Pragmatic is the adjective applied to people who approach life and problems in a practical, down-to-earth manner. A four-year old who wants a unicorn for her birthday isn’t pragmatic, but a person who is pragmatic would take into account what is possible and reasonable to accomplish. The word comes from the Greek root pragma, meaning “deed.” Pragmatists are realists, not idealists; they know that solutions aren’t magical, and they are more concerned with what is achievable than with what could be dreamed of.
As a philosophy, pragmatism has evolved over the years. It started as a simple criterion for evaluating meaning and ended up as a full-fledged epistemology with sweeping implications. The pragmatist tradition has influenced philosophers of diverse disciplines, including the social sciences, the humanities, the natural sciences and the hard sciences. During its heyday, the pragmatist approach was widely used in the social sciences and humanities by such luminaries as G. H. Mead (1863-1931), John Dewey (1859-1936) and the sociologist Josiah Royce (1855-1916).
But with the rise of analytic philosophy, pragmatism lost its momentum. In the 1940s, Dewey’s reputation suffered as rank-and-file analytic philosophers considered him dated and quaint. Peirce fared better, and he was rehabilitated by many analytic philosophers as the true founder of pragmatism, but overall pragmatism fell out of favor.
Nevertheless, it continues to thrive as a third alternative to analytic and Continental philosophical traditions. It has found new constituencies in fields that were originally hostile to it, such as the philosophy of science (Rorty 1999), the philosophy of language (Brandom 2008) and the history of philosophy (Seigfried 1996).
Philosophers who are pragmatists continue to identify and support Dewey’s original aims and ideas. They also defend his rejection of the logical positivist doctrine of truth and the search for a pragmatic account of knowledge and value. They have a particular interest in the ways in which scientific theories evolve and change over time, and they view scientific methods as a kind of pragmatism in their application to naturalistic problem solving.
Contemporary pragmatists are especially active in the areas of philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language and the philosophy of science. They interpret the developments in these areas through the lens of classical American pragmatism. The pragmatist tradition is also being embraced by liberatory projects such as feminism (Brandom 2010), ecology (Alexander 2013) and Native American philosophy (Pratt 1998). And it has gained international acclaim, with lively research networks appearing in South America, Scandinavia, central Europe and China. The pragmatist perspective provides a bridge between the analytical and Continental philosophical traditions. It offers an approach that is flexible enough to meet the challenges of different cultural and historical contexts. It also helps to clarify the differences between a variety of philosophical approaches to the nature of reality and the nature of knowledge. This is a valuable contribution to the ongoing dialogue among Western philosophical traditions.
