This site is home to information and applications for the upcoming Summer Seminar on Pragmatism being hosted by Dr. Russell Goodman at the Philosophy Department of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Location & Dates:
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
June 17 - July 20th, 2007
Russell B. Goodman, Project Director
Brief Overview of Seminar:
Each of the seminar's five weeks will have a distinct focus:
1)
the developing pragmatism of William James
2)
Peirce and Cheryl Misak’s "new pragmatism"
3)
pragmatic pluralism
4)
Wittgenstein, Heidegger and pragmatism
5)
the philosophy of Richard Rorty
Visiting Faculty:
Maria Baghramian (University College, Dublin)
William Blattner (Georgetown)
Charles Guignon (South Florida)
Cheryl Misak (Toronto)
Facilities: University of New Mexico
For more information on the University housing and services, click on the title above.
Locale: Albuquerque, New Mexico
For more information on actvities and attractions in and around the Albuquerque area, click on the title above.
In his book Pragmatism (1907) William James (1842-1910) writes that pragmatism is "a new name for some old ways of thinking," and cites philosophers from Aristotle to John Stuart Mill as predecessors. James was not wrong to see these writers as forerunners of pragmatism, but he was too modest in treating "pragmatism" simply as a new name. For it is a genuinely new movement or tradition in philosophy, with its founding members (Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) and James himself), its canonical texts to which all later pragmatists refer, and its diverging lines of interpretation and influence.
It is a tradition that is very much alive today, not only in the surprising "neopragmatist" revival of the last two decades of the twentieth century, but in more recent responses to and refinements of that work by philosophers in America and abroad. The purpose of this seminar, one hundred years after James published Pragmatism, is to examine pragmatism as a living tradition — to assess pragmatism's original appeal, and to understand why it continues to find powerful proponents (and powerful critics) today.
The project director directed an NEH institute in 2003 and a seminar in 2005, both on Ralph Waldo Emerson. In proposing this seminar to the NEH he wanted to build both on his experience with these programs and on his recent work on pragmatism: Wittgenstein and William James (Cambridge, 2002) and Pragmatism: Critical Concepts in Philosophy (four volumes, Routledge, 2005). These latter volumes, as well as his earlier Pragmatism: A Contemporary Reader (Routledge, 1995), contain substantial criticisms of pragmatism as well as statements by pragmatism's proponents and defenders. This is the approach we will take in the seminar: a sympathetic but critical look at the tradition
Click
Here for a page of images and a slideshow of events from the 2005 NEH
Summer Seminar.
Click
Here for a page of images and a slideshow of events from the 2003 NEH
Summer Institute.
To receive more detailed information on the seminar review this website. You may also write: pragma@unm.edu.
We look forward to responding to your interest and seeing you here!
Pragmatism: A Living Tradition
Russell B. Goodman, Project Director
pragma@unm.edu
