
Realistic Pragmatism
An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy
Recovers classical pragmatism from recent deconstructive interpretations.
Description
Nicholas Rescher gives a compact but comprehensive overview of pragmatism that does justice to the doctrine's original realistic and objectivistic purport. By providing a historically faithful version of a pragmatist position that is at once grounded in the root inspirations of the doctrine and able to overcome the sorts of objections that have often been advanced against it, Rescher defends the pragmatic tradition against a deconstruction into philosophical vacuity.
Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of numerous works, including Predicting the Future: An Introduction to the Theory of Forecasting, Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy, and Dialectics: A Controversy-Oriented Approach to the Theory of Knowledge, all published by SUNY Press.
Reviews
"This book is to be recommended for its effective portrayal of a hard-nosed objectivist, realist pragmatism." — Philosophy in Review
"In the course of sketching an entire philosophy of 'methodological' pragmatism, Rescher presides over the challenging and potentially fruitful union of the pragmatic perspective with such unlikely partners as the ontological duty of self-realization. To his credit, he manages to make such weddings appear desirable and carries them off with aplomb in the name of sweet reason. I am not convinced that all these marriages can last or that they are likely to issue in happy offspring, but demonstrating that they are possible is itself a remarkable achievement. This book is a significant contribution to the literature of contemporary pragmatism." — John Lachs, author of The Relevance of Philosophy to Life
"The chapters on values are the best discussion of pragmatism's attempt to deal with value in a non-relativistic way that I have seen." — Robert G. Meyers, author of The Likelihood of Knowledge
"Given the philosophical sophistication and subtlety of Nicholas Rescher, this book is truly sui generis." — Vincent Colapietro, author of Peirce's Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity