Neopragmatism
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Neopragmatism, sometimes called linguistic pragmatism is a recent (since the 1960s) philosophical term for philosophy that reintroduces many concepts from pragmatism. It has been associated with a variety of thinkers, among them Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, W.V.O. Quine, Donald Davidson, and Stanley Fish though none of these figures have called themselves "neopragmatists".
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[edit] Background
Neopragmatists, particularly Rorty and Putnam, draw on the ideas of Classical Pragmatists such as Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Putnam, in Words and Life (1994), enumerates the ideas in the Classical Pragmatist tradition, which newer pragmatists find most compelling. To paraphrase Putnam:
- antiskepticism (the notion that doubt requires justification just as much as belief);
- fallibilism (the view that there are no metaphysical guarantees against the need to revise a belief);
- antidualism about "facts" and "values";
- that practice, properly construed, is primary in philosophy. (WL 152)
[edit] Rorty Writings
In 1995 Rorty wrote: "I linguisticize as many pre-linguistic-turn philosophers as I can, in order to read them as prophets of the utopia in which all metaphysical problems have been dissolved, and religion and science have yielded their place to poetry."
Rorty and Pragmatism : The Philosopher Responds to His Critics, edited by Herman J. Saatkamp (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995).
This "linguistic turn" strategy aims to avoid what Rorty sees as the essentialisms ("truth," "reality," "experience") still extant in classical pragmatism. Rorty writes:
"Analytic philosophy, thanks to its concentration on language, was able to defend certain crucial pragmatist theses better than James and Dewey themselves. ...By focusing our attention on the relation between language and the rest of the world rather than between experience and nature, post-positivistic analytic philosophy was able to make a more radical break with the philosophical tradition."
Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 21, no. 1 (Winter 1985).
Three Basic Moves. Linguistic pragmatism revises pragmatism in three basic moves. First, one applauds pragmatists such as James and Dewey for repudiating a variety of methods and goals in traditional philosophy. Second, one renounces their attempts to reconstruct what should not be reconstructed. Finally, once one accepts the idea that only language is available to furnish philosophy's material. This step complete, one can create freely, even poetically, serve whatever ends seem best.
Many people are now writing about "neopragmatism" and so we can expect that definitions will proliferate.
