Pragmatic is a word that is used to describe people or actions who are concerned with matters of fact instead of focusing on ideals and ideas. This means that pragmatic people are more concerned with the results and consequences of their decisions than they are about the principles behind them. A person who is pragmatic is considered to be logical and sensible in their approach to life. In philosophy, pragmatism is usually contrasted with idealism.
Pragmatism is an American philosophical tradition that presents a growing third alternative to the analytic and continental traditions. Its key ideas originated in discussions at the so-called ‘Metaphysical Club’ around 1870, and became prominent through publications by Charles Sanders Peirce and William James (see the bibliography below for books on these authors). A first generation of pragmatists mainly focused on theorising inquiry, meaning and the nature of truth, although James turned a good deal of energy towards pragmatist perspectives upon religion, and his Harvard colleague Josiah Royce developed a version of pragmatism which was closely allied to absolute idealism.
A second generation of pragmatists turned the philosophy more explicitly towards politics, education and social improvement. These included the social-worker Jane Addams and her husband, the philosopher John Dewey. Several of their associates also wrote influential books on these topics, including the economist Herbert Mead (1934), the American psychologist James L. Elliot (1897-1935) and the African-American thinker W.E.B Du Bois (1902-1963). Other important pragmatist thinkers of this period included John Dewey’s younger colleague, George Herbert Mead (1863-1931).
After the end of the Progressive Era and the start of World War II, pragmatism was eclipsed as an analytical philosophy blossomed and continental philosophy came to be dominant in most anglophone departments. However, the ideas continued to spread and neopragmatism, represented by figures such as Richard Rorty, is gaining increasing prominence in academic philosophy as a broad-based approach to the nature of reality and value theory, as well as philosophical semantics and metaphilosophy.
The general lines of contemporary pragmatism are now evident in the work of a number of philosophers, both analytic and continental. For example, philosopher of language and linguistics John Perry has recently published a book on pragmatics which aims to reconcile analytic philosophy with some of the key themes of classical pragmatism. In this he follows in the footsteps of James, but differs from him in emphasising the importance of ‘functional efficacy’ as the test for validity, and in his rejection of the notion that concepts have intrinsic metaphysical properties. Other neopragmatists, such as Robert Brandom, take an approach which is more influenced by the metaphilosophy of Wittgenstein than by the classical pragmatists and also seek to link pragmatism with philosophical anthropology and philosophy of science. The pragmatist philosophy of language and semantics also draws on the work of Grice. This is a form of functional analysis which is based on the idea that communicative intentions are fulfilled when utterances are recognized by their intended recipients.