Radical Pragmatism: An Alternative - Softcover

Roth, Robert J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 082321852X ISBN 13: 9780823218523

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Robert Roth, among the first few Catholics to write favorably, even if critically, about American pragmatism, presents here a creative piece of comparative philosophy in which he achieves a long-term goal of attempting a reconciliation between pragmatism and a classical spiritual and religious perspective. The title, Radical Pragmatism, is an adaptation of William James’s "radical empiricism." James had argues that the classical empiricists, Locke and Hume, did not go far enough in their account of experience. They missed some of its most important aspects, namely connections and relations, and as a result they were left with discrete sense data and sense objects.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert J. Roth, S. J., is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Fordham University.

Review:

Roth (emeritus, Fordham Univ.) examines the work of the classical pragmatists (Peirce, James, and Dewey), and of the biologist and priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, on evolution and the relation between science and religion. Roth maintains that there are gaps in classical pragmatism that are best filled with a spiritual explanation. For example, Peirce, James, and Dewey stressed that useful scientific hypotheses are much more than generalizations from the facts, yet they had little to say about how hypotheses are generated. Roth focuses on recent interpretations of Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man (1955). Unsatisfied with vague appeals to "flashes of insight" or creative genius, Roth (following Teilhard de Chardin) sees the work of a transcendent being: "The soul, though radically discontinuous with biological evolution, is involved in its continuous process, in the whole phenomenon." The view is a contemporary version of ancient appeals to divine inspiration (e.g., Plato's Iona). Skeptics will respond that nothing is gained by explaining one mystery by another. However, even skeptics will find it illuminating to review central passages in Peirce, James, and Dewey from an explicitly religious perspective. General readers; undergraduate and graduate students. (―Choice)

About this edition

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 082321852X
• ISBN 13: 9780823218523
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 396