School

Pragmatism

Pragmatism treats meaning and truth in relation to practical consequences and the self-correcting practice of inquiry.

Overview

Peirce, James, and Dewey developed overlapping but distinct pragmatisms: clarification of concepts by conceivable effects, truth as workable belief under inquiry, and democracy as experimental associated living.

Historical notes

Classical American pragmatism emerges in the late nineteenth century and influences education, law, religion, and contemporary neo-pragmatism.

Core ideas

  • Clarify ideas by their practical bearings.
  • Inquiry aims at truth as the ideal end of investigation.
  • Experience is experimental and revisable.
  • Democracy and education are laboratories of growth.

Thinkers in this archive

William James , John Dewey , Charles Sanders Peirce , Hu Shi

FAQ

What is pragmatism in philosophy?

It is a family of views linking meaning, truth, and knowledge to practical consequences and inquiry.

Who founded pragmatism?

Charles Sanders Peirce coined key formulations; William James and John Dewey developed highly influential versions.

Where are pragmatism quotes?

See the English passages below and thinker pages for Peirce, James, and Dewey.

  1. Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent.
  2. Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
  3. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
  4. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.
  5. The essential achievement of the will is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast before the mind.
  6. Do not block the way of inquiry.
  7. Consciousness…does not appear to itself chopped up in bits…It is nothing jointed; it flows.
  8. Experience is not a veil that shuts man off from nature; it is a means of penetrating continually further into the heart of nature.
  9. The quest for certainty…has always been a quest for a peace that is assured.
  10. The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
  11. The quest for certainty…is a quest for a peace which is assured.
  12. The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief.
  13. Having become a pawn that has crossed the river, one can only press desperately forward.
  14. Consider what effects… we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.