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
Pray postpone for a moment the question whether the two contrasted
mixtures which I have written down are each inwardly coherent and
self-consistent or not--I shall very soon have a good deal to say on
that point. It suffices for our immediate purpose that tender-minded and
tough-minded people, characterized as I have written them down, do both
exist. Each of you probably knows some well-marked example of each type,
and you know what each example thinks of the example on the other side
of the line. They have a low opinion of each other. Their antagonism,
whenever as individuals their temperaments have been intense, has formed
in all ages a part of the philosophic atmosphere of the time. It forms a
part of the philosophic atmosphere to-day. The tough think of the tender
as sentimentalists and soft-heads. The tender feel the tough to be
unrefined, callous, or brutal. Their mutual reaction is very much like
that that takes place when Bostonian tourists mingle with a population
like that of Cripple Creek. Each type believes the other to be inferior
to itself; but disdain in the one case is mingled with amusement, in the
other it has a dash of fear.
Now, as I have already insisted, few of us are tender-foot Bostonians
pure and simple, and few are typical Rocky Mountain toughs, in
philosophy. Most of us have a hankering for the good things on both
sides of the line. Facts are good, of course--give us lots of facts.
Principles are good--give us plenty of principles. The world is
indubitably one if you look at it in one way, but as indubitably is
it many, if you look at it in another. It is both one and many--let us
adopt a sort of pluralistic monism. Everything of course is necessarily
determined, and yet of course our wills are free: a sort of free-will
determinism is the true philosophy. The evil of the parts is undeniable;
but the whole can't be evil: so practical pessimism may be combined with
metaphysical optimism. And so forth--your ordinary philosophic layman
never being a radical, never straightening out his system, but living
vaguely in one plausible compartment of it or another to suit the
temptations of successive hours.
But some of us are more than mere laymen in philosophy. We are worthy
of the name of amateur athletes, and are vexed by too much inconsistency
and vacillation in our creed. We cannot preserve a good intellectual
conscience so long as we keep mixing incompatibles from opposite sides
of the line.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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