Pragmatic is a philosophy of being and doing that focuses on the consequences of actions and the use and value of language. This is in contrast to the metaphysical ideas of the past, such as idealism or monism. For example, if you’re planning to throw a party for your four-year-old daughter and she wants a unicorn, don’t give her one because that won’t be very pragmatic. Pragmatic is also a verb, meaning to take a practical approach to something, as in, “That sounds like a good solution. Let’s do it.”
Pragmatism’s roots go back to the 1870s, with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James as its founding fathers. The pragmatist view was influenced by the scientific revolution then taking place, particularly evolutionary theory. Originally, pragmatism was a wing of Peirce’s’metaphysical club’, but it grew into a separate philosophical movement as it became clear that the scientific revolution would require new ways of thinking and doing.
In the first generation of pragmatists, the focus was on ‘truth’ as the result of an inquiry-based analysis of signification. In the second generation, a more psychologically-oriented view was developed. This included James’s idea that truth can be found only in what a person does or believes, not in any objective reality outside the individual’s experience. For James, this made it possible to have a religion without being dependent upon a belief in God or any other transcendent reality. This led to the elaboration of a pragmatic philosophy of mind.
The pragmatists also introduced a method of philosophical inquiry that is now called ‘pragmatic analysis’. This involves examining an argument or piece of writing in order to determine its usefulness. This is done by comparing the statement with its consequence, or what it achieves. This process also identifies any errors in the logical structure of the sentence.
A number of philosophical movements in the 20th century were influenced by pragmatism, including discourse ethics, phenomenology, structuralism and hermeneutics. In particular, Habermas’s concept of discourse ethics and his theory of communicative action are derived from pragmatism. His ‘community of inquiry’ approach to social sciences and philosophy of science is an example of the pragmatist philosophy applied in practice.
A wide range of scholarly approaches to pragmatics have evolved, reflecting the great variety of interests and areas of concern in contemporary philosophical thought. These include formal and computational pragmatics; theoretical, experimental and clinical pragmatics; intercultural, interlinguistic and neuropragmatics; and historical pragmatics. This broad spectrum of research shows the growing renaissance for pragmatic ideas. Pragmatism is now a viable alternative to analytic philosophy and ‘Continental’ philosophies worldwide. It has attracted followers from diverse fields and cultures, including feminism, ecology and Native American philosophy. It is also part of a liberatory movement in philosophy that includes existentialism and anti-colonialism. These new pragmatics have their own distinctive theories and methodologies. This makes a philosophically unified study of pragmatics difficult, but exciting and fruitful.
