THE AMERICAN PRAGMATISTS

This is an anthology of American pragmatism. It includes long and carefully selected excerpts from the works of William James, Charles S. Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Percy W. Bridgman, C.I. Lewis, Horace M. Kallin and Sidney Hook. It even includes some pieces by Emerson because both James and Holmes acknowledged the great influence of his thought on their own. The editors state emphatically that ""pragmatists as a group are not adherents to a doctrine, but proponents of a method... people have come to it with widely differing backgrounds and because of the diversity of their interests, they have interpreted and applied the theory in many different ways"". This book gives the impression of an attempt to revive interest in ""the American dream"", at a moment when that dream may perhaps be fading into a sad reality. This is a noble attempt. Unfortunately the sections chosen have no popular charm at all, and will appeal only to professional philosophers and academicians who probably already know the authors' works in full.