American Pragmatism

3 units

This course examines the history of American pragmatism through three of its primary founders, the philosophers Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. It considers pragmatism as a response to the experience of uncertainty brought on my modernity, and contextualizes it amidst late nineteenth and early twentieth century thought and politics, namely, scientific methodology, evolutionary theory, the probabilistic revolution, Transcendentalism, the rise of secularism, slavery, Abolitionism, and the Civil War. Major essays by each thinker will be read as well as three intellectual biographies and one critical survey.