Classical American Pragmatism

En este artículo expongo cómo la filosofía trascendental
kantiana utiliza la figura de las analogías de la experiencia como una
forma de interpretación normativa y pragmática de las condiciones a
priori del conocimiento. Dichas condiciones, no sólo se manifiestan en
la constitución de nuestros juicios sintéticos acerca de los fenómenos
empíricos; sino que también posibilitan la construcción de las ciencias
naturales mismas, como la Física. Al final de esta exposición señalo
que esta interpretación normativa y pragmática es esencial para la
filosofía trascendental en tanto, que sólo así, es posible la
fundamentación metafísica de las leyes newtonianas.

It is argued here that James’s notorious pessimism about logic and even truth (or at least ‘absolute’ truth), while most prominent in his later views, stem from the naturalistic conception of concepts developed much earlier in The Principles of Psychology, and it is his commitment to naturalism about our conceptual powers, rather than to any sort of mysticism or irrationalism, that motivates his skepticism about the scope and power of logic, and ultimately about the objectivity of truth itself.

Der Pragmatismus zählt als eines der bedeutsamsten Theorieparadigmen der Philosophie des einundzwanzigsten Jahrhunderts sowie als eine der wirkkräftigsten Perspektiven der gegenwärtigen philosophischen Forschung. Das Proseminar bietet eine Einführung in den Begriff des Pragmatismus an mit besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Rolle in der Werkentwicklung John Deweys. Das Werk Deweys spannt nicht weniger als sieben Jahrzehnte um und befasst sich mit allen klassischen Teildisziplinen des Philosophierens sowie mit der Pädagogik und der Psychologie; eher als durch eigenständigen Systembau entwickelt es sich durch eine stetige kritische Auseinandersetzung mit vergangenen und zeitgenössischen Denkweisen. Daher darf es auch nicht überraschend sein, dass die Haltung Deweys selbst zum Pragmatismus im stetigen Wandel begriffen war und vielleicht auch unentschieden blieb. Im Seminar wird der Versuch unternommen, die pragmatistische „Mentalität“ (James) als Reaktion auf bestimmte philosophische, wissenschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Probleme zu begreifen.

This class, introducing students to the pragmatist tradition and to neo-pragmatism, turned out unexpectedly: students knew so little of the history of modern philosophy that  it was necessary to include  summaries of. e.g., Descartes' approach.  One of the term papers in this class, by the way, was subsequently published in the Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society.

Everyday experience indicates that when we reason intelligently about how to craft a democratic process, which treats persons as "free and equal," we reason about procedures, virtues, and cultural practices in conjunction. This suggests that normative democratic theory should aid us in so reasoning. Yet, the prominent theories of Robert Dahl, Jürgen Habermas, and Joshua Cohen push us away from this recognition. The explanation for this concerns the procedural minimalism that characterizes each theory and the tenuous relationship each has to empirical inquiry. These criticisms point toward an attractive account of the status and function of normative democratic theory in democratic practice: such theory should emerge out of lived experience with the values of "free" and "equal" treatment and should guide inquiry into the procedures, virtues, and cultural practices that, in some particular context, are most apt to promote those values. The argument appropriates two ideas from John Dewey. First, our moral or ethical theories should offer interpretations of relevant aspects of "moral or ethical experience," based on observation of humans as they pursue certain values in their actions. Second, we should treat these theories as "tools" for practical reasoning, which function to extend the goods that inhere in the relevant kinds of experience.

Dewey’s social ontology could be characterized as a habit ontology, an ontology of habit qua second nature that offers us an account of intentionality, social statuses, institutions, and norms in terms of habituations. Such an account offers us a promising alternative to contemporary intentionalist and deontic approaches to social ontology such as Searle’s. Furthermore, it could be the basis of a social ontology better suited to explain both the maintenance and the transformation of social reality.
In the first part I will characterize Dewey’s model as a social ontology based on the notion of habit, and present it as an alternative to intentionalist approaches to social reality. In the second part I will argue that habit ontology offers us an account of social norms that is based on a peculiar understanding of the notion of ‘status’, and represents an alternative to deontic accounts. In the third part I will claim that Dewey’s notion of “public” offers us a dynamic understanding of social institutions and a ‘reactive’ notion of collective intentionality as an achievement rather than as a presupposition of social practices. In the final section I will summarize some advantages of the Deweyan over the Searlean social ontology concerning our understanding of acceptance, maintenance and transformation of statuses, and of the role played by the ‘background’.

Peirce's account of the Self shows some of the main critics to the classical, cartesian, substantial conception. Peirce's conception of the Self is social and historical, it rejects any form of intuition and is based on a fallibilist epistemology. Following the stages of the development of the Self, Peirce shows that it emerges as a subject of error, and therefore it can exist only in a social context, in a linguistic community.

In this contribution I outline some ideas on what the pragmatist model of habit ontology could offer us as regards the appreciation of the constitutive role that imagery plays for social action and cognition. Accordingly, a Deweyan understanding of habit would allow for an understanding of imagery in terms of embodied cognition rather than in representational terms. I first underline the motor character of imagery, and the role its embodiment in habit plays for the anticipation of action. Secondly, I reconstruct Dewey's notion of imaginative rehearsal in light of contemporary, competing models of intersubjectivity such as embodied simulation theory and the narrative practice hypothesis, and argue that the Deweyan model offers us a more encompassing framework which can be useful for reconciling these approaches. In this text I am mainly concerned with sketching a broad picture of the lines along which such a project could be developed. For this reason not all questions are given equal attention, and I shall concentrate mainly on the basic ideas, without going directly into the details of many of them.

Tracing the associations between artists, planners and engineers with and within the materials of our environment, this book introduces the relational theory of ‘art worlding’ as a way of coming to know our organic continuity.

Through a series of ‘sculptural’ ethnographies of the making and doing of
art in urban and rural contexts, the author re-orientates the art-planning relationship in recognition of art practice as a mode if inquiry and way of knowing.

Methodologically innovative, the book traces public art as practice and integrates
artistic practice within planning research. Inspired by the classical pragmatism of John Dewey the fieldwork illuminates the opportunity afforded by the art planning relationship in understanding relational continuity at differing scales. It introduces a new paradigm for the field of public art and for art and planning practice more broadly. Art Worlding: Planning Relations will appeal to sociologists and social anthropologists with interests in art, as well as artists and art scholars, and those working in the fields of urban and rural planning, urban regeneration, art and ecology, curating, public art, and cultural management.

Approaching Christian education in light of Charles Sanders Peirce’s Classical Pragmatism can help catechists make Christian tradition more intelligible to present-day North Americans; it can provide them with a rich framework for pedagogical practices; and it can help them offer a compelling vision of deeper participation in the Trinitarian life of God. A Peircean pedagogy of religious education emphasizes attentiveness, discernment, creativity, artistry, and the key role of the Holy Spirit.

Many scholars believe "On a New List of Categories" is a metaphysical or transcendental deduction. The present essay will argue that Peirce derives the categories by induction and validates their order by prescision. Then the article shall solicit aid from Peirce's early and later writings to explain how the new way to list the categories can serve as a genealogy of signifi cation: how the diff erent types of term, proposition, and argument emerge in the process of reasoning as the diff erent types of signs. Thus, the genealogy of signifi cation would then qualify as a phenomenology of logic as a science of semiotics. Such a science of semiotics will have three types of comparison corresponding to the sign-relation in illation: namely, uniparance, diaparance, and comparance. Then the three types of comparison will occasion three types of relative in diff erent types of propositions: namely, concurrents, disquiparants, and equiparants. Finally, the three types of relative will occasion the diff erent types of sign corresponding to the diff erent types of term: namely, icons, indices, and symbols. With this classifi cation, there is then an explanation of how the process of reasoning is a semiotic process with three forms of valid argument: namely, hypothesis, induction, and deduction.

This conversation between Peirce and Rorty is compiled entirely from their own words. It covers almost every area of philosophy; and it is very funny, showing (what could not within the bounds of academic politeness be said) that Peirce's philosophy is far deeper and far broader than Rorty's vulgar Pragmatism.

Originally published in Agora (1997) and then in  Partisan Review (1998), this conversation has been reprinted many times. It has also been performed at least twice, once, in English, as after-dinner entertainment at a meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (Haack dressedup as Peirce!); and once in Spanish at the University of Granada.

Buck, Christopher. “Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism.” Search for Values: Ethics in Baha’i Thought. Edited by Seena Fazel and John Danesh. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2004. Pp. 94–158.

African American philosopher Alain Locke is arguably the most profound and important Western Bahá’í philosopher to date. Except for one 1979 article in a Bahá’í periodical, scholarship on Locke has neither seriously taken into account his Bahá’í identity nor the Faith’s influence on his work. The present study, based largely on archival sources, contributes to research on this “missing” dimension of Locke’s complex life and thought. It examines Locke’s worldview as a Bahá’í, his secular perspective as a philosopher, and the synergy between his confessional and professional essays. This study also argues that Locke had a fluid hierarchy of values—of loyalty, tolerance, reciprocity, cultural relativism and pluralism (the philosophical equivalent of “unity in diversity”)—and that this hierarchy represents a progression and application of quintessentially Bahá’í ideals. Locke’s distinction as a “Bahá’í philosopher” may therefore be justified on ideological as well as historical grounds. Locke “translated” Bahá’í ideals “into more secular terms” so that “a greater practical range will be opened up for the application and final vindication of the Bahá’í principles” in order to achieve “a positive multiplication of spiritual power.”

The reception of classical American pragmatism by the Frankfurt School began with a critical confrontation with John Dewey. It then left Dewey behind, as Jürgen Habermas, following Karl-Otto Apel, took Charles Sanders Peirce and George Herbert Mead to be philosophers of “communicative Reason.” In recent years, the focus has turned back to Dewey, who is now appreciated as a critical social philosopher in his own right. 
One reason for the constant confrontation of critical theorists with the works of the pragmatists can be found in their shared intellectual roots. Another one lies in their common orientation towards social transformation. Nevertheless, a serious discussion between pragmatism and critical theory still poses major challenges for those involved today.
In what follows, I will first briefly map the common intellectual roots of these two habits of thought (I). Thereafter, I will, a little less briefly, tell the story of the reception of pragmatism in Frankfurt School critical theory as a family drama in five acts (II). At the end, we will find the house still divided; I will then ask why this must be so and whether that is not a philosophically happy ending in that it points to new adventures, which are for us to traverse (III).

Christopher Buck, Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2005. Pub date: July 3, 2005. ISBN-13: 978-1890688387. ISBN-10: 189068838X. L

In print. (Order from Kalimat Press: http://www.kalimat.com/Locke.html.)

REVIEWS
•  Derik Smith. World Order 38.3 (2006/2007): 42–48. (Published in 2008.): ”Christopher Buck’s recent book, Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy, is a welcome addition to the literature on early twentieth-century American and African American culture. But, perhaps more important, Buck’s study is a significant contribution to scholarship on the history of the Bahá’í Faith in the United States. … Any future study of Locke must necessarily make its way through Christopher Buck’s Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy. The scholar forcefully proves his thesis that, in Locke’s thinking, philosophy and religious belief operated as synergistic terms. He has shown that the Bahá’í Faith was integral to Locke’s life and ideology. …  Yet, after reading Buck’s work, it is difficult to imagine Locke the philosopher rapt in prayer. Of course, this is not a shortcoming of the book. Rather it is an indication that, while he may have wanted to portray a more pious figure, Buck maintains the vow he made in his introduction to Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy “to constrain any grandiose claims on Locke as a Bahá’í.”

• M. Anthony Fitchue. Journal of African American History 92.1 (Winter 2007): 131–133: “But the jewels in this book are unmistakable. … Clearly, Buck has given voice to the men and women who not only put the Baha’i faith first in their lives, but also left key documents, personal letters, notes, and memoranda related to the life of philosopher Alain LeRoy Locke for future researchers to ponder and use for years to come.”

• William P. Collins. Insights (Library of Congress Professional Association Newsletter) 38.1–3 (Jan–Oct 2006): 10–12: “Both of these books [Lights of the Spirit and Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy] go a long way toward correcting the historians’ failure to note the important role played by the Bahá’í Faith and prominent African-American Bahá’ís in the struggle for racial equality in the United States.”

While classical pragmatism quickly became identified with the theory of truth that dominated critical discussions of it, both of its founders, Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, understood pragmatism essentially as a method. The article compares Peirce’s conceptions of pragmatism with James’s view that the pragmatic method would allow us to resolve many disputes in philosophy, and argues that their differences undermine any purely ‘Peircian’ reading of James’s Pragmatic Maxim. It then examines the advantages and drawbacks of three other readings of James’s maxim: the “activist” reading, the “subjectivist” reading, and the “practical” reading.

The existing body of scholarship on Rorty’s relation to Dewey devotes relatively little attention to the shared commitments that animate their respective projects and what they hold in common philosophically. This article aims to shift the discourse from assaying Rorty’s faithfulness to Dewey to clarifying and critically examining the differences that make a difference between their respective projects of philosophical reconstruction and democratic meliorism, in the hope of learning from mutually corrective insights and moving pragmatism beyond stale impasses. Highlighting the continuity between Rorty’s early work and later Philosophy as Cultural Politics in a commitment to a Deweyan notion of philosophy as an instrument of social change, I argue that their differences are most fruitfully understood against the backdrop of their shared attentiveness to cultural context, the sociopolitical character of philosophical inquiry, pressing issues of the day, and the need for philosophers to transcend professionalized debates.

La presente selección de textos ofrece una muestra significativa de algunos resultados de las investigaciones de largo alcance sobre el pragmaticismo del pensador y científico norteamericano Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), emprendida por expertos de reconocimiento internacional, quienes abordan los conceptos filosóficos claves que este lógico norteamericano usó, estudió, aclaró o discutió.

While many have explored the international reception of Dewey's thought-for instance, by Hu Shih in the Chinese context-little has been said about the fate of pragmatism in India. Yet there is a line of discernable influence to Indian politics and civil rights movements in the person of Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891-1956). Ambedkar was highly educated in the West, earning degrees from universities in America and England. Importantly for the fate of pragmatism in India, one of the academic mentors that made a significant impact on Ambedkar during his education at Columbia University (1913-1916) was John Dewey.  The story of the specifics of this influence, however, has yet to be told. How has Dewey mattered for Ambedkar’s complex and creative thought? What has Ambedkar done to the tradition of pragmatism in his Indian context to change it, and to show its potentialities in dealing with caste oppression and other sources of injustice?

https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/pluralist/article/17/1/15/294093/Recovering-the-Story-of-Pragmatism-in-India

"Peter Hare, Michel Weber, James K. Swindler, Oana-Maria Pastae, Cerasel Cuteanu (eds.), International Perspectives on Pragmatism, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009 (ISBN 978-1-4438-0194-2).
Foreword
Introduction: Modernity between humanism and crisis; towards pragmatism and liberalism by overcoming tradition
JASON JORDAN- On Human Dignity: The Testament of the Two Humanisms
MIHAELA STEFANESCU - Aspects of the crisis of the West
Part I: Practical Politics
NAOMI ZACK- Social Contract Theory and Disaster Preparation: The Importance of Including Civilians
HORST FREYHOFER - Libertarianism: Old Recipe for a New America?
SIMON GLYNN - Democracy, liberalism and freedom
LINDA SIMON - William James and the Haymarket Affair: A case study of pragmatic
politics
JANE SKINNER - Pragmatism and Political Practice: a Developing Country Perspective
MARJORIE O’LOUGHLIN - The values and practices of democracy in Deweyan pragmatism: a brief exploration
JASON D. HILL - The Right to Permanent Residency as a Human Right: A Kantian Inquiry
MICHEL WEBER - Pragmatic Anarchy in A. N. Whitehead
Part II: Democratic Theory
J.K. SWINDLER - Rationalist Grounds for Pragmatist Democracy
VASIL GLUCHMAN - Humanity and Moral Duty: Contexts with Rorty’s Ideas
SUSANA DE CASTRO - The Rortyan concept of justice as a 'larger loyalty'
MICHAEL HODGES - Rorty on Democracy and Justification
CERASEL CUTEANU - Contemporary Society under the tyranny of a Democracy of the Truth
JON MAHONEY - Pragmatism and Human Rights
MARTA GLUCHMANOVA – Teacher, democratic values and methods (Dewey and his philosophy of education)
NED MCCLENNEN -  A Pragmatic Defense of Justice

Part III: Art and Culture

OTILIA SIMION - Totalitarianism in Literature
KRYSTYNA WILKOSZEWSKA - Community of Art
PETER H. HARE - Comments and Queries: Krystyna Wilkoszewska's "Community and Art"
"

Did the pragmatic turn encompass the linguistic turn in the history of philosophy? Or was the linguistic turn a turn away from pragmatism? Some commentators identify the so-called “eclipse” of pragmatism by analytic philosophy, especially during the Cold War era, as a turn away from pragmatist thinking. However, the historical evidence suggests that this narrative is little more than a myth. Pragmatism persisted, transforming into a more analytic variety under the influence of Quine and Putnam and, more recently, a continental version in the hands of Richard Rorty and Cornel West. In this paper, I argue that proof of the linguistic turn’s presence as a moment in a broader pragmatic turn in philosophy can be garnered from close examination of a single article, W. V. O. Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” and a single issue: whether the analytic-synthetic distinction is philosophically defensible.

Pragmatism has been called "the chief glory of our country's intellectual tradition" by its supporters and "a dog's dinner" by its detractors. While acknowledging pragmatism's direct ties to American imperialism and expansionism, Chad Kautzer, Eduardo Mendieta, and the contributors to this volume consider the role pragmatism plays, for better or worse, in current discussions of nationalism, war, race, and community. What can pragmatism contribute to understandings of a diverse nation? How can we reconcile pragmatism's history with recent changes in the country's racial and ethnic makeup? How does pragmatism help to explain American values and institutions and fit them into new national and multinational settings? The answers to these questions reveal pragmatism's role in helping to nourish the fundamental ideas, politics, and culture of contemporary America. Contributors include Mitchel Aboulafia, James Bohman, Robert Brandom, David Kim, Eduardo Mendieta, Lucius T. Outlaw, Jr., Max Pensky, Richard Rorty, Tommie Shelby, Shannon Sullivan, Robert Westbrook, and Cynthia Willett.

Christopher Buck, “Alain Locke: Baha’i Philosopher.” Baha’i Studies Review 10 (2001/2002): 7–49. 

ABSTRACT

African American philosopher Alain Locke is arguably the most profound and important western Bahá’í philosopher to date. Except for Ernest Mason’s 1979 World Order article, scholarship on Locke has neither seriously taken into account his Bahá’í identity nor its influence on his work. The present study, based largely on archival sources, will contribute to research on this “missing” dimension of Locke’s complex life and thought. This study examines Locke’s worldview as a Bahá’í, his secular perspective as a philosopher, and the synergy between his confessional and professional essays. This study also argues that Locke had a fluid hierarchy of values—of loyalty, tolerance, reciprocity, cultural relativism and pluralism (the philosophical equivalent of “unity in diversity”)—and that this hierarchy represents a progression and application of quintessentially Bahá’í ideals. Locke’s distinction as a “Bahá’í philosopher” may therefore be justified on ideological as well as historical grounds. Locke “translated” Bahá’í ideals “into more secular terms” so that “a greater practical range will be opened up for the application and final vindication of the Bahá’í principles” in order to achieve “a positive multiplication of spiritual power.”

The relationship of Frankfurt school critical theory to classical American pragmatism has always been ambivalent. This ambivalence gives the story of debates between the critical theorists a continuity that transcends the generation gaps in the Frankfurt school. The attitude of critical theorists towards classical American pragmatism has been characterized by two prejudices: The first is that pragmatism is uncritical as it takes critique to be immanent to experience; according to the second, pragmatism is a variant of non- or post-metaphysical thinking, although all classical pragmatists were involved in metaphysical speculation and published metaphysical treatises. However, both points are controversial within the Frankfurt school itself.

Read throughout the world, H. G. Wells was one of the most famous political thinkers in the early twentieth century. During the early 1900s he elaborated a bold, idiosyncratic, and controversial cosmopolitan socialist vision. In this article I offer a new reading of Wells’s political thought. I argue that he developed a distinctive pragmatist philosophical orientation, which he synthesised with his commitments to evolutionary theory. His pragmatism had four main components: a nominalist metaphysics; a verificationist theory of truth; a Jamesian “will to believe”; and a vision of philosophy as an exercise oriented to improving practice. His political thought was shaped by this philosophical orientation. Wells, I contend, was the most high-profile pragmatist political thinker in the opening decades of the twentieth century. Such an understanding requires a re-evaluation of both Wells and the history of pragmatism.

This book is an edited collection of essays made by undergraduate and postgraduate students and lecturers of education, particularly reflecting the experiences and thoughts that developed sparked by a series of lectures and readings on Pragmatist Epistemology given by Paniel Reyes-Cárdenas. The essays explore different routes of application and action that are released after considering the thoughts of the classical pragmatists: Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, Josiah Royce, Jane Addams, and George Herbert Mead.

Prof. Haack answers a series of questions on pragmatism, beginning with the origins of this tradition in the work of Peirce and James, its evolution in the work of Dewey and Mead, and its influence beyond the United States in, for example, the Italian pragmatists and the radical British pragmatist F. C. S. Schiller. Classical pragmatism, she observes, is a rich and varied tradition from which there is still much to be learned—as the many ways her own work in logic, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of law has been informed by the old pragmatists testify. Of late, however, this tradition has been misunderstood, impoverished, and vulgarized by self-styled neo-pragmatists; here, Haack turns her attention specifically to the conception of pragmatism as essentially a political philosophy, and the near-vacuous equation of pragmatism with " problem-solving. "

This paper was written in 2009, for a volume the editor of which became incommunicado before it ever appeared; so is now published, in Tabriz, Iran, for the first time!

Keywords:
Peirce;semeiosis;semiotics;phenomenology;pragmatism;learning;philosophy of education

Abstract
The later works of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1913) offer an extended metaphor of mind and a rich conception of the dynamics of knowledge and learning. After a ‘rhetorical turn’ Peirce develops his early ‘semiotics’ into a more general theory of sign and sign use, while integrating his pragmatism, phenomenology, and semiotics. Therefore, in this article I bring Peirce's notion of semiosis—the sign's action—to the forefront. In doing so, I hope to disclose how Peirce's rhetorical turn not only opens up towards a richer conception of the dynamics of knowledge and learning, but also invites a shift of perspective from the psychological processes of learning to the semeiotic processes that characterizes the very dynamics of knowledge production.

Minor dissertation on Charles S. Peirce's account of truth, his view of science and it's possible implications por ethics.

ÍNDICE

Tabla de abreviaturas…………………………………………….. vii
Introducción………………………………………………………. ix

Capítulo I. Verdad e hipótesis verdaderas en Peirce…………… 1
1. Peirce y la Teoría del Conocimiento……………………….. 2
2. Quién es Charles S. Peirce…………………………………. 16
3. Qué es el pragmatismo……………………………………... 25
4. Qué es una hipótesis verdadera…………………………….. 38

Capítulo II. La vida científica y la verdad………………………. 65
1. Ciencia, creencias e investigación en Peirce……………….. 66
2. La concepción peirceana de la verdad……………………... 105
3. La ampliación de la razonabilidad…………………………. 161

Capítulo III. La ética según Peirce………………………………. 165
1. ¿Qué es una ética pragmatista?........................................... 172
2. La ética como ciencia normativa…………………………... 182
3. Aprendida o instintiva: ética y moral………………………. 199
4. Consecuencias para una ética del intelecto………………… 223

Conclusiones………………………………………………………. 229
Bibliografía………………………………………………………... 239

These essays, highly unfashionable in their time, represent Haack's response against postmodernist, radical feminist, neo-pragmatist, and other extravagances. "Better ostracism than ostrichism," Haack writes. Economist Robert L. Heilbroner, writing of this book, describes Haack as having "a wicked wit, a kindly heart, and a passion for clarity..."

Public administrators are often described as pragmatic. Yet few scholars have investigated what this might mean. This article introduces the notion of policy imprint-the effect that professional groups have on policy. Pragmatism is championed as an organizing principle that explains the public administration (PA) policy imprint. The pragmatism of William James and John Dewey is described and applied to PA. Because PA leaves its imprint where theory and practice meet, the article examines the theory-practice nexus through the lenses of pragmatism. Finally, pragmatism's link to democracy is developed.

The power of Theatre of the Oppressed and other embodied critical pedagogies is best understood though Pragmatist semiotics, which refines and transforms "hermeneutical" models of method in Practical Theological. Explorations in classroom and parish-based ministry suggest how Pragmatist semiotics can make faith discourse more accessible and more responsive to crises of today.

Il libro di Vismara Currò attraversa la storia della filosofia occidentale nella sua interezza. Lo scopo è sovvertire le letture storiografiche tradizionali che la interpretano come un’eterna dialettica tra Razionalismo ed Empirismo. Secondo l’autore il Pragmatismo non è una corrente di pensiero sorta in America alla fine dell’Ottocento, bensì un vero e proprio paradigma filosofico dotato di una sua storia e di un suo sviluppo che non sono ancora stati colti nella loro continuità. Questa tesi sarebbe di per sé già sufficiente a porre in discussione interi capitoli di opere storiografiche contemporanee e ad alimentare il dibattito accademico sulle (tanto contese) origini della filosofia analitica. Ma l’analisi non si ferma al Novecento. La consapevolezza dell’esistenza di tale paradigma pragmatistico si pone come la base per una radicale rilettura della storia del pensiero occidentale, nonché per una nuova indagine sull’origine delle principali tematiche filosofiche del Novecento, in esplicita polemica con le ricostruzioni oggi vigenti.

Haack teaches epistemology in not-quite-the-usual way. first, her approach is historical; second, it is classical-pragmatist in tone and tenor. nonetheless she also covers most of the topics in contemporary analytic epistemology (context, virtues, etc.) as well.

Readers may be amused to see that Haack's fall semester is, as so often, interrupted by a hurricane!