FROM THE PUBLISHER
"The word 'pragmatism' is used everywhere today, from business to sports to politics. Although the word hadn't yet entered everyday language when William James published Pragmatism in 1907, the philosopher believed its doctrine had virtually become common sense in twentieth-century America. For James, pragmatism was a specific philosophical alternative to essentialism and foundationalism and argued that ideas are meaningful only insofar as they have practical consequences in concrete human experience; however today pragmatism has come to denote merely a general willingness to compromise principles, even to the point of selfishness or irresponsibility. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Pragmatism is a valuable corrective to modern uses of the word, since the voice that speaks in its pages embodies precisely the opposite values from the pejorative senses the word has acquired."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
"William James may well have been born into the nineteenth century's most interesting family. His father, Henry, was the wayward son of successful Irish immigrants in New York State. William James, born in 1842, was the first in a remarkable series of children that included famous novelist Henry, Jr. In 1875 William James began teaching at Harvard, where he established the first ever psychology laboratory and in 1890 he practically invented the modern discipline of psychology in his two-volume Principles of Psychology. Shortly after this, he discovered the philosophy of Charles Renouvier and responded to his ideas about belief in a series of lectures and articles that culminated in the publication of Pragmatism in 1907."
It has been said that Pragmatism is the only philosophical school America has given the world. James is its great popularizer along perhaps with Dewey. Pragmatism in James is a ' theory of truth' which cancels common - sense correspondance theory of truth, and says that truth is the ' cash - value' of a proposition. The results of an idea or proposition in the marketplace are according to James ' its truth'. This sounds odd and in fact is certainly not what we ordinarily mean when we speak about the truth. It does make a certain sense however in trying to order the decisions of our life, and may help us in judging those beliefs we wish to hold on to.
My own sense is that this theory is pretty thin stuff, and the greater James is in the psychology of the ' Varieties of Religious Experience'
Again it seems to me that Pragmatism adds a certain element to the conception of Truth we should have, but it misses out on other crucial dimensions. There after all are truths which are painful, and truths which we do not want to know, and truths which it does not help us to know, and truths which we must grudgingly admit, and truths which do not promise to help us at all but may hurt us very much.
