Introduction

While Hilary Putnam does not identify himself as a pragmatist, pragmatism is an important theme in his recent work. He discussed pragmatism in his Italian lectures, which he delivered in 1992 and published three years later (Putnam 1995b). He has also discussed pragmatism in numerous articles, some of which have been reprinted in Words and Life (1994a), The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body and World (1999). He sees pragmatism as a valuable source of insights into fundamental philosophical questions, such as ‘How can we know anything about the world?’ and ‘What are our obligations?’ Like the pragmatists, he considers such questions both from a theoretical point of view and from the point of view of our moral, political, social and (even) religious practices.