The meaning of pragmatism as a tradition of philosophical thinking has been contested by those on the outside, and also intermurally by those within it.
I think the time has come for both sides, critics and purveyors, to move beyond the idea that "pragmatism" means "practicality." There are many linguistic landmines having to do with common usage, common sense, original usage, philosophical usage, etc. The classical pragmatists, Peirce, James, Dewey, amongst others (Schiller, Mead, etc.), surely had their reasons for using various rhetorical framings. But the core of pragmatism as it has been worked out through the years has nothing (and everything) to do with "practicality." The parenthetical is there to remind people that the classical rhetoric isn't completely worn out. The insight they had was that things only became true or false in practice. Pragmatism is the thesis that theory, thinking, metaphysics, philosophy, academics, poetry, math, education, school, business, baseball, _everything_--everything is useful if it has a use. Tautological, yes, but notice the shift in focus: truth is what works, but _what is it working --for--_? _What_ is its use? Everything is relative to a purpose. Theory and philosophy have uses. They are true, they are worth keeping, if we can figure out to what purpose that they are useful for. Pragmatism is antithetical to Kant and Plato and essentialism because they deny, not the thing-in-itself, but the _thing-for-itself_. As Pirsig taught us, everything _is_ value and value is always relative to something _valuing it_. (Pirsig's redescription of causation: B _values_ precondition A.) Pragmatism doesn't destroy philosophy, nor does it let the Nazi's win. Pragmatism is the core of Socrates' message, it cuts out the bullcrap created over the last 2500 years and gets back to the reason Socrates started up his cross-examinations in the first place: know thyself; the unexamined life is not worth living. At the core of pragmatism is the call to examine the purposes to which we perform various activities. Know why you are doing them. If it serves no purpose, cut it out. If it does, could anything serve it better? Is the purpose it serves a good one? Might there be better purposes? Pragmatism is a return to philosophy as it should be done. Pragmatism returns us to the practice of life, to the experience of life. There are many purposes that aren't "practical," not at least to the common usage of the term. But pragmatism isn't about being practical, it is about knowing why we do things. It is about asking, "Okay, it works. But for whom?" Matt _________________________________________________________________ Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser! http://biggestloser.msn.com/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
