ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book summarizing the basic tenets of normative pragmatism, according to which implicit norms guiding our practices are more basic than any factual determinations of entities. It provides a critical survey of three pragmatic readings of Heidegger that it deems the most fruitful for further discussion, namely the contributions by Mark Okrent, John Haugeland and Steven Crowell. The book prolongs Nenon's critical engagement with pragmatist readers by reconstructing Rorty's appropriation of the Heideggerian emphasis on radical historicity. It argues that Dreyfus' position conflates the distinction between sentience and sapience and the distinction between "theoria" and "praxis". The book focuses on Merleau-Ponty's account of the perceptual experience of things. It suggests that the reality of things consists both in their capacity to create a familiar world, and in their capacity to make the world of everyday coping unfamiliar.
