This essay examines the provenance of a single, curious term that William James often used in connection with his own pragmatism. The term is Denkmittel, an uncommon German contraction of Denk and Mittel. James’s Central European sources for this now forgotten bit of philosophical jargon provide a small illustration of a bigger historical point that too often gets obscured. Pragmatism—James’s pragmatism, at least—was both allied with and inspired by a broader sweep of scientific instrumentalism that was already flourishing in fin (...) de siècle European philosophy. (shrink)

Teresa Brennan was born in 1952 in Australia and died in South Florida, following a hit-and-run car accident in December 2002. In the ten years between her doctorate and her death, Brennan published five monographs, the most famous posthumously. The Transmission of Affect begins with a question that readers often remember: “Is there anyone who has not, at least once, walked into a room and ‘felt the atmosphere’?” Here and throughout her work, Brennan challenges the self-contained subject of Western modernity, (...) whose affects are presumed to be possessions of that self, underscoring the historical emergence of this egoic construction.I never met Teresa Brennan; I did not know her name until a decade after she... (shrink)

In a 2006 interview, Bruno Latour, distancing himself from the French philosopher Alain Badiou, casually remarks, “I’m the only French pragmatist, so it winds up that I have absolutely no contact with the French”. Latour’s remark is curious insofar as the work performed by the coupling reveals his own dissociation of French philosophy with pragmatism. If Latour is French, he cannot possibly be a pragmatist, but if he is a pragmatist, he cannot possibly be French, so better to refer to (...) himself by this new hybrid, “French pragmatist.”Perhaps it is not so peculiar for Latour to describe himself as a “pragmatist,” since references to classical pragmatist figures like William James and John... (shrink)

Polytheism is a strange view to hold in modernity. Connected as it is in the popular imagination with archaic, animistic, magical, prescientific systems of thought, we don’t hesitate much before casting it into the dustbin of history. Even if we are not monotheists, we are likely to think of monotheism as the obviously more plausible position. The traditional arguments for the existence of God, which have been enormously influential in Western philosophy of religion, do not necessarily rule out polytheism but (...) they are clearly formulated with monotheism in mind. While there could be multiple first causes, intelligent designers, or beings than which nothing greater can be conceived, the simplest and most natural... (shrink)

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)

Enactive theory seems to be reaching a critical juncture in its evolution, as it expands beyond cognitive science to include a project that Shaun Gallagher has called “new naturalism”: a “phenomenologized” reconstruction of nature, directed by a distinctive view of experience that is itself a product of “naturalized phenomenology.” This article aims to contribute to conversations about how to move forward with this project by highlighting important parallels between the trajectory of enactive theory and the early history of pragmatism. Pragmatism (...) was first developed by Peirce, James, and Dewey out of a distinctive view of experience that strongly resembles that of enactive theory. Then, during the first third of the twentieth century, pragmatism evolved into a philosophy of nature and played a leading role in a reconstructive project much like the “new naturalism” proposed by Gallagher and others. Around midcentury, however, this project was largely abandoned as philosophers turned to problems of more limited scope. This history raises crucial questions for proponents of enactive “new naturalism”: Why did the pragmatist version of this project fail to achieve its aims? And how will it be different this time? (shrink)

In this essay I examine the contributions of the pragmatist tradition to the philosophy of ethnicity. From the pragmatist philosophies of Dewey and Locke I derive a reconstructive model for the clarification and improvement of the life experiences of ethnic groups. Addressing various problems and objections, I argue that this Deweyan and Lockean reconstructive model rejects any sharp separation between race and ethnicity and avoids the pitfalls of the biologist race paradigm and the culturalist ethnicity paradigm. I explore some of (...) the social and political implications of this reconstructive model through a discussion of José Martí's inspiring account of Hispanic identity. (shrink)

In the division between analytic and continental thought, pragmatism has often been cast as a middle way. Fundamentally critical of each, it also shares resonances with both of these traditions. However, while this observation is common, remarkably little has been done to examine its truth in contemporary political thought. Drawing on recent trends in political theory, including ‘New Realism’, critical genealogical methods and a surge in pragmatic approaches, this article identifies an emerging situated turn in political thought. Emerging from several (...) major traditions in contemporary political thinking, this trend has pragmatic themes at its centre. Having identified this as a fertile opportunity for inter-methodological work across the analytic/continental divide, it then turns to the late work of Richard Rorty in order to expose his productive framework for such cross-border exchanges. Arguing for its fundamentally democratic and pluralistic nature, this analysis also exposes this framework’s weaknesses before illustrating how recent methodological exchanges between genealogy and pragmatism rectify these deficiencies while providing a viable model for future work across traditional philosophical boundaries. (shrink)

According to G. E. Moore, moral expertise requires abilities of several kinds: the ability to factor judgments of right and wrong into (a) judgments of good and bad and (b) judgments of cause and effect, (2) the ability to use intuition to make the requisite judgments of good and bad, and (3) the ability to use empirical investigation to make the requisite judgments of cause and effect. Moore’s conception of moral expertise is thus extremely demanding, but he supplements it with (...) some very simple practical guidance. (shrink)

“The world is,” William James notes, “full of partial stories that run parallel to one another, beginning and ending at odd times. They mutually interlace and interfere at points, but we cannot unify them completely in our minds”. As a radical empiricist, he takes there to be more to experience than any of our stories or other forms of account can ever capture. Here as everywhere else, “ever not quite” and “ever not yet” qualify even our master strokes. As a (...) radical pluralist, accordingly, he takes these partial stories to be the best we can ever do. The plurality of narratives can never all be gathered into our hands and woven into a fully coherent metanarrative or even an all-inclusive story. Loose... (shrink)

When the Bible salesman is invited to stay for dinner, Hulga Hopewell immediately recognizes the young man sitting across the table from her as something true to type, a pitiable exemplar of those her mother would classify as "good country people," which happens to be the title of Flannery O'Connor's 1955 short story where this scene takes place (see 1978). 1 Hulga's assessment of Manley Pointer is a preliminary judgment and as such is not particularly perceptive. It signifies what John (...) Dewey calls "recognition," which is "a beginning of an act of perception" cut short, or "perception arrested before it has a chance to develop freely" (2005, 54). Unlike mere recognition, perception requires the work of .. (shrink)