Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

This reread helped me to realize just how fundamental this book is to Richard Rorty's more recent formulation of pragmatism, and to his book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. A lot seems antiquated in James (e.g. his use of humanism as a stand in for pragmatism), but his discussion of Truth/truth, his attempts to resist charges of idealism, his approach to defining a material world that is not there to be corresponded to and that is not o be ignored except at one's own hazard, his repeated emphasis on the consequences of pragmatism are all core building blocks for Rorty (and, yes, many other neo-pragmatists).

It's easy to see how this would be so readily adopted by Dewey and other reformers, since Truth is really just a conveyance to an end. I'm not quite as critical as that might seem. James is convincing in his argument that the other philosophers rely too much on abstraction and logic, when much of that rationality becomes too unwieldy for use.

A classic. Maybe James didn't really understand C S Pierce, but he was that rare thing, a readable philosopher.

What does it mean to be a pragmatist? How come an actual attitude towards knowledge becomes a philosophical school? This is what William James develops throughout eight one hour lectures given at the Lowell Institute (Boston) in 1906.

Throughout these lectures, James explores different aspects of the pragmatic thinking, how it relates to different schools of thought and how it distinguishes itself in terms of its results. Be it in the domain of the classic philosophical disciplines, such as metaphysics or epistemology (in its striving to come up with a workable definition of truth), be it dealing with more down to earth matters, such as common sense and even religion, James guides his listeners/readers through a superbly reasoned show more journey in defense of pragmatism as a genuine philosophical school of thought worth of study and practice.

If you’re interested in learning what makes pragmatism one of the great contenders in the philosophical arena, this is an essential book, one of the best introductions to this topic. Give it a try and maybe you’ll discover how much philosophy has to offer on a practical level. show less

The is a collection of eight lectures that James gave at a university on pragmatism, a school of philosophy that accepts the validity of an idea based on its practical uses and applications for humanity. I picked out a handful of interesting ideas from this collection, but I struggled with it overall. I’m not sure if I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for something this serious right now or if it was just too dense for me in general, although I suspect it was some of both.

I can’t “rate” this book because I only understood a tiny fraction of it. It’s a series of 8 lectures, and I had the impression it was not delivered to professional philosophers or even to philosophy students - but the attendees must have been quite well educated if they had any chance of comprehending the lectures. The book was published in 1907 but I think the lectures may have been given several years before that. Anyway, I “read” the book in some sense but vast portions were completely meaningless to me. Oh well. I’m really fascinated by philosophy, but so much of it is impenetrable for me.

Pragmatism is an okay philosophy. When espoused by Pierce. Not so much by James.