Early Critics of Pragmatism (The Foundations of Pragmatism in American Thought) - Hardcover

These volumes reprint five of the most significant critiques of pragmatism written before World War I, along with a selection of contemporary responses and replies. Each author was a formidable philosophical critic. James B. Pratt was educated at Harvard; initially attracted to James's pragmatism, he soon became a member of the Realist movement. Paul Carus, the editor of The Monist, and Albert Schinz, a scholar of language and literature, deplored pragmatism's relativism. William Caldwell was a product of the Cornell school of idealism. John T. Driscoll appealed to Thomistic scholasticism for his critique of pragmatism. They all participated in the heated controversies over pragmatism during its first decade, and drew on this experience to sum up their views in their books reprinted in these sets. These are key texts for understanding the context of pragmatism's years of greatest vitality.