ABSTRACT
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking was first published in
1907, only three years before the end of James’s life. It contains the text of a series
of lectures that he had delivered in Boston in late 1906 and then at Columbia Uni-
versity in New York early the following year. The book represents James’s attempt
to give a general account of the “pragmatist movement”. Pragmatism, as we shall
see, emerged more than thirty years earlier, but it had very little impact until shortly
before James’s lectures. When it “rather suddenly precipitated itself out of the air”
it rapidly encountered controversy and even scorn. The book reflects James’s sense
that “much futile controversy might have been avoided … if our critics had been
willing to wait until we got our message fairly out”. In an attempt to “get the mes-
sage out” (P: 5), 1
James promised to “unify the picture as it presents itself to my
own eyes, dealing in broad strokes and avoiding minute controversy”. As this sug-
gests, the book is lively and enthusiastic, with James’s passionate commitment to
his position making the lectures a delight to read. But the lack of rigour in formu-
lating positions and defending them meant that controversy (futile or otherwise)
increased rather than diminished. The lectures require a sympathetic reader, but,
as is evidenced by the writings of G. E. Moore (1907-8) and Bertrand Russell
(1908), it did not find one: they responded with impatient refutations of his
positions and their interpretations helped to give currency to a crude caricature of
what pragmatism is to which a more careful reading of the lectures gives the lie.
