Pragmatism: meaning and philosophy. An in-depth study dedicated to the most original expression of American thought and the thought of its exponents, Dewey and Peirce.
Philosophy in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century lost the polemical tendency that had characterized it until then and took on optimistic values , supported by the influence of Puritanism, the Enlightenment and Transcendentalism.
PRAGMATISM MEANING
Pragmatism represents the first original American philosophical thought and is based on the theory that a philosophical doctrine should be chosen considering its usefulness for the life of the individual in society , that is, its capacity to be valid as a guide for the practical conduct of man in the moral, religious, scientific and social fields (every truth is a rule of action, a norm for future conduct).
Charles Peirce
According to Charles Sanders Peirce the function of thought is to produce beliefs , rules of action and this can happen in different ways:
- tenacity method : the stubborn person who does not question his beliefs can lead to success;
- authority method : can lead to agreement, by prohibiting different opinions;
- metaphysical method : it is based on the use of reason;
- scientific method : it is the best because it is not considered infallible and includes the possibility of continuously correcting its results and should also be applied to philosophy.
Regarding the thinking that produces beliefs, James argues that it is necessary to have faith in a certain belief and to act as if one believed it because this often leads to its verification (love, sympathy, trust).
DEWEY PRAGMATISM
The most important exponent of pragmatism , or rather of instrumentalism , is John Dewey according to whom experience also includes error factors , which are instead excluded in classical empiricist theories. Experience includes the entire world of events and people.
In life, in the world, therefore, the elements of instability are very important , which traditional philosophy tends to eliminate in order to provide man with stability, guarantees for his hopes and desires; even Heraclitus , Hegel and Bergson , while basing their thought on the continuous change of reality, end up divinising becoming, making it an element of order.
This is the philosophical fallacy par excellence, because of which the evils of the world are insoluble, but this is a false problem because everything is reality , the good and stable things and their opposites, and rather man must try to reduce the scope of the error, thanks to instrumentalist logic .
In light of the latter, every research derives from a problematic situation that somehow suggests a solution, which must be developed with reasoning ( intellectualization of the problem ). The next moment is that of observation and experiment , which is followed by the re-elaboration of hypotheses and the formulation and verification of new ideas.
Dewey states that in the face of many things that can satisfy us at a certain moment, the immediately desired goods or factual values , there are others that are able to elevate our experience: the values of right .
There are no absolute ends or values; these can only be identified in concrete problems and are always in relation to the means that allow their realization.
From this comes the rejection of the Machiavellian maxim “the end justifies the means”, because an end that can be achieved by repugnant means is itself repugnant. The right social life is not a static but a dynamic ideal. Dewey opposes the idea of a planned society with the idea of a society that is continually planning itself .
He proposes a liberalism based on the scientific attitude, a rational democracy .
