ABSTRACT
The previous chapter traced one trajectory emerging from the neopragmatic renaissance. That trajectory, the dominant philosophical strain, considers neopragmatism an extension of Enlightenment empirico-rationalism, constructing neopragmatism along what Stanley Cavell calls ‘the Kantian settlement’.1 That compromise, famously expressed in the first Critique, is ‘to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith’.2 NeoKantian neopragmatism secures understanding by bifurcating the world into a sphere of lived experience and a sphere of pure speculation, dividing rational subjectivity along the same lines. That bifurcation, however, creates a divide that threatens Kant’s foundationalist project, dichotomising rationality and keeping part of reality in reserve. Following Cavell, if the cost of ‘knowledge of the world’ is ‘the world’, then ‘Thanks for nothing’.3
