From: london@rain.org ()
Subject: Review of THE PROMISE OF PRAGMATISM by J.P. Diggins
Date: 8 Feb 1995 22:47:26 GMT

Book review:
~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE PROMISE OF PRAGMATISM
Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority
By John Patrick Diggins
University of Chicago Press, 1994, 515 pages, $29.95


Pragmatism made its entrance into history under the banner of
modernism, with its emphasis on scientific progress and its disdain of
historical and metaphysical truths.  The pragmatists, led by John
Dewey, William James, and Charles Sanders Pierce, challenged Hegel's
notion that "philosophy aims at knowing what is imperishable, eternal,
and absolute."  Since objective truth isn't something that can be
discovered through the faculty of reason, they argued, epistemology
and its preoccupation with the "foundations" of knowledge must be
abandoned altogether.  They believed that ideas and propositions
cannot be judged by objective criteria since it's impossible to
establish such criteria; instead, they should be judged by the results
they produce when put into practice.  As Santayana once observed, the
pragmatists insisted that "it's better to pursue truth than to possess
it."

In this engaging intellectual history of what he calls "America's one
original contribution to the world of philosophy," Diggins traces
pragmatism from the seminal works of Dewey and James to the
contemporary neopragmatism of Richard Rorty.  He juxtaposes their
ideas with those of contemporaries such as Weber, Niebuhr, Lippmann,
and Veblen, "as though they were in conversation with one another." 
The result is not only a sweeping account of a century of American
ideas, but a probing and insightful analysis of many of its key
players.  Diggins has a special fondness for historian Henry Adams. 
He serves as the conscience of the study, for in Diggins's view,
pragmatism was an answer to the very "crisis of knowledge and
authority" Adams articulated so well a century ago.

Diggins finds that although pragmatism ultimately failed to fulfill
its promise, it embodied both the spirit of its time and the culture
in which it flourished.  This account is certainly not the first to
chart the legacy of pragmatism, but it may be one of the most
intellectually stimulating and wide-ranging.


                                   Scott London * london@rain.org