Pragmatism: A Contemporary Reader

by Goodman,Russell B.

• ISBN13: 9780415909105
• ISBN10: 0415909104
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1995-09-12
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Russell Goodman examines the curious reemergence of pragmatism in a field dominated in the past decades by phenomenology, logic, positivism, and deconstruction. With contributions from major contemporary and classical thinkers such as Cornel West, Richard Rorty, Nancy Fraser, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Ralph Waldo Emerson Russell has gathered an impressive chorus of philosophical voices that reexamine the origins and complexities of neo-pragmatism. The contributors discuss the relationship between pragmatism and literary theory, phenomenology, existentialism, and the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. They question the meaning of pragmatics, what it is to be practical, and ask provocative questions such as: whatisreading? and whether or not democracy is a precondition for the functioning of intelligence. This work places this reemergent and interesting neo-development in its proper context and will provide readers with a strong sense of the movement's foundations, history, and subtlities.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction	p. 1
Circles	p. 25
How to Make Our Ideas Clear	p. 37
Pragmatism: What Pragmatism Means	p. 53
Pragmatism and Humanism	p. 65
Does Reality Possess Practical Character?	p. 79
Education as Growth	p. 93
The Contingency of Language	p. 107
Feminism and Pragmatism	p. 125
From Irony to Prophecy to Politics: A Response to Richard Rorty	p. 153
The Many Faces of Realism	p. 163
A Reconsideration of Deweyan Democracy	p. 183
Prophetic Pragmatism: Cultural Criticism and Political Engagement	p. 209
Three Parables	p. 237
What Makes an Interpretation Acceptable?	p. 253
The Reinstatement of the Vague	p. 269
Thinking of Emerson	p. 297
Selected Bibliography	p. 306
Contributors	p. 311
Index	p. 312
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