The Truth Is What Works: William James, Pragmatism, and the Seed of Death

by Harvey Cormier

Overview

Charles Sanders Peirce complained that James allowed pragmatism to become 'infected' with 'seeds of death' like the idea that truth is mutable. The Truth is What Works is an attempt to defend James's pragmatic theory of truth from a wide range of critics including Peirce, Betrand Russell, Hilary Putnam, and Cornel West. Cormier runs the gauntlet of historical and contemporary criticism in an attempt to show, not that Jamesian pragmatism does in fact contain a perfectly good theory of objective reality after all, but rather that it doesn't, and is still a kind of realism anyway because it does not leave individuals and their subjective desires behind in an attempt to describe the real world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781461645894
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/06/2000
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Harvey Cormier is assistant professor of philosophy at SUNY, Stony Brook.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: Pragmatism and the Real
Chapter 2 A Genealogy of Truth; or, Twilight of the Idle
Chapter 3 James, Peirce, and the Seed of Death
Chapter 4 Pragmatism and Scepticism; or, the Pragmatist Keeps on Searching
Chapter 5 The Ideal Becomes the Real: Pragmatism and "Empirical Realism"
Chapter 6 The One and the Many: Gramsci and Cornel West on James

Editorial Reviews

Is there any real truth? How can we know? Can we know? Philosopher William James offered a famous answer: truth is what works, what comes to be good, useful or satisfactory for human beings as they live and try to understand their lives. His "pragmatic theory of truth" has come under attack from critics both fierce and well regarded (such as Cornel West and Bertrand Russell), who wanted to pay less attention to subjective feelings and beliefs and more to physical, moral or political power. This book is Cormier's (philosophy, SUNY, Stony Brook) rebuttal to these and other critics of James, arguing that Jamesian pragmatism represents the best kind of realism because it does not leave individuals and their subjective states behind in an attempt to describe the real world. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Corimer has a good grasp of James' views, and ranges widely over his oeuvre in making his case.

Matthew Stephens