Nicolas Rescher, Pragmatism. The Restoration of Its Scientific Roots; The Pragmatic Vision. Themes in Philosophical Pragmatis

In Pragmatism. The Restoration of Its Scientific Roots (P) and The Pragmatic Vision. Themes in Philosophical Pragmatism (PV) Rescher continues the work of analysis and assessment of the pragmatist tradition that he started more than thirty years ago with the publication of his The Primacy of Practice (1973). The thirty essays that compose the two books (some of them already published elsewhere) deal with a large number of issues, ranging from axiology to epistemology, from art to religion. Th..

Normativity and Objectivity: The Semantic Nature of Objects and the Potentiality of Nature

In this paper, I address the question of the nature and ground of objectivity, with the aim to develop a pragmatist account of its distinctive features. Traditionally, pragmatism has been considered as an alternative to Kantian approaches. The aim of the paper is to argue that, contrary to the received view, a consistent pragmatist theory of objectivity should preserve many insights of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. My thesis is that Kantian notions of spontaneity, activity and objectivity can be fruitfully reformulated and translated into pragmatist terms. The key notion here is that of practices. It is only within the context of a practice that concepts can be successfully applied to experience. The intrinsic normativity of practices establishes different levels of objectivity. The paper defends a pluralistic view of reality, insisting on the irreducibility of common-sense objectivity to scientific objectivity. At the same time, it is maintained that common-sense practices have a primacy over scientific practices, and that scientific objects are constructed out of common-sense objects through a process of articulation of the potentialities of the latter

J. R. Shook and J. A. Good (eds.), John Dewey’s Philosophy of Spirit, with the 1897 Lecture on Hegel

The book reviewed here makes available an important lecture on Hegel’s philosophy of spirit that Dewey delivered at the University of Chicago in 1897. Less than one hundred pages long, the lecture aimed to introduce students to a critical understanding of the third part of Hegel’s Encyclopedia of Philosophical Science. It is preceded by two introductory essays written by the editors – namely, Shook’s Dewey’s Naturalized Philosophy of Spirit and Religion and Good’s Rereading Dewey’s “Permanent..

What Does China Mean for Pragmatism? A Philosophical Interpretation of Dewey’s Sojourn in China (1919-1921)

This paper aims to investigate the transformations undergone by Dewey’s philosophy in the period from 1916 to 1921. By analyzing three different problematic situations with which Dewey found himself confronted (German militarism; the effects of propaganda on American society; the experience of a two-year stay in China), the paper seeks to show the various lines of development at work in his thought. The thesis of the paper is that in the war and immediately post-war years Dewey was concerned with outlining a new account of the nature of theory which was preliminary to the formulation of his social philosophy. The paper presents Dewey’s main philosophical achievements, with the aim of providing some background knowledge that could be useful to understanding that place and significance of the Lectures in China in the overall context of his thought

8. Book Reviews

Reviews of Coyer and Shuttleton (eds.), Scottish Medicine and Literary Culture, 1726-1832, Rodopi 2014; Poggi, L’anima e il cristallo. Alle radici dell’arte astratta, 2014.