A collection of essays on the theory of history and the theory of nature. Topics include the genetic method and historical determinism, historical decision, the nature of metaphysics, empirical pluralism and unification of nature, ways of construing mind and intelligibility, and others.

THIS VOLUME owcs its existence to the suggestion and the persuasive insistence of my friend and colleague Justus Buchler... the unpublished papers dealing with "the theory of history" and “the theory of nature” bulked large enough to form a volume in themselves. Hence the volume appears ...with [these] essays in philosophic analysis of two themes that have for some years been central in my own interests. -/- Each of the two Parts deals with a unified theme, and the two together (...) not only exhibit, it is hoped, a consistent philosophic attitude and approach, but also treat two different aspects of what is a common metaphysical inquiry. Aside from the prologue and the epilogue, none of these papers has appeared in this form before... History and nature together offer the great challenge to the philosophic mind. [Excerpt from Foreword]. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophical debates in the United States "redefining pragmatism" has become the conventional way to flag significant philosophical contests and to launch large conceptual and programmatic changes. This book analyzes the contributions of such developments in light of the classic formulations of Charles S. Peirce and John Dewey and the interaction between pragmatism and analytic philosophy. American pragmatism was revived quite unexpectedly in the 1970s by Richard Rorty's philosophical heterodoxy and his running dispute with Hilary Putnam, who, like Rorty, (...) is a professed Deweyan. Reinventing Pragmatism examines the force of the new pragmatisms, from the emergence of Rorty's and Putnam's basic disagreements of the 1970s until the turn of the century. Joseph Margolis considers the revival of a movement generally thought to have ended by the 1950s as both a surprise and a turn of great importance. The quarrel between Rorty and Putnam obliged American philosophers, and eventually Eurocentric philosophy as a whole, to reconsider the direction of American and European philosophy, for instance in terms of competing accounts of realism and naturalism. (shrink)

Pragmatism's advantage -- Reclaiming naturalism -- Vicissitudes of transcendental reason -- Pragmatism and the prospect of a rapprochement within Eurocentric philosophy.

EJPAP – This is going to be an informal conversation about the history of American philosophy, about yourself in the history of American Philosophy. Basically, we have four parts of the interview. When and how you encountered pragmatism and what interested you in it, if you think there is an American tradition of philosophy, and then about yourself in this tradition. And then your view about the prospect of the future, your prophecies. It is part of your profile to have (...) a clear view of the fu... (shrink)