The Pragmatic Century critically assesses the significance of American philosopher Richard J. Bernstein's intellectual contributions. Written by scholars who share with Bernstein a combined interest in the American pragmatic tradition and contemporary religious thought, the essays explore such diverse topics as Bernstein's place as an interpreter of both American and continental thought, the possibility of system building and analysis in an antimetaphysical age, the potential for theological and ethical reinterpretation in contemporary society, and much more. Included are not only responses by Bernstein to each essay, but also two new essays by Bernstein himself that orient readers to the central role pragmatism has played throughout the last century and also provide an encomium to the continuing value of democratic ideals at a time when those ideals are threatened on many different fronts.

In this major new work, Richard J. Bernstein argues that many of the most important themes in philosophy during the past one hundred and fifty years are variations and developments of ideas that were prominent in the classical American pragmatists: Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey and George H Mead. Pragmatism begins with a thoroughgoing critique of the Cartesianism that dominated so much of modern philosophy. The pragmatic thinkers reject a sharp dichotomy between subject and object, mind-body dualism, the quest for certainty and the spectator theory of knowledge. They seek to bring about a sea change in philosophy that highlights the social character of human experience and normative social practices, the self-correcting nature of all inquiry, and the continuity of theory and practice. And they-especially James, Dewey, and Mead-emphasize the democratic ethical-political consequences of a pragmatic orientation. Many of the themes developed by the pragmatic thinkers were also central to the work of major twentieth century philosophers like Wittgenstein and Heidegger, but the so-called analytic-continental split obscures this underlying continuity. Bernstein develops an alternative reading of contemporary philosophy that brings out the persistence and continuity of pragmatic themes. He critically examines the work of leading contemporary philosophers who have been deeply influenced by pragmatism, including Hilary Putnam, Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, and Robert Brandom, and he explains why the discussion of pragmatism is so alive, varied and widespread. This lucid, wide-ranging book by one of America's leading philosophers will be compulsory reading for anyone who wants to understand the state of philosophy today.

Richard J. Bernstein is a leading exponent of American pragmatism and one of the foremost philosophers of the twentieth century. In this collection he takes a pragmatic approach to specific problems and issues to demonstrate the ongoing importance of this philosophical tradition. Topics under discussion include multiculturalism, political public life, evil and religion. Individual philosophers studied are Kant, Arendt, Rorty, Habermas, Dewey and Trotsky. Each of the sixteen essays, many of which are published here for the first time, offers a way of bridging contemporary philosophical differences. This book will be of interest to scholars of philosophy and those researching social and political theory.

Throughout his diverse and highly influential career, Hilary Putnam was famous for changing his mind. As a pragmatist he treated philosophical “positions” as experiments in deliberate living. His aim was not to fix on one position but to attempt to do justice to the depth and complexity of reality. In this new collection, he and Ruth Anna Putnam argue that key elements of the classical pragmatism of William James and John Dewey provide a framework for the most progressive and forward-looking forms of philosophy in contemporary thought. The Putnams present a compelling defense of the radical originality of the philosophical ideas of James and Dewey and their usefulness in confronting the urgent social, political, and moral problems of the twenty-first century. Pragmatism as a Way of Life brings together almost all of the Putnams’ pragmatist writings—essays they wrote as individuals and as coauthors. The pragmatism they endorse, though respectful of the sciences, is an open experience-based philosophy of our everyday lives that trenchantly criticizes the fact/value dualism running through contemporary culture. Hilary Putnam argues that all facts are dependent on cognitive values, while Ruth Anna Putnam turns the problem around, illuminating the factual basis of moral principles. Together, they offer a shared vision which, in Hilary’s words, “could serve as a manifesto for what the two of us would like philosophy to look like in the twenty-first century and beyond.”

F. Thomas Burke examines the writings of William James and Charles S. Peirce to determine how the original "maxim of pragmatism" was understood differently by these two earliest pragmatists. Burke reconciles these differences by casting pragmatism as a philosophical stance that endorses distinctive conceptions of belief and meaning. In particular, a pragmatist conception of meaning should be understood as both inferentialist and operationalist in character. Burke unravels a complex early history of this philosophical tradition, discusses contemporary conceptions of pragmatism found in current US political discourse, and explores what this quintessentially American philosophy means today.

Cheryl Misak offers a strikingly new view of the development of philosophy in the twentieth century. Pragmatism, the home-grown philosophy of America, thinks of truth not as a static relation between a sentence and the believer-independent world, but rather, a belief that works. The founders of pragmatism, Peirce and James, developed this idea in more (Peirce) and less (James) objective ways. The standard story of the reception of American pragmatism in England is that Russell and Moore savaged James's theory, and that pragmatism has never fully recovered. An alternative, and underappreciated, story is told here. The brilliant Cambridge mathematician, philosopher and economist, Frank Ramsey, was in the mid-1920s heavily influenced by the almost-unheard-of Peirce and was developing a pragmatist position of great promise. He then transmitted that pragmatism to his friend Wittgenstein, although had Ramsey lived past the age of 26 to see what Wittgenstein did with that position, Ramsey would not have like what he saw.

Discusses the political cooperation between Jews and Lithuanians in the Tsarist Empire from the last decades of the 19th century until the early 1920s. These years saw the transformation of both Jewish and Lithuanian political life. Within the Jewish community, the previously dominant integrationists were now challenged both by those who believed that the Jews were not a religious but an ethnic or proto-nationalist group and those who believed that only with the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a socialist state would Jewish integration be possible. Among the Lithuanians, the emergence of a modern national identity became increasingly prevalent.