Richard J. Bernstein and the Pragmatist Turn in Contemporary Philosophy

Once before, as it now is again, pragmatism was a transformative, world-wide intellectual movement that championed a new paradigm of how we should think and act in order to meet the challenges of the modern sciences, frame inclusive and democratic public policy, and teach ethical habits of inclusive, meaning-filled, growth-fostering daily living. During pragmatism's time of eclipse after World War II, Richard J. Bernstein and a few other stubborn visionaries struggled to keep its embers alive while successfully steering philosophy out of its "linguistic turn". In The Pragmatic Turn, Bernstein reflects on the lessons classical pragmatism can still teach us, criticizes the ideas of some leading contemporary thinkers, and calls younger scholars to join him in working on key philosophical issues of the present and the future. Richard J. Bernstein and the Pragmatist Turn in Contemporary Philosophy: Rekindling Pragmatism's Fire is the response of twelve younger critics - some fresh voices, some already well-known - and Bernstein's response to each of them. It is a lively, accessible, inter-generational conversation that exemplifies pragmatism's spirit, including discussions of classical pragmatists like Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead, and Locke, and contemporary pragmatists like Putnam, Rorty, Brandom, and Habermas.