ABSTRACT
In Chapter 4, I discussed the pragmatist philosophy of Nicholas Rescher and distinguished it from verificationism and from the social constructivism of Richard Rorty. Of course, the question of what counts as pragmatism could lapse into a mere verbal dispute, and the issue of how contemporary approaches claiming, or being accorded that description relate to the positions of the historical pragmatists, C.S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey, as well as the question of how their outlooks relate to one another, are matters of philosophical interpretation and debate. Yet there are certain themes concerning the purposes of philosophy and the nature of reason and justification that are recurrent among the historical figures and which have been picked up in the last few decades by leading contemporary thinkers. One such is Hilary Putnam. Like Nicholas Rescher, and again like Michael Dummett, Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, among all of whose work there are certain affinities of interest and argument, Putnam has been increasingly drawn to thinking and writing about religious belief and practice. The title of this chapter is intended to recall that of Putnam’s engaging and
important book Reason, Truth and History, and later I shall consider some of the ideas presented there and in his subsequent writings such as Realism with a Human Face.2 I also wish to discuss certain assumptions operative in a short but incisive work by the late Ernest Gellner entitled Postmodernism, Reason and Religion.3 As will emerge, there are interesting points of contact between the views of these authors and I believe it may be profitable to examine some of them. More positively, I want to urge the claims of a view still held (often tacitly) by many scholars and researchers in the humanities and in the natural sciences but
frequently attacked by revisionary philosophers and cultural theorists; a view which might be described as ‘non-reductive pluralistic realism’. Finally, I shall suggest that this view should be congenial to theists, for it both supports and draws support from a religious understanding of human history.
