Translated in the Revue Philosophique for January, 1879 (vol. VII). ↩
“Theorie und Praxis,” Zeitsch. des Oesterreichischen Ingenieur u. Architecten-Vereines, 1905, Nr. 4 u. 6. I find a still more radical pragmatism than Ostwald’s in an address by Professor W. S. Franklin: “I think that the sickliest notion of physics, even if a student gets it, is that it is ‘the science of masses, molecules and the ether.’ And I think that the healthiest notion, even if a student does not wholly get it, is that physics is the science of the ways of taking hold of bodies and pushing them!” (Science, January 2, 1903.) ↩
The Foundations of Belief, p. 30. ↩
Compare A. Bellanger: Les concepts de cause, et l’activité intentionelle de l’esprit. Paris, Alcan, 1905, p. 79 ff. In this, acquaintance with reality’s diversities is as important as understanding their connection. The human passion of curiosity runs on all fours with the systematizing passion. ↩
The Conception of God, New York, 1897, p. 292. ↩
Compare on the Ultimate, Mr. Schiller’s essay “Activity and Substance,” in his book entitled Humanism, p. 204. ↩
The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense, 1905, p. 59. ↩
A. E. Taylor, Philosophical Review, vol. XIV, p. 288. ↩
H. Rickert, Der Gegenstand der Erkenntniss, chapter on “Die Urtheilsnothwendigkeit.” ↩
I am not forgetting that Professor Rickert long ago gave up the whole notion of truth being founded on agreement with reality. Reality, according to him, is whatever agrees with truth, and truth is founded solely on our primal duty. This fantastic flight, together with Mr. Joachim’s candid confession of failure in his book The Nature of Truth, seems to me to mark the bankruptcy of rationalism when dealing with this subject. Rickert deals with part of the pragmatistic position under the head of what he calls “Relativismus.” I cannot discuss his text here. Suffice it to say that his argumentation in that chapter is so feeble as to seem almost incredible in so generally able a writer. ↩
Personal Idealism, p. 60. ↩
Mr. Taylor in his Elements of Metaphysics uses this excellent pragmatic definition. ↩
Colophon
Pragmatism
was published in 1907 by
William James.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Lukas Bystricky,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2004 by
Steve Harris, Charles Franks, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Woman Holding a Balance,
a painting completed in 1664 by
Johannes Vermeer.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
September 18, 2023, 1:36 a.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-james/pragmatism.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
Uncopyright
May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
Copyright pages exist to tell you that you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The United States public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the United States to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission.
Copyright laws are different all over the world, and the source text or artwork in this ebook may still be copyrighted in other countries. If you’re not located in the United States, you must check your local laws before using this ebook. Standard Ebooks makes no representations regarding the copyright status of the source text or artwork in this ebook in any country other than the United States.
Non-authorship activities performed on items that are in the public domain—so-called “sweat of the brow” work—don’t create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, the contributors to this ebook release their contributions under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesn’t change the copyright status of the source text or artwork. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much.
