ABSTRACT

A recent book by Howard Mounce is called The Two Pragmatisms (Mounce 1997). The title refers to the positions of two of the classical American pragmatists of the late nineteenth century, Charles S.Peirce and William James; and Mounce argues for the greater originality and contemporary interest of the latter. In this he follows Richard Rorty who once remarked that Peirce ‘gave only a name to pragmatism’ (Rorty 1982:161); and, although others have different views of who is villain and who is hero, such a distinction is commonly drawn. It rests upon a contrast in answers that can be given to the question that concerns us here. Peirce is a scientifically minded systematic philosopher who thinks that scientific knowledge is the only real knowledge, while James describes a pluralistic universe in which different bodies of belief and different styles of inquiry can answer to different cognitive and affective needs.