Pragmatism and political philosophy

Abstract

While there are several ways in which political valences of pragmatism have been mapped, this chapter focuses on three central themes: the primacy of practice, the justification of democratic values, and ethical pluralism. Pragmatists are fissiparous, though, and the chapter tries to bring out some of the debates under each of these headings, in particular between John Dewey, the most prominent pragmatist social and political philosopher, and what I’ll call the neopragmatism, which takes its cue from Richard Rorty’s provocative claims, and the new pragmatism, which takes its cue from philosophers such as Hilary Putnam and Cheryl Misak, who want to provide a clearer account of how the standards and practices of inquiry can be both historical and objective.