F.C.S. Schiller: Pragmatism, Humanism, and Postmetaphysics

Abstract

In order to understand the implications of Richard Rorty’s notion of a genuinely postmetaphysical culture, one has to see how important the idea of humanism is for this kind of culture. On a more general level, one can state that the idea of humanism has played a crucial role for thinkers as different as William James, John Dewey, and Rorty. All three pragmatists, to varying degrees, call attention to the Protagorean idea that man is the measure of all things. Moreover, they urge their readers to confront the centrality of the following questions: In what way can pragmatism, as a philosophy of praxis, of creative action, and of experiences and consequences, be understood as a kind of humanism? How does it change our understanding of the task philosophy has to fulfill if man’s desires, feelings, purposes, needs, and interests are recognized as shaping and directing our approaches in epistemology and logic? What are the consequences of the insight that one cannot strictly separate logic and psychology? Furthermore — and this will preoccupy us throughout this study — one has to realize how pragmatism, humanism, postmetaphysics, and anti-authoritarianism are linked. A pragmatist humanism is a form of anti-authoritarianism insofar as it shows that man does not need to strive to be adequate to a nonhuman power; that is, he does not need to develop a way of thinking that, in its purity, objectivity, rationality, and neutrality, follows the imperatives of this nonhuman power.