Pragmatism and Poetic Agency: The Persistence of Humanism (Routledge Research in American Literature and Culture)

Pragmatism is a humanist philosophy. In spite of the much-debated renaissance of pragmatism, however, a detailed discussion of the relationship between pragmatism and humanism is still a desideratum. It is difficult to understand the complexity of pragmatism without considering the significance of humanism. At least since the 1970s, humanism, mostly in its liberal version, has been vehemently attacked and criticized. In pragmatism, however, a particular understanding of humanism has persisted. Bringing literary studies, philosophy, and intellectual history together and establishing a transatlantic theoretical dialogue, Pragmatism and Poetic Agency endeavors to elucidate this persistence of humanism. Schulenberg continues the thought-provoking argument he developed in his previous two monographs by advancing the idea that one can only grasp the unique contemporary significance of pragmatism when one realizes how pragmatism, humanism, anti-authoritarianism, and postmetaphysics are interlinked. If one appreciates the implications and consequences of this link, then one is in a position to see pragmatism’s antifoundationalist and antirepresentationalist story of progress and emancipation as continuing the project of the Enlightenment.

Ulf Schulenberg teaches American studies at the University of Bremen, Germany. He is the author of Zwischen Realismus und Avantgarde (2000), Lovers and Knowers (2007), Romanticism and Pragmatism (2015), and Marxism, Pragmatism, and Postmetaphysics (2019). He has published widely in literary and cultural theory, aesthetics, and American and European intellectual history.