The seminar's fourth week is devoted to pragmatism's relation to other philosophical traditions. We begin with James's humanistic epistemology, and its resemblance to the language-based epistemology of Ludwig Wittgenstein's On Certainty—where Wittgenstein states that he is "saying something that sounds like pragmatism," but also that he is being "thwarted by a kind of weltanschauung." We will consider ways in which the similarities and differences between Wittgenstein and James help us to understand the uses made of both writers by Rorty and Putnam.
William Blattner of Georgetown University, author of Heidegger's Temporal Idealism (Cambridge, 1999) and a forthcoming study of Dewey and Heidegger, will join the seminar to discuss the proximity of Heidegger’s phenomenology of engaged action in the late 1920’s to Dewey’s descriptions of action in “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology” (1896) and “Does Reality Possess Practical Character?” (1908). Blattner will ask the seminar to consider the degree to which Heidegger and Dewey disagree about the ontology of engaged action, even as they agree about its phenomenology,
Readings:
Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (selections);
Russell B. Goodman, Wittgenstein and William James, Chapter 1;
Stanley Cavell, "What's the Use of Calling Emerson a Pragmatist?";
Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (selections);
John Dewey, "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," "Does Reality Possess Practical Character?", Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (selections);
Richard Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others (selections);
William Blattner, "The Primacy of Practice and Assertoric Truth: Dewey and Heidegger."
Week 1 • Week 2 • Week 3 • Week 4 • Week 5
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
