PHGA 6251 American Pragmatism: Classical and Contemporary
Dr. Judith M. Green
Spring 2007
Thursdays, 4:30–6:30

     The classical American Pragmatists – Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Jane Addams, W. E. B. DuBois, and Alain Locke – offered a critique and reconstruction of the Western philosophical tradition that had great intellectual and social impact in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, influencing contemporaries like Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, Alfred North Whitehead, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  This school of philosophical thought has returned to international influence in recent years through the work of Richard Rorty, Robert B. Brandom, Jurgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, Hillary Putnam, Ruth Anna Putnam, Richard Bernstein, John McDermott, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, John Stuhr, Leonard Harris, Vincent Colapietro, Claudine Tiercelin, Nancy Fraser, Cornel West, and others.

     Peirce and James defined “Pragmatism” as a method of resolving metaphysical disputes and a conception of truth, rather than a body of doctrines.  However, careful reading of the works of the classical American pragmatists reveals a family of interrelated research projects and many areas of overlapping agreement, including:

• critical reconstruction of dualisms of all kinds, including mind-body dualism,
• rejection of traditional substance metaphysics in favor of a realist process metaphysics,
• a future-focused, fallibilistic but non-relativistic conception of truth(s),
• a mutually educative, cooperative approach to inquiry in all intellectual fields,
• a way of analyzing semiotics as the theory and practices of interpretive communities,
• a psychological conception of self as fully social and as a stream of consciousness with “fringes” of awareness and a profound sense of “the more,” 
• an immanent, interactive conception of the divine,
• a consequence-focused approach to ethics that fosters intellectual and social democracy, appreciative openness to individual and cultural diversity, and peace-building processes that lead to dispute resolution without war.

In the first two-thirds of this seminar, we will read essays by the classical American pragmatists and their contemporary commentators expressing differing yet interlinked views on this wide range of topics.  In the final weeks, we will read influential contemporary essays that develop key ideas from the classical American Pragmatists in new directions and propose bridges to other contemporary philosophical movements, including Phenomenology, Critical Theory, and Feminism.  Seminar members will have responsibilities to lead discussions, to submit weekly “commonplace books” and commentaries on the readings (2 pp each), to develop annotated bibliographies (12 pp total), and to present conference-length papers (3500 words, 20 minutes reading time) at our concluding Seminar Symposium. This seminar will help participants to gain a critical perspective on the history of philosophy, to understand an important contemporary school of philosophical thought, and to explore the value of a pragmatist approach to philosophical problems and everyday life.

Required Texts:
 
Morris Dickstein, ed., The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).

Ruth Anna Putnam, ed., The Cambridge Companion to William James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

John J. Stuhr, ed., Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy: Essential Readings and Interpretive Essays, Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 1999).