Pragmatism is a philosophical school of thought that developed in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pragmatism, true to its name, champions only those ideas that apply practically, repudiating philosophy's reputation of being excessively idealistic and abstract. Pragmatism is a theory about meaning: the meaning of ideas lies in their consequences rather than in the ideas themselves. Included in pragmatism's approach is an openness to change and a readiness to respond to particular circumstances in which human beings are inevitably placed. Pragmatists insist on the importance of trying different methods and ways of life and then evaluating them with regard to their effectiveness. Pragmatism finds troubling philosophy's insistence on truth and certainty. Determining that we cannot solve the perennial philosophical questions and that we cannot discover the first things of human knowledge, pragmatists contend that we should not try. Pragmatism arises then to undermine the importance of these questions by focusing on the common occurrences of practical life. The philosophers Peirce, James, and Dewey compose the trio of the most notable proponents of pragmatism, and each contributed something unique to its development. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was the founder of pragmatism, but published no books and was barely recognized during his lifetime. Influenced by Kant and Scottish common sense philosophy, Peirce sought to begin theoretical inquiry with empirically verified and common experiences rather than Cartesian absolute certainty. Not until the work of philosopher and psychologist William James (1842-1910) did pragmatism begin to gain significant momentum in the philosophical world. James substantially altered Peirce's pragmatism to fit the subjectivist viewpoint: an idea's effectiveness is judged by an individual agent rather than determined objectively by a scientific community. Finally, philosopher and public intellectual John Dewey (1859-1952) elaborated and defined his own system of pragmatism, which emphasized its place in popular democracy. Pragmatism is the only original philosophical tradition that was born on American soil and so, not surprisingly, it reflects ideas implicitly accepted in the United States since the founding of this country. Because pragmatism's highest ideal is action, it corresponds with the intuitive attitude of an egalitarian nation built by immigrants eager to abandon the traditions and restricting certitudes of the old world. Europeans, accordingly, tend to look down on pragmatism as a peculiarly American ideology driven only by success. Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting America in the 1830s, saw a people who were more concerned with results than with first principles. Each man in America, Tocqueville observed, "undertakes to be sufficient unto himself and glories in the fact that his beliefs about everything are peculiar to himself. No longer do ideas but interests only form the links between men." Thus from the beginning, Americans stressed the extent to which ideas were practical. As Leo Strauss has suggested, liberal democracy gives its citizens the opportunity to pursue happiness as they perceive it, thus replacing the quest for the ideal way of life with a more realistic, if less significant, outlook. Perhaps, then, pragmatism's emergence in America was to be expected. Pragmatism witnessed something of a resurgence in the late twentieth century in what is sometimes known as neo-pragmatism. Neo-pragmatism, pointing to the definitive influence that historical context has on social ideas and practices, denies the possibility of universal truth and meaning. Neo-pragmatists include Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, and Cornel West. Both pragmatism and neo-pragmatism link truth with usefulness, which often leads critics to insist that pragmatism is inherently skeptical and relativistic. As some pragmatists contend, truth does not correspond to the way things are but exists in a relational theory of meaning that is always changing according to practical necessities of the present moment and at a particular age. Indeed, pragmatism sometimes overlaps with the theories of relativism and postmodernism. But it is important to point out that there are many different versions of pragmatism (and neo-pragmatism), some, such as Peirce's, placing the utmost importance on objectivity. And there are a number of Christian pragmatists as well who emphasize living responsibly and practically in this world. For primary sources on pragmatism, William James's best known and most influential work is Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907). A good place to start with John Dewey is the two volume The Essential Dewey (Indiana, 1998), which includes a thorough selection of his important writings. For neo-pragmatist readings, see Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, 1979) by Richard Rorty, Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge, 1981) by Hilary Putnam, and The Trouble with Principle (Harvard, 1999) by Stanley Fish. John Patrick Diggins's book The Promise of Pragmatism gives a thorough examination of pragmatism from a historical perspective. Diggins argues that pragmatism was an attempt to respond to the modern crisis of knowledge, which he describes as a series of felt absences: "knowledge without truth, power without authority, society without spirit, self without identity, politics without virtue, existence without purpose, history without meaning." Diggins contends that pragmatism's attempt to gain knowledge through experience rather than through classical notions of truth was a failure. See also Glenn Tinder's review of Diggins's book in the October 1995 issue of First Things. Alan Ryan's John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (Norton, 1995) is a sympathetic biography. The Philosophy of John Dewey, edited by Schlipp and Hahn (first published in 1939) is a useful reference for students, and is still in print from Open Court. Another anthology, Pragmatism: A Contemporary Reader, edited by Russell B. Goodman (Routledge, 1995), includes readings from nineteenth and early twentieth century sources, as well as essays by Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, Richard Poirier, and Cornel West. Two Christian critiques of pragmatism from different angles are Gordon Clark's monograph on John Dewey (recently reissued with his monograph on William James by the Trinity Foundation), and Philip E. Devine's Relativism, Nihilism, and God (Notre Dame, 1989). The Fall 2001 issue of The Hedgehog Review provides several recent articles on the state of pragmatism today and includes a helpful annotated bibliography. Following are brief descriptions of the main articles in the issue. Catherine Z. Elgin "What's the Use?" Elgin focuses on the justification for our academic, theoretical, and everyday practices. She seeks to avoid the extremities of absolutism and relativism because they are epistemologically untenable and they fail to provide proper justification for our practices. She proposes "a type of conditional justification, where the conditions under which justification obtains are reasonable, revisable, and subject to evaluation." There is no absolute grounding for why we do the things we do in medical research, say, or anthropology. Rather, justification of these discipline's procedures is internal and takes place in a particular context, a "web-like structure," where means justify ends and vice versa. We need to be continually evaluating (and re-evaluating) how successful the ends, norms, and methods of a certain practice are. We need constantly to ask "what's the use?" of a practice to be able to find some kind of justification for it—albeit not absolute justification. Linda Martin Alcoff "Reclaiming Truth Talk: Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary" As her title suggests, Alcoff wants to recover the use of truth talk while still avoiding absolute or objective truth on the one hand and a Rortyian denial of truth altogether on the other. Using a recent example from feminist historical scholarship, Alcoff argues that there is middle ground to be found in a philosophical conception of truth and she forwards Putnam's internal realism as a worthwhile explanation. Truth encompasses claims about the world and the way we represent the world. We will not arrive at a final ultimate reality but we can and should aim at the truth; we simply have to realize that we are doing the aiming. Hans Joas "Values versus Norms: A Pragmatist Account of Moral Objectivity" Joas's thesis is that values are objective and so can be reasonably communicated, but nevertheless there is a distinction between values and norms. Values are the attractive features of morality whereas norms are moral restrictions and obligations. Joas argues that Habermas misconstrues this distinction between values and norms whereas the classical pragmatists, particularly William James, understood this distinction well and insisted upon it. Joas contends that communicating about values should not involve rational persuasion but explanation, social in character and narrative in form, about emotions and experiences. John J. Stuhr "Life without Spirituality, Philosophy without Transcendence" In forwarding a "more thoroughgoing, more pluralistic, more genealogical pragmatism," Stuhr suggests that pragmatists dispense with spirituality and transendence altogether. Pragmatism traditionally has attempted to retain a watered-down transendence, relocating it within the physical world. But Stuhr suggests, as have critics of pragmatism, that this effort has been an utter failure. Stuhr believes we need to realize our embodied and temporal nature, reject the problem of the absolute versus the arbitrary, and learn to "live without living without anything."For Stuhr, spirituality exists only as a "function," i.e. saying something is spiritual is only to say that someone prefers it. Pragmatically, we simply do not need transcendence. Merold Westphal "Coping and Conversing: The Limits and Promise of Pragmatism" Seeking to avoid the extremes of a dogmatic realism and a skeptic anti-realism, Westphal holds out hope for a weak—if modified—skepticism. Dewey's pragmatism, argues Westphal, fails to tell us what to value. Instead, Westphal offers Rorty's insistence on conversation as the best way to understand knowledge. The method of conversation is a kind of epistemic modesty; it is realizing that our language is relative to ourselves and that we do not possess God's view of world. Conversation, for Westphal, means "nothing [is] precluded a priori." Westphal amends Rorty's view, however, by insisting it need not be atheistic and that it should not be wholly pragmatic. Richard V. Horner "Two Cheers for Pragmatism" Horner applauds pragmatism first for its emphasis on the practical consequences of the beliefs we hold and second for its attempt to redeem modest reason rather than modernity's infallible reason or postmodernity's no reason at all. Yet, Horner takes issue with pragmatists (such as Rorty) who, while not suffering from inconsistency, are still not taking pragmatism to its fully-realized conclusions. As Horner writes, "we are not simply looking for beliefs that will allow us to be good, but for beliefs that will lead us to be good." In an effort to provide a thorough pragmatism that establishes action-guiding beliefs, Horner concludes by suggesting that transcendence and spirituality may be the beliefs that work best. [Posted July 2003, PAR]		John Patrick Diggins, on how pragmatism fails to offer a coherent way of understanding of the world (MARS HILL AUDIO Journal, ) MHT-018.1.2