Western Philosophy

C

7

Pragmatism

Toward the end of the 19th century, pragmatism became the most vital school of thought within American philosophy. It continued the empiricist tradition of grounding knowledge on experience and stressing the inductive procedures of experimental science. The pragmatists believed in the progress of human knowledge and that ideas are tools whose validity and significance are established as people adapt and test them in physical and social settings. For pragmatists, ideas demonstrate their value insofar as they enrich human experience.

The three most important American philosophers of the pragmatic movement were Charles Sanders Peirce, who founded pragmatism and gave the movement its name; psychologist and religious thinker William James; and psychologist and educator John Dewey. Their work continued into the 20th century. Peirce formulated a pragmatic theory of knowledge and advocated “laboratory philosophy” whereby researchers investigate and clarify the kinds of knowledge that can be gained either through everyday experience or through scientific inquiry. By limiting the realm of meaningful questions to those that concern possible experience, Peirce hoped to introduce scientific logic into metaphysics. He advanced a theory of truth that defined truth as that which an ideal community of researchers could agree upon. Peirce concluded that many traditional philosophical concepts have no practical use and thus are meaningless.

Whereas Peirce sought to determine the meaning of terms and ideas and thereby make metaphysics a precise and pragmatic discipline, James and Dewey applied the principles of pragmatism in developing a comprehensive philosophy. Like Peirce, James maintained that the meaning of ideas lies in their practical consequences. If an idea has no practical uses, then it is meaningless. James focused on the power of true ideas to offer individuals, rather than scientific researchers, practical guidance in handling problems that arise in everyday experience. Truth, according to James, resides in those experiences that enable people to successfully navigate the challenges and demands of the world.

Dewey emphasized the cooperative process in which human beings, as intelligent and social beings, create and revise ideas about the world. One such process was scientific inquiry; another was participation in just and democratic social and political communities. Dewey concluded that science and democracy are the only sure guides for intelligent behavior. His progressive social philosophy communicates a vision of a world in which science, education, and social reform demonstrate the benefits of pragmatic ideas for human life.

---

---

D

20th-Century Philosophy

A diversity of methods, interests, and styles of argumentation marked 20th-century philosophy and proved both fruitful and destructive. This diversity, and the divisions that arose, proved fruitful as new topics arose and new ways developed for discussing these topics philosophically. It proved destructive, however, as philosophers wrote increasingly for a narrow audience and often ignored or derided philosophical styles different from their own.

In the decades following World War II (1939-1945), significant divisions arose between so-called continental philosophers, who worked on the European continent, and philosophers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Deconstruction and other postmodern theories followed existentialism and phenomenology on the continent, whereas the Americans, Britons, and Australians worked in the analytic tradition. In the final decades of the century, the divisions between continental and analytic philosophy eased as interest moved away from the old disputes, and more and more philosophers became interested in exploring common roots of the two traditions in the history of Western philosophy.

D

1

Phenomenology

German philosopher Edmund Husserl founded the 20th-century movement of phenomenology. Husserl said that philosophers must attempt to describe and analyze phenomena as they occur, setting aside such considerations as whether the phenomena are objective or subjective. He emphasized careful observation and interpretation of our conscious perceptions of things. First, we must attend to what we are conscious of, observing our perceptions far more carefully and intensely than we do in everyday life. Second, we must reflect upon these observations and interpret them without preconceptions. Husserl maintained that we arrive at meaning and the key to solving philosophical problems through a logical analysis of the data that emerges from such a “phenomenological study” of the contents of the mind.

French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty and German philosopher Martin Heidegger further developed phenomenology and its emphasis on pure description. For Merleau-Ponty, however, all perceptual experience carries with it a reference to something beyond and independent of our perception of it. Heidegger, too, sought to return to what he claimed had become unfamiliar—Sein (German for “being” or “existence”).

D

2

Existentialism

Heidegger was also a key figure in the 20th-century movement known as existentialism. Existentialists focused on the personal: on individual existence, subjectivity, and choice. Two central existential doctrines claim that there is no fixed human essence structuring our lives and that our choices are never determined by anything except our own free will. In making choices in life, we determine our individual selves. These doctrines imply that human beings have enormous freedom. Existentialists maintained that the human ability to make free choices is so great that it overwhelms many individuals, who experience a “flight from freedom” by falsely treating religion, science, or other external factors as constraints and limits on individual freedom. In addition to Heidegger the main existentialist thinkers include French feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and her companion, the philosopher, novelist, and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre.

D

3

Analytic Philosophy

Analytic philosophy rose to prominence in the United Kingdom after the end of World War I (1914-1918). This movement heralded a linguistic shift according to which the philosophical study of language became the central task of philosophy. Many analytic philosophers concluded that a number of issues prominent in the history of philosophy are unimportant or even meaningless because they arose when philosophers misunderstood or misused language. Analytic philosophy is based upon the assumption that the careful analysis of language and concepts can clear up these problems and confusions. The key figures at the beginning of the movement were British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell and Austrian-born British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Russell, strongly influenced by the precision of mathematics, wished to construct a logical language that would reflect the nature of the world. He argued that what he called the “surface grammar” of everyday language masks a true “logical grammar,” knowledge of which is essential for understanding the true meaning of statements. Russell and many philosophers influenced by him asserted that complex statements can be reduced to simple components; if their logic does not permit such reduction, then the statements are meaningless.

Russell’s view was central to the development of the so-called Vienna Circle, a group of analytic philosophers active from about 1920 to 1950, who were led by Rudolf Carnap and Moritz Schlick. The members of the Vienna Circle were scientists or mathematicians as well as philosophers, and they originated the movement known as logical positivism. They believed that the clarification of meaning is the task of philosophy, and that all meaningful statements are either scientifically verifiable statements about the world or else logical tautologies (self-evident propositions). According to the logical positivists the discovery of new facts belongs to science, and metaphysics—the construction of comprehensive truths about reality—is a pretentious pseudo-science.

Wittgenstein, who studied with Russell at Cambridge University, was perhaps the most important analytic philosopher. Like Russell, he distrusted ordinary language. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) Wittgenstein stated that “philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts.” Philosophy’s function, he believed, is to monitor the use of language by reducing complex statements to their elementary components and by rebuffing all attempts to misuse words in creating the illusion of philosophical depth. “What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must consign to silence.” The Tractatus made important contributions to the philosophy of language, logic, and the philosophy of mathematics. The account of language in Wittgenstein’s later work was much richer and more sophisticated than that in the Tractatus. However, Wittgenstein never abandoned his radical early views on the nature of philosophy.

As the analytic movement developed, different ideas emerged about how philosophical analysis should proceed. A group called constructivists was inspired by Russell, the early writings of Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists. The solutions to philosophical problems, the constructivists argued, lie in using tools of logic to create more precise technical vocabularies. Two leading representatives of this movement were the American philosophers Nelson Goodman and W. V. Quine. Quine saw language and logic as themselves embodying theories about reality, rather than consisting of theory-neutral tools of analysis. By contrast, the descriptivists maintained that philosophical analysis should focus on the careful study of the everyday usage of crucial terms. This group was inspired by the 20th-century British philosophers G. E. Moore, Gilbert Ryle, and John Austin.

Although the radical formulations of analytic philosophy from the first half of the 20th century no longer hold sway, analytic philosophy continues to flourish. Many contemporary philosophers have adopted ideas, methods, or values from the movement, including the Americans Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, and Saul Kripke. Analytic philosophy also has widely influenced the training and practices of philosophers today. On the one hand, its influence has led to a renewed commitment to clarity, concision, incisiveness, and depth in philosophical thinking and writing. On the other hand, it has also caused many philosophers to embrace difficult and obscure technical language to such an extent that their ideas are accessible to only a small community of specialists.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain