Todd Suomela's Library tagged pragmatism →  View Popular

If "pragmatic" is the highest praise one can offer in DC these days,
"ideological" is perhaps the sharpest slur. And it is by this twisted
logic that the crimes of the Bush cabinet are laid at the feet of the
blogosphere, that the sins of Paul Wolfowitz end up draped upon the
slender shoulders of Dennis Kucinich.

But privileging pragmatism over ideology, while perhaps understandable
in the wake of the Bush years, misses the point. For one thing, as Glenn
Greenwald has astutely pointed out on his blog, while ideology can lead
decision-makers to ignore facts, it is also what sets the limiting
conditions for any pragmatic calculation of interests.

Principle is often pragmatism's guardian.
Particularly at times of crisis, when a polity succumbs to collective
madness or delusion, it is only the obstinate ideologues who refuse to
go along. Expediency may be a virtue in virtuous times, but it's a vice
in vicious ones.

There's another problem with the fetishization of the pragmatic, which
is the brute fact that, at some level, ideology is inescapable. Obama
may have told Steve Kroft that he's solely interested in "what works,"
but what constitutes "working" is not self-evident and, indeed, is
impossible to detach from some worldview and set of principles. Alan
Greenspan, of all people, made this point deftly while testifying before
Henry Waxman's House Oversight Committee. Waxman asked Greenspan, "Do
you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish
you had not made?" To which Greenspan responded, "Well, remember that
what an ideology is, is a conceptual framework with the way people deal
with reality. Everyone has one. You have to--to exist, you need an
ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not."

Analytical, neo- and other pragmatists (1950-)




(Often labelled neopragmatism as well.)



• Willard van Orman Quine (1908-2000): pragmatist philosopher, concerned with language, logic, and philosophy of mathematics.
• Clarence Irving Lewis (1883-1964).
• Richard Rorty (1931 - 2007): famous author of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.
• Hilary Putnam: in many ways the opposite of Rorty and thinks classical pragmatism was too permissive a theory.
• Stanley Fish: Literary and Legal Studies pragmatist. Criticizes Rorty's and Posner's legal theories as "almost pragmstism"^[3] and authored the afterword in the collection The Revival of Pragmatism^[4].
• Richard Shusterman: philosopher of art.
• Mike Sandbothe: Applied Rorty's neopragmatism to media studies and developed a new branch that he called Media Philosophy. Together with authors like Juergen Habermas, Hans Joas, Sami Pihlstroem, Mats Bergmann, Michael Esfeld and Helmut Pape he belongs to a group of European Pragmatists who make use of Peirce, James, Dewey, Rorty, Brandom, Putnam and other representatives of American pragmatism in continental philosophy.
• Stephen Toulmin: student of Wittgenstein, known especially for his The Uses of Argument.
• John Hawthorne: Defends a pragmatist form of contextualism to deal with the lottery paradox in his Knowledge and Lotteries.
• Jason Stanley: Defends a pragmatist form of contextualism against semantic varieties of contextualism in his Knowledge and Practical Interest.
• Arthur Fine: Philosopher of Science who proposed the Natural Ontological Attitude to the debate of scientific realism.
• Joseph Margolis still proudly defends the original Pragmatists and sees his recent work on Cultural Realism as extending and deepening their insights, especially the contribution of Peirce and Dewey, in the context of a rapprochement with Continental philosophy.

Neoclassical pragmatists (1950-)




Neoclassical pragmatists stay closer to the project of the classical pragmatists than neopragmatists do.



• Sidney Hook (1902-1989): a prominent New York intellectual and philosopher, a student of Dewey at Columbia.
• Isaac Levi (1930): seeks to apply pragmatist thinking in a decision-theoretic perspective.
• Susan Haack (1945): teaches at the University of Miami, sometimes called the intellectual granddaughter of C.S. Peirce, known chiefly for foundherentism.
• Larry Hickman: philosopher of technology and important Dewey scholar as head of the Center for Dewey Studies.
• David Hildebrand: like other scholars of the classical pragmatists, Hildebrandt is dissatisfied with neopragmatism and argues for the continued importance of the writings of John Dewey.
• Nicholas Rescher