[MD] David Hildebrand's Dewey

[david buchanan]

No, Steve, that's not the one I was referring to but it's by the same author and it's a good one too. (http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Realism-Antirealism-Neopragmatists-Vanderbilt/dp/082651426X) You'll find "Dewey" below, where Amazon displays the "also bought" books. The anthologies (Classical American Pragmatism and Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy) displayed there are also quite good. Hildebrand uses those anthologies in his course on Pragmatism, in fact, and so I own a copy of them as well. Hildebrand's "Beyond Realism and Antirealism" is especially good if you're interested in the differences between classical pragmatists like himself and neo-pragmatists like Richard Rorty. As I understand it, Pirsig, Hildebrand and myself are classical pragmatists. Pirsig calls himself a pragmatist in Lila but doesn't say whether he's classical or neo. His adoption of radical empiricism is what leads me to claim he's of the classical variety. James thought of his pragmatism and his radical empiricism as separate so that one need not accept both but contemporary philosophers, like Pirsig, insist that they are two aspects of a whole.  You're quite right to point out that Rorty's disrespect for experience plays a crucial role. Like other neo-pragmatists, he pretty much dismisses radical empiricism and the contemporary classical pragmatists are a bit angry about that. Sandra Rosenthal, for example, has been a guest lecturer twice and both times she accused Rorty of being a relativist who has filtered out some very important elements in his interpretation of Dewey. Sadly, there are lots of kids in school right now who only know Rorty's brand of pragmatism and this is considered to be something of a crisis among Dewey scholars. In my opinion, Rorty's distortions grow out of his background. He's basically a reformed positivist, a positivist who was reformed by the linguistic turn. Or, as I like to put it, James, Dewey and Pirsig can all be considered philosophical mystics while Rorty can't. I find his work to be almost entirely negative and full of emptiness, maybe even nihilistic. I think the differences are not at all trivial. Matt K would probably disagree with me about all that but most of Rorty's classically minded critics agree that he's some kind of relativist. This semester will be my last for course work and then I'll a take about a year to write the thesis. I'll be taking an independent study course on 19th century reactions to the Enlightenment and a class on Plato. The independent study will allow me to look at the context in which James and Dewey were thinking and the Plato class will allow me to get a better handle on Pirsig's criticisms of dialectic. (I ordered a book called "Coffee with Plato" because Pirsig wrote a forward or introduction for it.) For the last year or so I've been studying religion and art, among other things. Basically, if a class doesn't illuminate the MOQ I don't bother taking it. It's all about Bob, you know? 
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