Abstract: Pragmatism involves simultaneous commitments to modes of inquiry that are philosophical and historical. This article begins by demonstrating this point as it is evidenced in the historicist pragmatisms of William James and John Dewey. Having shown that pragmatism focuses philosophical attention on concrete historical processes, the article turns to a discussion of the specific historiographical commitments consistent with this focus. This focus here is on a pragmatist version of historical inquiry in terms of the central historiographical categories of the (...) object of historical inquiry and mode of historical periodization. After describing the basic historiographical consequences of pragmatism's historicism, the article moves to a discussion of the philosophical results of this historicism. The focus here is on the role that historical inquiry can play in the general philosophical perspective of pragmatism as well as on some recent texts that exemplify the dual pragmatist commitment to philosophy and history. (shrink)

The American pragmatist John Dewey was no stranger to the problems of economics and their effects on the quality of work experience. Indeed, in his Democracy and Education (1916/1985), he remarks that “the greatest evil of the present regime is not found in poverty and in the suffering which it entails, but in the fact that so many persons have callings which make no appeal to them, which are pursued simply for the money reward that accrues” (MW 9:326–27). This was (...) not a uniquely American problem, as he continued to discuss the “problem of labor” in his lectures in China from 1919 to 1921. There his analysis of education and what it has to contribute to capitalistic economies takes on a more comparative shade .. (shrink)

Hunger seems, at first glance, to be primarily a biological state, emerging first incipiently and then with insistent, yet extremely varying, sharpness in the wide continuum of sentient and feeling beings. The pervasive lived through, but not necessarily attended to, tonus of somatic well-being is unbalanced by the experience of lack that initiates attempts to restore equilibrium in a cycle that continues until death or its equivalent. Hunger in this sense provokes appetite or appetition. It is satisfied by an appropriate (...) object or even, in extreme cases and with catastrophic consequences, inappropriate objects. Toxicity is specific to the organism. There is no guarantee that what can be ingested can be digested. .. (shrink)

One of the most vexing problems in contemporary liberal democratic theory and practice is the relation between ethics and economics. This article presents a way of bringing this relation into focus in the terms offered by two incredibly influential but too-often neglected twentieth-century political philosophers: John Dewey and Friedrich Hayek. I describe important points of contact between Dewey and Hayek that enable us to begin the project of reframing contemporary debates between ethical egalitarians and economic libertarians. Cautiously recognizing these commonalities (...) whilst remaining attentive to persisting differences enables us to better approach the difficult relations between morals and markets. Specifically, I argue for a Deweyan combination of fair trade and free trade motivated by taking seriously a Hayekian caution about states. The result is a democratic theory that importantly refuses to attribute too much political efficacy to the quintessential liberal distinction between public and private. (shrink)

The paper discusses the relation of philosophical pragmatism to empiricism as the backdrop to understanding human being. The crux of the problem is the relation between language and experience. The author argues that pragmatist empiricism is based on the concept that human practices are transactions, which includes both non-linguistic as well as linguistic practices. Within pragmatist anthropological philosophy, experience is a complex of transactions between humans and reality. Humans are both natural/physical and cultural/linguistic beings, whose living experience involves transactions with (...) both the natural and the sociocultural environment. The dualism between language and experience is false and should be abandoned. (shrink)

Peirce was a thinker who claimed that his mind had been thoroughly formed by his rigorous training in the natural sciences. But he was also the author who proclaimed that nothing is truer than true poetry. In making the case for Peirce’s relevance to issues of education, then, it is necessary to do justice to the multifaceted character of his philosophical genius, in particular, to the experimentalist cast of his mind and his profound appreciation for the aesthetic, the imaginative, and (...) (more narrowly) the metaphorical in their myriad guises. My aim in this paper is to go some distance, however small, toward doing such justice to Peirce. (shrink)

Twenty years ago, even ten years ago, one might have begun an essay about the intersection of pragmatism and rhetoric by lamenting the dearth of scholarship on the subject. Today, no such lamentations are needed. The past decade has seen an explosion of interest in the way pragmatism and rhetoric can profitably inform each other. Offering everything from formulations of pragmatist rhetorical theory (Mailloux 1998; Schollmeier 2002; Danisch 2007; Crick 2010) to explorations of pragmatist methodology in the study of rhetorical (...) texts (Stroud 2009a; Stroud 2010) to analyses of what individual pragmatists have contributed to the history of rhetoric (Asen and Brouwer 2003; Asen 2003; Finnegan 2003; Greene 2003; Stob .. (shrink)