ABSTRACT
The obliteration or disappearance of pragmatism from the philosophical scene might be more understandable had it been an esoteric movement whose ideas never gained much currency and whose proponents were obscure intellectuals working at remote universities. C. I. Lewis, the natural successor to the Harvard pragmatist tradition, was a most influential teacher and scholar. But although Lewis was an admirer of the pragmatists, he could never shake off his Kantian concerns for an account of warrant. He could, as he said, be pragmatic about our conceptual schemes, but he could not buy the pragmatists’ account of experience. Perhaps more of an answer would come from an understanding of why Lewis, so closely attuned as he was to the pragmatists, was still unable to accept their deeper claims and thus shed a larger part of the traditional metaphysical assumptions and problematic.
