The Pragmatic Turn

A Sea Change In Philosophy

In 1967, a young philosopher, Richard Rorty, prepared an anthology called "The Linguistic Turn" which consisted of Rorty's own introduction together with many seminal articles in the analytic or "linguistic" philosophy which then dominated philosophy departments in American universities. The title of Richard Bernstein's book, "The Pragmatic Turn" (2010) is only one of many allusions to Rorty. Rorty and Bernstein are lifelong friends who studied philosophy together as undergraduates at the University of Chicago and who subsequently did their graduate work together at Yale. Borrowing in his turn a phrase from the philosopher Donald Davidson, Rorty described a "sea change" in recent philosophical thought resulting from the growing influence of American pragmatism. Rorty wrote: "If the change of which Davidson spoke is someday recognized as having occurred then Peirce, James, and Dewey may cease to be treated as provincial figures. They may be given the place I think they deserve in the story of the West's intellectual progress." Pragmatism as a "sea change" in philosophical thinking is the dominant theme of Bernstein's book. Bernstein in Vera List Professor of philosophy at the New School of Social Research, New York, and the author of many books on American philosophy.

The aim of Bernstein's is to show how pragmatism constitutes a "sea change" in thinking and why it is important. Broadly speaking, Bernstein sees pragmatism as changing markedly how philosophers view "objectivity", and "knowledge" by breaking down the Cartesian picture of subject-object, mind-body, that long dominated philosophy. Pragmatism shares the rejection of Cartesianism with two other broad tendencies in contemporary philosophy: the existential-phenomenological school practiced on the Continent and the analytic school dominant in the United States and Britain. Bernstein sees pragmatism at work in both of these schools. He further suggests that pragmatism may be a force in uniting these seemingly disparate trends in current thought.

Although it is not a history of pragmatism, "The Pragmatic Turn" offers an overview of leading thinkers with pragmatic tendencies beginning with the late 19th Century to the present. The book begins with Bernstein's lengthy Prologue in which he offers a bird-eye view of pragmatism and its history starting with Charles Peirce's formulation of the pragmatic maxim: "Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object." Bernstein proceeds with nine essays, some of which had been published earlier. The essays are interrelated and cross-referenced. For the most part, the book makes a coherent whole rather than a collection of disjointed essays.

Still, the essays vary. Most are about individual philosophers, but perhaps the leading three essays, together with the Prologue are thematic. The first three essays deal with respectively with the three early American pragmatists, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. The best of these essays is on Peirce, "Charles S. Peirce's Critique of Cartesianism" which explores Peirce's difficult writings and sets the stage for the subsequent pragmatic "turn" in philosophy. To my mind, Peirce is still the most challenging of the pragmatists. Bernstein's essay on William James' pluralism and ethics I thought somewhat short and sketchy. (Later in the book, Bernstein offers great insight into James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience.") Bernstein's essay on Dewey, "John Dewey's Vision of Radical Democracy" offers a brief summary of Dewey's political thought.

The middle three essays in the book begins with a consideration of Hegel and his deep influence on each of the American pragmatists even when they vociferously disagreed with him. I thought this a valuable essay because Hegel's importance still is frequently overlooked. Bernstein introduced me to two contemporary American thinkers, John McDowell and Robert Brandom, whose pragmatisms have strong overtones in Hegel. The following two essays "Pragmatism, Objectivity and Truth" and "Experience after the Linguistic Turn" are careful philosophical studies about how pragmatism attempts to revise the understanding of "objectivity" without falling into either absolutism or relativism and about how pragmatism saves and modifies the concept of "experience" in philosophy from what Bernstein sees as the excesses of a purely linguistic approach.

The final three essays examine contemporary philosophers who describe themselves as pragmatists and who have learned from the early American thinkers. Bernstein's essay "Hilary Putnam: the Entanglement of Fact and Value" examines the career and thought of this multi-faceted and ever-changing American philosopher who has become known for a pragmatism that combats what Putnam sees as relativism, as exemplified by Richard Rorty. Bernstein offers a long, difficult essay on the German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas and his attempt, which Bernstein deems unsuccessful, to combine pragmatism with Kant. The final essay deals with the late Richard Rorty and what Bernstein terms Rorty's "Deep Humanism". Rorty is probably the most influential late 20th Century American philosopher. Bernstein offers a personal overview of Rorty's career which culminated, Bernstein argues, in Rorty's 1979 book, "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature", which influenced me greatly when I read it years ago. Bernstein is critical of Rorty's idiosyncratic course and of his thought subsequent to that famous book.

Bernstein presents an erudite, thoughtful, well-written overview of what he aptly describes as a "sea change" in philosophy. He made me want to revisit many of the thinkers he discusses as well as to learn more about some philosophers I don't know, particularly Brandom and McDowell. I wanted to think more about Peirce and Hegel. The book will be of most interest to readers with a strong interest in philosophy and to serious students at the advanced undergraduate or graduate level.

Robin Friedman