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Companion to pragmatism

It is not much of an exaggeration to contend that over the course of the past couple of decades Western philosophy has experienced a distinctive shift which may be called a “pragmatic turn.” Several reasons for this spontaneous intellectual move can be identified. First and foremost, in the first half of the twentieth century it gradually became increasingly clear that the initially extremely promising project of analytic philosophy, approaching traditional intellectual puzzles from the standpoint of linguistic analysis exclusively is destined to reach its limitations soon. Second, within Europe, the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein (notwithstanding the difficulties of unequivocally identifying this thinker either with analytic or continental philosophy) paved the way for a radical paradigm shift, in which the use of long-standing visual and speculative metaphors of traditional philosophy was abandoned in favor of a serious look at the concept of action. The recent revival of the philosophy of pragmatism, it could thus be maintained, has not come out of the blue but should be viewed rather as a complex answer to the difficulties in which philosophy as a discipline found itself in the first half of the last century. Currently, the term “pragmatism” is used to refer to an incredibly broad collection of doctrines not only in philosophy but also in politics, education, economics, cultural theory and so on. Regardless of how positive this move may seem, it pushes us with an increasing urgency towards the need to seriously consider the following questions: What in fact is pragmatism? Is there any hallmark of this intellectual current linking its particular cultural manifestations by means of some central concept or idea? From this review’s perspective, precisely these kind of concerns form the central topic of the endeavours of the international team of twelve authors who, under the editorial leadership of Sami Pihlström, contributed to the notable volume, titled The Continuum Companion to Pragmatism (2011a). Special regard should also be granted to Michael Eldridge, its co-editor and significant contributor, who unexpectedly passed away on 18 September, 2010. The volume as a whole was thus dedicated to the memory of the “pragmatist Socrates”, as his friends used to call him. HUMAN AFFAIRS 22, 100–108, 2012 DOI: 10.2478/s13374-012-0010-7