NEW PHILOSOPHY CALLED PRAGMATISM 61 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY CALLED PRAGMATISM 



By Professor H. HEATH BAWDEN 



UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI 



PRAGMATISM is a recent movement of thought which is seeking 

 to do justice to the neglected claims of common sense, of religious 

 faith and of science, in determining a true philosophy of life. It isj 

 as Professor James says, simply a new name for some old ways oi 

 thinking, yet in its scope and depth of significance it promises to rank 

 among the important and characteristic products of our Anglo-Saxon 

 civilization. 



Pragmatism originated as a logical principle of method, first formu- 

 lated by Mr. Charles Peirce in 1878 in an article published in The 

 Popular Science Monthly. Twenty years later, Professor James, 

 in an address before the Philosophical Club of the University of Cali- 

 fornia, brought Peirce's principle to the attention of the philosophical 

 world, since which time those sympathetic with the general point of 

 view have been rallying about it as an organizing center. 



At the present time pragmatism is connected with the names of 

 three men, in this country and in England, each being associated with 

 a distinct phase of the movement. Professor William Jantes, of Har- 

 vard University, emphasizes the practical meaning of philosophy for 

 every-day life. Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, of Oxford University, England, 

 defends the rights of religious faith and feeling in determining our 

 beliefs. Professor John Dewey,, of Columbia University, is the cham- 

 pion of a scientific empirical method in philosophy. Professor James 

 uses the words pragmatism and radical empiricism to describe his 

 point of view. Mr. Schiller prefers the term humanism and his philos- 

 ophy has much in common with what in other quarters has come to be 

 called personalism. Professor Dewey's method is quite generally 

 known as instrumentalism, but in a recent article is described by Pro- 

 fessor Dewey himself as immediate empiricism. 



These three leading exponents of pragmatism may be regarded as 

 meeting the objections urged, respectively, by the man of affairs, by the 

 mystical religious man, and by the man of science. 



The man of affairs has objected to philosophy in the past on the 

 ground of its being abstruse and theoretical, impractical and dreary. 

 He is unable to convert the speculations of the metaphysician into 

 market values, on the one hand — it doesn't " bake any bread " — while, 

 on the other hand, it unsettles his faith in the spiritual verities — " God, 



