Pragmatic is a philosophy concerned with the connection between thought and action. It draws on the ideas of John Dewey, Jane Addams and George Herbert Mead and is often considered a feminist philosophy because its concern with women’s roles and the social dimension of human behavior was first advocated by these three founders of classical pragmatism as they worked together at the Hull House, were close friends and engaged in women’s rights causes.
A pragmatist is someone who is concerned with real world problems and is pragmatic in dealing with them. The word pragmatic is derived from the Greek words pragmatikos, meaning practical, and praxis, meaning activity. It is sometimes called American pragmatism because many of the original pragimatists were Americans. Its philosophical roots go back to Peirce and James’s discussions at the Metaphysical Club in 1870. Later, Peirce developed his pragmatism into a philosophy in the 1880s and 1890s through writings and lectures. He and James were influenced by Mary Parker Follett, who was a leader in the Hull House experience and women’s rights causes.
The philosophies of pragmatists have been applied in fields as diverse as organizational operation, law, philosophy of language, ethics, and political science. It is particularly relevant to education, where pragmatism can be used to encourage students to make their own decisions rather than accepting predetermined notions of right and wrong. The pragmatist approach is also useful in counseling and therapy.
A pragmatic philosopher is one who applies an empirical method to the study of human thought and action. This means that they seek out those theories and ideas that actually work in the real world, rather than simply those that are theoretically interesting or intellectually appealing. Applied fields such as public administration, political science and leadership studies have all incorporated pragmatism into their methodologies.
For a long time, there was a decline in the popularity of pragmatism in the philosophical community. However, in the 1970s Richard Rorty turned pragmatism around by taking it as a point of departure for his bold criticism of mainstream epistemology. He and other neopragmatists have sought to rehabilitate classical pragmatist ideals of truth and objectivity.
Jurgen Habermas is an example of a contemporary pragmatist who has applied the methodology of the pragmatists to many different philosophical topics. His concept of discourse ethics has been a significant influence on the development of contemporary philosophy. He combines analytic philosophers’ goal of systematically theorising language with a neo-Marxian, hermeneutic and pragmatic analysis of modern society. He also advocates a pragmatic version of Dewey’s concept of truth as that which is realised in the communicative process. In this way, he has extended the pragmatists’ original a posteriori epistemology into a broader philosophy of language.