Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education

Pragmatism is an American philosophical tradition, developed in the late nineteenth century by Charles Sanders Peirce and William James and later reshaped by John Dewey and, more recently, Richard Rorty, that treats ideas as tools whose value lies in their practical consequences rather than in their correspondence to fixed, abstract truths. Researchers working in this tradition examine how knowledge, meaning, and democratic life are formed through inquiry, habit, and social experience, drawing on Peirce's semiotics to understand how signs mediate thought and on Dewey's vision of education as a rehearsal for participatory democracy. Current debates push at whether pragmatism's historically optimistic account of inquiry can accommodate feminist critiques of whose experiences count as evidence, and how far Rorty's neo-pragmatist rejection of truth as a goal leaves room for meaningful political solidarity. These tensions make pragmatism a live philosophical project rather than a settled doctrine, with scholars continuing to test its resources against questions of power, language, and the purposes of public education.

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Keywords

PragmatismPhilosophyDeweyPeirceDemocracySemiotics