Pragmatist Metaphysics: An Essay on the Ethical Grounds of Ontology

(Hardback)

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Pragmatist Metaphysics proposes a pragmatist re-articulation of the nature, aims and methods of metaphysics. Rather than regarding metaphysics as a first philosophy', an inquiry into the world independent of human perspectives, the pragmatist views metaphysics as an inquiry into categorizations of reality laden with human practices. Insofar as our categorizations of reality are practice-laden, they are also, inevitably, value-laden.
Sami Pihlstrm argues that metaphysics does not, then, study the world's own' categorial structure, but a structure we, through our conceptual and practical activities, impose on the reality we experience and interact with. Engaging with the classical American pragmatists, in particular William James, and neopragmatists, including Hilary Putnam, the author seeks to correct long-held misconceptions regarding the nature of the relationship between metaphysics and pragmatism. He argues that a coherent metaphysical alternative to the currently fashionable realist metaphysics emerges from pragmatism and that pragmatism itself should be reinterpreted in a metaphysically serious manner. Moreover, the book argues that, from a pragmatist perspective, metaphysics must be inextricably linked with ethics.

Reviews

"In an age when analytic philosophy and much contemporary pragmatic thought focuses on only this or that particular problem, Pihlstrm's masterful and wide-ranging philosophical project recalls the thoroughgoing philosophical systems of the classical pragmatists like Peirce and James and Dewey who saw every part of philosophy to hang together. Ethics and religion, mind and metaphysics, language and logic, all appear together in Pihlstrm's pragmatism, and all interpenetrate in a dynamic and developmental view of the humanity in the world. This book is must reading not only for pragmatists but for anyone who wants to understand the consilience of strands of philosophical thought in twenty-first century." - Elizabeth F. Cooke, Creighton University, USA
A good primer for those with some background and interest in pragmatism and metaphysics, and who would like to see the latter tailored to the former, Philstrom's book makes for a good resource. -- American Journal of Theology & Philosophy

Author Bio

Sami Pihlstrm is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His previous publications include Pragmatic Pluralism and the Problem of God (2013) and Taking Evil Seriously (2014). He is a board member of the Central European Pragmatist Forum and the Nordic Pragmatism Network.