Pragmatic is a philosophical approach that emphasizes practical action and the usefulness of ideas over their theoretical truth or falsity. It is a moderate approach between extremes of idealism and realism, and combines elements of both. A pragmatist takes into account the consequences of his or her actions for everyone involved. For example, if a person kills a creditor, this may appear pragmatic only from the perspective of the killer, but a pragmatist would consider that the victim’s family and community have lost someone productive.
A major figure in the development of pragmatism was John Dewey (1863-1931). He taught at the University of Chicago and helped cultivate a number of pragmatist thinkers, including Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1920) and George Herbert Mead (1900-1931).
Dewey saw pragmatism as a means of uniting various philosophical traditions, and he promoted its influence abroad. As the progressive ‘New Deal’ era ended and the United States entered the Second World War, though, pragmatism declined in popularity. It was overtaken by analytic philosophy, which became the methodological orientation of most Anglo-American departments of philosophy.
In the early 1970s, a number of prominent philosophers began to take pragmatism seriously again. Richard Rorty (b. 1931) endorsed it in order to rectify what he perceived as mainstream epistemology’s fundamental mistake of naively conceiving of language and thought as mirroring the world, and his bold iconoclastic attacks on such’representationalism’ birthed a neopragmatism to which a host of other philosophers (such as Hilary Putnam and Susan Haack) have contributed.
Some scholars have argued that a pragmatist approach to ethics can be applied to issues of animal rights and bioethics, as well as to a wide range of other topics. Others, however, have emphasized that a pragmatist ethical theory is essentially the same as any other ethical theory and does not imply any particular set of beliefs or values.
Forms of empiricism, fallibilism, verificationism and a Quinean naturalist metaphilosophy are all commonly incorporated into pragmatist philosophies. Many pragmatists are epistemological relativists and see this as an essential facet of their pragmatism (e.g. Joseph Margolis). Other pragmatists, such as Huw Price and Hilary Putnam, are ardent defenders of classical pragmatism and its ideals of objectivity.