Pragmatism - A Contemporary Reader (Paperback)

The book provides the essential matierials for understanding pragmatism's contemporary revival. The contributors consider philosophical issues such as the distinction between truth and knowledge, the meaning of literature and the practice of reading. The readings treat not only traditional philosophical issues such as truth and knowledge, but questions from literary theory and politics: what it is to read a text, or whether democracy is a precondition for a form of intelligence. In his introduction, Russell Goodman examines the roots from which neo-pragmatism evolved. Together the essays show how it is that a philosophy so vibrant and promising at the turn of the 20th century and so depleted at midcentury should revive at the century's end.