Pragmatism and idealism

PRAGMATISM AND IDEALISM
SIR WILLIAM MACDONALD PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, McGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL
LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1913
What is attempted in this book is an examination of the Pragmatist philosophy in its relations to older and newer tendencies in the thought and practice of mankind.
While a good deal has been written within the last ten years upon Pragmatism, the issue that it represents is still an open one—to judge at least from recent books and reviews, and from recent official discussions. And there seems to be a favourable opportunity for a general account of the whole subject and for an estimate of its significance.
In the opening chapter and elsewhere, both in the text and in the footnotes, I have put together some things about the development and the affiliations of Pragmatism, and of pragmatist tendencies, that may not be altogether new to the professional student. Such a presentation, or general conspectus, I have found to be a necessity in the way of a basis both for discussion and for rational comprehension. Taken along with the original pronouncements of James and his confrères it affords an indication of the philosophy to which the pragmatists would fain attain, and of the modification of rationalistic philosophy they would fain effect.
The chapter upon Pragmatism as Americanism is put forth in the most tentative spirit possible, and I have thought more than once of withholding it. Something in this connexion, however, is, in my opinion, needed to cause us to regard the pragmatist philosophy as resting upon a very real tendency of the civilized world of to-day—a tendency that is affecting us all whether we like it or not.
The chapter upon Pragmatism and Anglo-Hegelian Rationalism is also offered with some degree of reservation and misgiving, for, like many of my contemporaries, I owe nearly everything in the way of my introduction to philosophy to the great Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian movement. In its place, I had some months ago a more general chapter upon Pragmatism and Rationalism, containing the results of material that I had been elaborating upon the development of English Neo-Hegelianism. At the last moment I substituted what is here offered upon the significant high-water output of Hegelianism represented in Dr. Bosanquet’s Edinburgh Gifford Lectures.