Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of ThinkingJames, William
Philosophy
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
James, William
Pragmatism
Religious philosophy in our day and generation is, among us
English-reading people, of two main types. One of these is more radical
and aggressive, the other has more the air of fighting a slow retreat.
By the more radical wing of religious philosophy I mean the so-called
transcendental idealism of the Anglo-Hegelian school, the philosophy of
such men as Green, the Cairds, Bosanquet, and Royce. This philosophy has
greatly influenced the more studious members of our protestant ministry.
It is pantheistic, and undoubtedly it has already blunted the edge of
the traditional theism in protestantism at large.
That theism remains, however. It is the lineal descendant, through one
stage of concession after another, of the dogmatic scholastic theism
still taught rigorously in the seminaries of the catholic church. For a
long time it used to be called among us the philosophy of the Scottish
school. It is what I meant by the philosophy that has the air of
fighting a slow retreat. Between the encroachments of the hegelians and
other philosophers of the 'Absolute,' on the one hand, and those of the
scientific evolutionists and agnostics, on the other, the men that
give us this kind of a philosophy, James Martineau, Professor Bowne,
Professor Ladd and others, must feel themselves rather tightly squeezed.
Fair-minded and candid as you like, this philosophy is not radical
in temper. It is eclectic, a thing of compromises, that seeks a modus
vivendi above all things. It accepts the facts of darwinism, the facts
of cerebral physiology, but it does nothing active or enthusiastic with
them. It lacks the victorious and aggressive note. It lacks prestige in
consequence; whereas absolutism has a certain prestige due to the more
radical style of it.
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