Pragmatism's Advantage: American and European Philosophy at the End of the Twentieth Century by Joseph Margolis

ISBN: 9780804770460

Stanford University Press | 29 January 2010

Paperback | 192 pages

Pragmatism’s Advantage: American and European Philosophy at the End of the Twentieth Century is a highly original reading of the contemporary interplay between pragmatism and continental European philosophy based on an unexpectedly inventive union of Hegelian and Darwinian themes. Joseph Margolis addresses the rift between major philosophical factions — analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, and pragmatism — offering a modified pragmatism as the best way out of this stalemate. Whether examining Heidegger or rethinking the foibles of Dewey, Rorty, and Peirce, much of nineteenth‑ and twentieth‑century Western philosophy comes into play as Margolis presents his history of philosophy’s evolution and defends his views, seeking a middle ground that transcends scientism and transcendentalism.