The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture by Dickstein, Morris Dickstein (Editor), Morris Dickstein (Editor)

From the Publisher

Although long considered the most distinctive American contribution to philosophy, pragmatism-with its problem-solving emphasis and its contingent view of truth-lost popularity in mid-century after the advent of World War II, the horror of the Holocaust, and the dawning of the Cold War. Since the 1960s, however, pragmatism in many guises has again gained prominence, finding congenial places to flourish within growing intellectual movements. This volume of new essays brings together leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, social thinkers, and literary critics to examine the far-reaching effects of this revival.

As the twenty-five intellectuals who take part in this discussion show, pragmatism has become a complex terrain on which a rich variety of contemporary debates have been played out. Contributors such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Nancy Fraser, Robert Westbrook, Hilary Putnam, and Morris Dickstein trace pragmatism's cultural and intellectual evolution, consider its connection to democracy, and discuss its complex relationship to the work of Emerson, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. They show the influence of pragmatism on black intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, explore its view of poetic language, and debate its effects on social science, history, and jurisprudence. Also including essays by critics of the revival such as Alan Wolfe and John Patrick Diggins, the volume concludes with a response to the whole collection from Stanley Fish.

Including an extensive bibliography, this interdisciplinary work provides an in-depth and broadly gauged introduction to pragmatism, one that will be crucial for understanding the shape of the transformations taking place in the American social and philosophical scene at the end of the twentieth century.

Alan Ryan

Among the pleasures of the volume are some essays that stray outside the usual fare of philosophylaw and political theory....Just as pragmatists repudiated any idea that truth was a matter of our minds picturing the way the world really isso they repudiated any idea that mind was other than an aspect of our bodily selves. So do we all when we are not led astray by philosophers. —The New York Times Book Review

The New York Times Book Review - Alan Ryan

Among the pleasures of the volume are some essays that stray outside the usual fare of philosophy, law and political theory....Just as pragmatists repudiated any idea that truth was a matter of our minds picturing the way the world really is, so they repudiated any idea that mind was other than an aspect of our bodily selves. So do we all when we are not led astray by philosophers.

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