Steven Levine

In recent years, a renascent form of pragmatism has developed which argues that a satisfactory pragmatic position must integrate into itself the concepts of truth and objectivity. This New Pragmatism, as Cheryl Misak calls it, is directed primarily against Rorty's neo-pragmatic dismissal of these concepts. For Rorty, the goal of our epistemic practices should not be to achieve an objective view, one that tries to represent things as they are 'in themselves,' but rather to attain a view of things that can gain as much inter-subjective agreement as possible. In Rorty's language, we need to replace the aim of objectivity with that of solidarity. While the New Pragmatists agree with Rorty's 'humanist' and ..

In this paper, I argue against Terry Pinkard's account of the relation between Deweyian pragmatism and Hegelian idealism. Instead of thinking that their affinity concerns the issue of normative authority, as Pinkard does, I argue that we should trace their affinity to Dewey's appropriation of Hegel's naturalism, especially his theory of habits. Pinkard is not in a position to appreciate this affinity because he misreads Dewey as an instrumentalist, and his social-constructivist account of Hegel – which he shares with Pippin and Brandom, is not able to correctly take the measure of Hegel's naturalism. On my reading, Dewey's philosophy is concerned above all with understanding and making objective the proper relation between reason and habit, with our achieving an equipoise in which thought is informed by intelligent habits and where habits are instituted by past thought and inquiry. In achieving this equipoise, one's bodily nature becomes a form in which subjects can realize their freedom. I claim..