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
By taking it abstractly I mean placing it behind our finite life as we
place the word 'winter' behind to-night's cold weather. 'Winter' is
only the name for a certain number of days which we find generally
characterized by cold weather, but it guarantees nothing in that line,
for our thermometer to-morrow may soar into the 70's. Nevertheless
the word is a useful one to plunge forward with into the stream of our
experience. It cuts off certain probabilities and sets up others: you
can put away your straw-hats; you can unpack your arctics. It is a
summary of things to look for. It names a part of nature's habits,
and gets you ready for their continuation. It is a definite instrument
abstracted from experience, a conceptual reality that you must take
account of, and which reflects you totally back into sensible
realities. The pragmatist is the last person to deny the reality of such
abstractions. They are so much past experience funded.
But taking the absolute edition of the world concretely means a
different hypothesis. Rationalists take it concretely and OPPOSE it to
the world's finite editions. They give it a particular nature. It is
perfect, finished. Everything known there is known along with everything
else; here, where ignorance reigns, far otherwise. If there is want
there, there also is the satisfaction provided. Here all is process;
that world is timeless. Possibilities obtain in our world; in the
absolute world, where all that is NOT is from eternity impossible,
and all that IS is necessary, the category of possibility has no
application. In this world crimes and horrors are regrettable. In that
totalized world regret obtains not, for "the existence of ill in the
temporal order is the very condition of the perfection of the eternal
order."
Once more, either hypothesis is legitimate in pragmatist eyes, for
either has its uses. Abstractly, or taken like the word winter, as a
memorandum of past experience that orients us towards the future, the
notion of the absolute world is indispensable. Concretely taken, it is
also indispensable, at least to certain minds, for it determines them
religiously, being often a thing to change their lives by, and by
changing their lives, to change whatever in the outer order depends on
them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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