ABSTRACT

Enduring movements in the history of philosophy often owe their influence not to their core doctrines, but rather to the distinctive vision of philosophy they embody. This chapter discusses the ways in which pragmatism, in both its classical and some of its current varieties, invites an especially potent version of the metaphilosophical antimony. It provides a survey of the place of metaphilosophy in the classical pragmatists; it shows that the progression from Peirce to James and Dewey manifests an increasingly robust role for metaphilosophy, and this "metaphilosophical creep" is naturally accompanied by increasing pressure from the antinomy. In response to this pressure, more recent pragmatisms have faced a dilemma of either abandoning the robust metaphilosophical commitments central to Deweyan pragmatism, or more fully embracing them and adopting an "end of philosophy" program. The chapter argues that an "end of philosophy" stance is pragmatically unappealing.