Pragmatism. Idealism, committed as it is to the 'latent' and 'implicit' cannot account for genuine development (p. 297). Pragmatism "drops the pretense of envisaging the universe," and "frankly acknowledges the realities of immediate experience" (pp. 467, 466). Speculative philosophers have been guilty of "the more than technical blunder" of substituting "the otiose insight gained by manipulation of a formula for the slow coöperative work of a humanity guided by reflective intelligence." We are to infer that the latter effective method is that of Pragmatism (p. 28). Idealists have spent all their spiritual substance (if we may believe the account of the Pragmatists) in "disingenuous apologetics," in explaining away real experience.
Because this claim of superior faithfulness in reporting reality is made by all philosophers who take themselves seriously, and who believe that they are the first to know the whole truth, it is worth while once more to examine in what sense, and by virtue of what affirmations and exclusions, the Pragmatists are closer to the facts than anyone else. For it is evident that the 'experience' that they report has a distinctive and describable nature; not all qualifications attach with equal validity to the world as it appears to the Pragmatist. Even he has predilections and assumptions.
In general, then, it is true that the Pragmatic philosophy draws its substance—the material upon which it operates from the contemporary industrial, political, and scientific movements. This at once implies that it does not draw its significance from the life of philosophy hitherto. "This essay," says Professor Dewey, who opens the volume with a general discussion of the work of Pragmatism, "[is] an attempt to forward the emancipation of philosophy from too intimate and exclusive attachment to traditional problems." Too much emphasis has been laid on past thought, old antitheses, old problems and their solutions. What is called for is "direct preoccupation with contemporary difficulties." Philosophy must not be side-tracked from the main currents of contemporary life. But in the next breath Professor Dewey hastens to add that we must keep something of philosophical tradition. We do not want too much of it, but something of it is necessary. By what standard then do we distinguish what has value in the history of philosophy from what is an unprofitable accumulation of words? It appears that we are to retain such parts of the tradition as are useful to outsiders. Scientists and business men shall determine in large measure the content of philosophy (see p. 5). Philosophy, in a word, is a serving-woman, as in the middle ages, and is valued as an instrument, but does not properly determine its own ends (p. 14).
