ABSTRACT
Pragmatism, as a philosophical perspective, originated in the work of three classical pragmatists: Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Richard Rorty then revived it in the context of the contemporary debates between (and within) the so-called analytic and continental philosophical traditions in the 1980s. While pragmatism has always been – and remains – a deeply contested philosophical tradition, it has concerned itself throughout with the problem of reconciling the notion of rationality with the concrete historical situatedness of all human cognition, stressing simultaneously the primacy of the more promising modes of reasoning developed by the modern sciences over the abstract a priori methods of traditional philosophy, and endeavouring to reorient philosophy itself towards the concrete problems arising from human practices. This chapter offers an outline of some key organizing themes within the tradition of pragmatist thought, namely: inquiry, language, experience, and learning. It aims, furthermore, to show the interrelations between these themes and to explore their distinctive bearing on the problem of historical representation. Finally, it uses aspects of this discussion to highlight and explore the tensions and affinities between the classical pragmatism’s naturalist orientation and the more recent rationalist pragmatism advanced by Robert Brandom.
