Introducing Prophetic Pragmatism
Introducing Prophetic Pragmatism

Author: Jacob L. Goodson

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-08-01

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1498539971

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Prophetic pragmatism is a gritty philosophical framework that undergirds the intellectual and political work done by those who seek to overcome despair, dogmatism, and oppression. It seeks to unite one’s intellectual vocation and one’s duty to fight for justice. Cognizant of the ways in which political forces affect thought, while also requiring political action to not be so sure of itself that it simply replaces one oppressive structure with another, prophetic pragmatism requires a critical temper through the mode of Socratic questioning. Introducing Prophetic Pragmatism argues that hope lies between critical temper and democratic faith. Socratic questioning, prophetic witness, and tragicomic hope open a space for democratic energies to flourish against the forces of nihilism and poverty. Critical temper keeps democratic faith from becoming too idealistic and Pollyannaish, and democratic faith keeps critical temper from being pessimistic about the ability to change current realities. These twin pillars provide the best and most helpful framework for understanding the nature and purpose of prophetic pragmatism. Through their dialogue, Jacob L. Goodson and Brad Elliott demonstrate why prophetic pragmatism is, in the words of Cornel West, “pragmatism at its best.”

The American Evasion of Philosophy
The American Evasion of Philosophy

Author: Cornel West

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 1989-05-09

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0299119637

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Taking Emerson as his starting point, Cornel West’s basic task in this ambitious enterprise is to chart the emergence, development, decline, and recent resurgence of American pragmatism. John Dewey is the central figure in West’s pantheon of pragmatists, but he treats as well such varied mid-century representatives of the tradition as Sidney Hook, C. Wright Mills, W. E. B. Du Bois, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling. West’s "genealogy" is, ultimately, a very personal work, for it is imbued throughout with the author’s conviction that a thorough reexamination of American pragmatism may help inspire and instruct contemporary efforts to remake and reform American society and culture. "West . . . may well be the pre-eminent African American intellectual of our generation."—The Nation "The American Evasion of Philosophy is a highly intelligent and provocative book. Cornel West gives us illuminating readings of the political thought of Emerson and James; provides a penetrating critical assessment of Dewey, his central figure; and offers a brilliant interpretation—appreciative yet far from uncritical—of the contemporary philosopher and neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty. . . . What shines through, throughout the work, is West's firm commitment to a radical vision of a philosophic discourse as inextricably linked to cultural criticism and political engagement."—Paul S. Boyer, professor emeritus of history, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Wisconsin Project on American Writers Frank Lentricchia, General Editor

Introducing Pragmatism
Introducing Pragmatism

Author: Cornelis de Waal

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-08-30

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1000428427

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This unique introduction fully engages and clearly explains pragmatism, an approach to knowledge and philosophy that rejects outmoded conceptions of objectivity while avoiding relativism and subjectivism. It follows pragmatism’s focus on the process of inquiry rather than on abstract justifications meant to appease the skeptic. According to pragmatists, getting to know the world is a creative human enterprise, wherein we fashion our concepts in terms of how they affect us practically, including in future inquiry. This book fully illuminates that enterprise and the resulting radical rethinking of basic philosophical conceptions like truth, reality, and reason. Author Cornelis de Waal helps the reader recognize, understand, and assess classical and current pragmatist contributions—from Charles S. Peirce to Cornel West—evaluate existing views from a pragmatist angle, formulate pragmatist critiques, and develop a pragmatist viewpoint on a specific issue. The book discusses: Classical pragmatists, including Peirce, James, Dewey, and Addams; Contemporary figures, including Rorty, Putnam, Haack, and West; Connections with other twentieth-century approaches, including phenomenology, critical theory, and logical positivism; Peirce’s pragmatic maxim and its relation to James’s Will to Believe; Applications to philosophy of law, feminism, and issues of race and racism.

Native Pragmatism
Native Pragmatism

Author: Scott L. Pratt

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2002-04-01

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780253108906

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Pragmatism is America's most distinctive philosophy. Generally it has been understood as a development of European thought in response to the "American wilderness." A closer examination, however, reveals that the roots and central commitments of pragmatism are indigenous to North America. Native Pragmatism recovers this history and thus provides the means to re-conceive the scope and potential of American philosophy. Pragmatism has been at best only partially understood by those who focus on its European antecedents. This book casts new light on pragmatism's complex origins and demands a rethinking of African American and feminist thought in the context of the American philosophical tradition. Scott L. Pratt demonstrates that pragmatism and its development involved the work of many thinkers previously overlooked in the history of philosophy.

Cornel West and the Politics of Prophetic Pragmatism
Cornel West and the Politics of Prophetic Pragmatism

Author: Mark David Wood

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 9780252025785

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"Wood evaluates the political consequences of a shift in West's position from an earlier, revolutionary socialist stance to a later, progressive reformist one. Wood shows how West's subsequent reworking of Marxism supports his transition from a socialist to a progressivist politics."--BOOK JACKET.

The Dark Years?
The Dark Years?

Author: Jacob L. Goodson

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1532653883

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In 1997 and 1998, the American secular philosopher Richard Rorty published a set of predictions about the twenty-first century ranging from the years 2014–95. He predicted, for instance, the election of a “strong man” in the 2016 presidential race and the proliferation of gun violence starting in 2014. He labels the years from 2014–44 the darkest years of American history, politics, and society. From 2045–95, Rorty thinks his own vision for “social hope” will be implemented within American society—a vision that includes charity (in the Pauline sense), solidarity, and sympathy. Rorty considers himself a leftist, liberal, and a philosopher of hope. So why would a philosopher of hope predict such darkness and despair? In The Dark Years? Philosophy, Politics, and the Problem of Predictions philosopher and political theorist Jacob L. Goodson explains the fullness of Rorty’s predictions, the problem of making predictions within the social sciences, and the reasons why even Rorty’s vision for life after the “dark years” fails us on the standards of hope. Goodson argues that we ought to challenge the monopoly that American politics has as our object of hope. Goodson makes the case for a melancholic yet redemptive hope.

Pragmatist and American Philosophical Perspectives on Resilience
Pragmatist and American Philosophical Perspectives on Resilience

Author: Kelly A. Parker

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-12-03

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1498581064

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The essays in Pragmatist and American Philosophical Perspectives on Resilience offer a survey of the ways that “resilience” is becoming a key concept for understanding our world, as well as providing deeper insight about its specific actual and proposed applications. As a concept with multiple theoretical and practical meanings, “resilience” promises considerable explanatory power. At the same time, current uses of the concept can be diverse and at times inconsistent. The American philosophical tradition provides tools uniquely suited for clarifying, extending, and applying emerging concepts in more effective and suggestive ways. This collection explores the usefulness of theoretical work in American philosophy and pragmatism to practices in ecology, community, rurality, and psychology.

The Truth is what Works
The Truth is what Works

Author: Harvey Cormier

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 0847692736

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Charles Sanders Peirce complained that William James allowed pragmatism to become infected with seeds of death like the idea that truth is mutable. This volume aims to defend James's pragmatic theory from a range of critics including Peirce, Bertrand Russell, Hilary Putnam, and Cornel West.

Composition and Cornel West
Composition and Cornel West

Author: Keith Gilyard

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 2008-05-05

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9780809328543

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Composition and Cornel West: Notes toward a Deep Democracy identifies and explains key aspects of the work of Cornel West—the highly regarded scholar of religion, philosophy, and African American studies—as they relate to composition studies, focusing especially on three rhetorical strategies that West suggests we use in our questioning lives as scholars, teachers, students, and citizens. In this study, author Keith Gilyard examines the strategies of Socratic Commitment (a relentless examination of received wisdom), Prophetic Witness (an abiding concern with justice and the plight of the oppressed), and Tragicomic Hope (a keep-on-pushing sensibility reflective of the African American freedom struggle). Together, these rhetorical strategies comprise an updated form of cultural criticism that West calls prophetic pragmatism. This volume, which contains the only interview in which Cornel West directly addresses the field of composition,sketches the development of Cornel West’s theories of philosophy, political science, religion, and cultural studies and restates the link between Deweyan notions of critical intelligence and the notion of critical literacy developed by Ann Berthoff, Ira Shor, and Henry Giroux. Gilyard provides examples from the classroom to illustrate the possibilities of Socratic Commitment as part of composition pedagogy, shows the alignment of Prophetic Witness with traditional aims of critical composition, and in his chapter on Tragicomic Hope, addresses African American expressive culture with an emphasis on music and artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, and Kanye West. The first book to comprehensively connect the ideas of one of America's premier scholars of religion, philosophy and African American studies with composition theory and pedagogy, Composition and Cornel West will be valuable to scholars, teachers, and students interested in race, class, critical literacy, and the teaching of writing.

Pragmatism
Pragmatism

Author: Louis Menand

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 1997-10-07

Total Pages: 568

ISBN-13:

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Here are the major texts of American pragmatism, from William James, John Dewey, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Charles Sanders Peirce to Cornell West, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, Richard Posner, and Richard Poirier, now collected and reprinted unabridged. All are remarkable for the wit and vigor of their prose and the mind-clearing force of their ideas. They reflect the vital role that pragmatism has played in almost every area of American intellectual and cultural life, inspiring judges, educators, politicians, poets, and social prophets. Edited and introduced by Louis Menand, Pragmatism: A Reader is an invaluable resource--and an absorbing read--for everyone who is interested in American culture.