WHO OWNS PRAGMATISM?

Extract

In the opening years of the twentieth century a furious contest broke out over the meaning of pragmatism in professional philosophical circles in the United States. When William James introduced his idea to the learned public at the University of California in 1898, he credited Charles Peirce as its prime mover. After James's lecture became known, Peirce, an impossible man who did not know on which side his bread was buttered, re-christened his brainchild pragmaticism to make sure no one confused it with the foolishness of James. When John Dewey made his mark and critiques of pragmatism emerged, Dewey said that we should not argue about a brand name. Nonetheless, he still gave his own philosophy a new designation, dubbing it instrumentalism to avoid the charges unleashed against James. Were there, then, three styles of this speculative tendency? Arthur O. Lovejoy was an unrelenting opponent of the tendency. In 1908 he mocked these thinkers, and wrote in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods a captivating and long-cited essay, “The Thirteen Pragmatisms.”