face, 13. Susan Haack: Reclaiming Pragmatism, 14. Legal Pragmatism, 15. Prophetic Pragmatism and Feminist Inspirations, 16. Pragmatism and the End(s) of Philosophy
